Softie problems without fish

[jccaclimber]

Another update, the toadstool has been out almost constantly during the day since just after I removed a large mass of chaeto and xenia, which points to competition for the resources available. The frogspawn and rics have also been happier since then. I'll start reverting stuff (will start rinsing the shrimp, return slowly to normal feeding and WC schedule). Looking back things did slowly decline as the xenia and chaeto populations grew. May be coincidence, or may not.
This points to something I preach in freshwater regularly: Test until you get a feel for what parameters do to a tank, and test whenever something is wrong. I haven't been doing this in my salt tank, and probably should be as unlike planted freshwater I'm much less familiar.
We're also finally cleared to move offices so I'll be upgrading the tank soon. I'd like to leave it as-is for a little while to try to confirm this though.
Unfortunately the other algae is also quite happy, but I'll continue working on that.

 

[Shane C.]

That's encouraging! Sounds like you were running to clean of a tank! A couple of fish in the new tank will help with that! What type of nuisance algae do you have to deal with in the absence of xenia and chaeto?

 

[jccaclimber]

The tank swap ran without any unsurmountable issues a week ago Saturday. The new 29 isn't great, but is doing ok. I've been keeping the nitrate levels up with the phyto and not changing much water. I've tried not feeding the nems for a week and the toadstool seems happy still. I'll cut the phyto for a while once I have the clowns in (ie another way to keep the nitrates up) and see if that does anything.

The nuisance algae is growing a bit faster, but that's no surprise. I expect to have a bigger ball of chaeto in this tank (29 vs a 14) but I'll be sure to keep the nitrates up a bit as it grows.

For now I'll call this case closed, but I'll be sure to report back if I have more issues in the future.

 

[jccaclimber]

Another long term update:

I added a pair of clowns shortly after the tank swap. I still go through occasional bursts of moodiness with the softies, but upping my feeding always seems to help. I'm quite amazed at how much food the tank can handle. While the algae situation is only marginally better, I'm putting in several times more food than I was previously and my nitrates/phosphates are still testing much closer to 0 than to the lowest readable value on my basic tests. For the phosphate the lowest readable is 0.25, but the color almost perfectly matches the 0. For the nitrates 5 is the lowest readable, but the color is a perfect yellow so I'm inclined to say the chaeto, pest algae, and softies are still consuming everything.

If I wanted to add nitrates to keep the softies happy while decreasing my phosphate addition, what about feeding less but throwing in some KNO3? I know this is contrary to the usual goal of removing nitrates, but what would it do?