first post, hello

I have 180gal. reef tank. 3 250watt mh ,4 atinic vho ice cap. 125 lbs live rock, 14 soft corals, 2 yellow tangs ,kent ro on float, sump under tank, turbo multi 1000, turbo twist uv, eco- aqualizer ha ,ha tring it . I have a ick problem trying to get rid of . Also even with all that , I still have nitrates around 20-40 . I keep doing water changes about every 2 weeks with ro water. ro water test 0 nitrates. I also been fighting hair alge. sal. I ,ve been keeping around 1.026 with refrac. meter. phosphate 0 , ph 8.3. I only run 2 of mh 8 hrs on timers , because of temp, it runs 82-83 degrees . I need a chiller . any help, with these things
thanks chris will put pc on, video to as soon as i figure it out thanks

 

have you tried puting fans over your tank to blow on the lights, it will increase evaporation but decrease your temperature atleast a couple degrees?
have you tried hyposalinity treatment for your ich?

also welcome to 3reef

 

welcome to 3reef. You should get alot of good info here!

 

I have 2 fan dragging hot air out , how much is hyper sal. right now its 1.026 -1.0265 not sure how high to take with soft corals and fish . already lost to much to the ick , powder blue , brown tangs , purple ,

 

hypo its the opposite of hyper. you lower you salinity to 1.012 or something like that and the ich eggs pop in the lower salinity.
taken from reefkeeping magazine

 

Are you running a fuge? IMO, you need to investigate a way to control the nitrates other than water changes. Investigate conversion of part of your sump to a refugium or look at a denitrator. Tangster makes good, inexpensive denitrators. Either PM him, his wife Amcarrig, That Guy or contact Aquatic Art Technologies in the sponsor's section. Here is what I did to a 20 long to make it a sump/fuge. There is a piece of acrylic topped off by a piece of eggcrate to divide the tank. In this pic, I needed to add water to the mud substrate.....



This is what a denitrator looks like.....it is the tubular thang to the left.....

 

here are some pic.

 

that was the next thing i was looking into ,nice set up

 

you know you could almost do a planted tank look with that hair algae.