BTA vs. Koralia

So yesterday morning my BTA was wandering and got eaten by a Koralia. The water looked like soup. I did two 20% water changes yesterday and one this evening. I replaced the carbon and put in some Phosguard (Just for good measure), and changed out my filter floss.

Last night, when I got home from work, I checked my parameters. I had a trace of Nitrite (Between 0.0 and .25 on the color chart), but my Nitrate (usually diligently kept under 10) was at 20. PH (8.3), Ammonia (0.0), Calcium (460), Dka (11), and Mag (1380), Specific Gravity (1.023) were all still good.

Anyone have any other suggestions other then what I did and to keep doing water changes until I get the nitrate level back down?

 

yup ur doin the right thing... you can do bigger changes

 

You pretty much have it right. Water changes and carbon is pretty much all you can do.

 

Thanks, just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

 

Sorry to hear that. You can do a 20% water change as well, every 3rd or 4th day. Honestly, even at 20ppm nitrates, your tank is safe. Just keep an eye on the ammonia and make sure you don't get a spike there.
I think it was moving around looking for stronger lighting. Mine did the same thing until I upgraded to MH lights, then it stayed put. How long did you have it?

 

Just found the receipt this morning dated 02/21/10. I got him in hopes that my tank raised clowns would somehow have some instinctive behavior and host, never worked. My son would get so mad at the fish....

It stayed put for a long time but the last couple of weeks it almost seemed to be chasing my clowns. It would follow them (Granted very slowly) around the tank. If they found a spot to hang out it would eventually go to that spot. I know this idea sounds absurd, but if they went to a corner so did the BTA. Up, down, behind rocks, it didn't matter. This time the clowns went up by the power head and the BTA was wondering no more.

Halides would be nice, but I have a small tank in a small living room and don't think I could go bigger.

I checked my parameters this morning and my only issue is the nitrates. Looks between the 10 and 20 on my color chart. I will do a couple more water changes this weekend and see if I can get that back where I like it.

My big problem is I don't have a skimmer. I ordered one like a month ago, but it's on backorder and it probably will not ship for another two weeks. A skimmer would have come in really handy the other day. Just my luck I guess.

 

large WC wont get rid of it, you need to do small but frequent water changes, that will get rid of it,

And 20 Nitrate isnt bad at all, i keep mine at 30ppm

 

With a 26G tank, you can get away with T5 lights, like a 4 bulb fixture will do the trick. If you had a skimmer right now, it would go nuts and overflow within mintutes. Just keep doing what you are doing and it will be ok.
I wasn't clear when I asked "how long have you had it" I actually meant how long have you had the tank, more specifically, how long has it been running? Tanks really need to be very mature and stable for an anemone to have a good chance at surviving in a home aquarium.

 

My LTA met my protein skimmer today it ended good for me though. hopefully it wont do that again.

 

Guess it would depend on what you call "Very." Set up last September for my wife's birthday.

Stability has not been a problem, been the same every week since I have been testing. Since I am anal enough to keep a excel spreadsheet with my results every time I have tested, since I got my test kit. Only hiccup in the data is when the BTA bought the farm.

As far as the lighting goes I am putting out more light with my two 65 watt power compacts then with a four bulb T5 fixture.