25 gallons of disaster

Hi everyone, the reason for the thread's name is because i have "crashed" this tank many many times before, the main reason being my impatience, sometimes i change things too quickly. So i hope that by posting my tank details here i will get useful tips to improve my reef keeping skills.


So here are my tank details, i have a 2 feet tank to a 2 feet sump, this tank is only about 2 weeks old since the last crash that's why i have some live stock in there.

Livestock:

display tank: Bubble tip anemone, 2 Mini Maxi carpet Anemones, some ricordea yumas, leather coral frag, frogspawn frag.

Sump: Snowflake eel, red bamboo algae.


Equipment:

Sump: 1800 l/h return pump, 1/15 hp chiller, 150ml ATB HQ biopellets, Deltec MCE600 protein skimmer rated for 100 to 155 gallon tanks. 1 T5 HO bulb.

Display Tank: a 600 l/h powerhead, with a DIYed overflow pipe, 2 T5 HO bulbs.

Maintenance: weekly 5% water change, daily 1 litre water top off, weekly Coral Energizer (some kinda soft coral food that looks like plankton)

Additives: It's Clear!, Coralline Stimulator, PO4 eliminator, Microbacter7, Reef Bio-Fuel, Reef Calcium, Reef Carbonate (only added when my Alkalinity levels drop), Reef Magnesium.


As you can see my tank is really full of algae because of the tank crash 2 weeks ago caused by the addition of that sump full of live rock all at one shot without making sure they were cured properly first.

when i find the time, maybe i'll tell you guys more about what i've done before to crash my tank.

after that crash i started to really upgrade my tank equipment and additives. and told myself to take it slow.

The new equipment that i got was my protein skimmer -added a month ago and i got it second hand so it was really really cheap - and biopellet reactor - added a few days ago - , which is the little red square thing you can see from my sump.

The new additives i've been adding are everything except for the calcium, carbonate and magnesium.

So here's my plan to avoid any future disasters, right now my sump is abit low on the amount of water, so instead of water changes i'm adding 5 litres of saltwater a week to slowly increase the water level without altering the water chemistry of the entire tank too much.

i'm also going to be adding livestock only after 3 - 4 weeks to allow my biopellets to kick in and my tank to stabilize.

here's my current parameters.

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Phosphate 0 to 0.25 ( i have difficulty reading the color chart so i just assumed 0.25 to be safe)
Nitrates 40 ppm
Alkalinity 4.5 meq/l
Ph 8.1
Calcium 350ppm


my nitrates are kinda high cause didn't use a RO/DI unit previously and i'm hoping the reef biofuel and bio pellets plus weekly water changes will bring them down slowly.

 

wow...
ok, first things first.
Exactly how old is the tank?
How many gallons in the display tank AND how many in the sump?
How many pounds of rock do you have. Specifically how much was live rock and how much, if any, was dry rock?

 

It's actually about a year old. But since the last crash 2 weeks.

15 gallons in the display. I think the sump can hold more but it's 10 at the moment.

I can't remember how many pounds in the display, but aboUt 12 pounds in the sump. Everything was live rock.

 

Hey samuel i would if you don't mind next time you do a water change take your hoes and with your figure start to rub off some of the alga. and i would down up your light hours about three hours.


just to start getting your tank back in order

Joe

 

Sounds like a good plan. Definitely will do.

 

Maybe this is just miscommunication but...

It sounds like your water level is low do to evaporation.
If that is the case, your salinity level has went up as the salt does not evaporate. You should be topping off you sump with ro/di or distilled water (daily or every 2 or 3 days) to keep your water parameters stable.

 

actually its low because it started off with that level. i'm just slowly raising the water level week by week, i do top off with RO/DI each day.

 

Just a few thoughts. You can increase the water volume without messing with the chemistry. Check the current ph, salinity and temperature in the tank and make new water that matches those and simply put in more water.

You are adding quite a few things to your tank (ie: It's Clear and Coralline Stimulator) which IMHO you don't need and probably shouldn't add. I don't know what It's Clear is, but the use of carbon is common and can remove certain things from the water. There's no need to accelerate the growth of coralline algae---it will grow on its own. Again, IMHO, the more stuff you add, the higher the chance of having problems. However, maintaining alk., magnesium, and calcium are important and most people need additives in one form or another. It would be good if you bumped the calcium level up as 350 is on the low side.

Also, there is nothing wrong with doing a 5% weekly water change but 10% might be a bit better, especially since your nitrates are on the high side for corals.

I'm glad to hear you're going slow as moving too quickly usually causes all sorts of problems. You said you're going to wait 3-4 weeks before adding more livestock which is a good thing. When you do, add in very small increments (like maybe 1 small fish) and make sure you don't overfeed, especially since you are already battling nitrates.

 

Thanks, i will definitely take the advice to heart.

 

Good luck and keep us posted.