Not a newbie persay, but have newbie questions

Hi guys,

I've been a lurker for most of my reefkeeping career, learning a lot from this and other forums. I've had a 75g set up for about a year and a half now and sadly haven't been able to give it the attention I'd like to. Some background: Flame angel, blue tang, and 2 clowns that each have their own BTA (it split!!!). 260W of power compacts with bulbs that are entirely too old (12 months??), octopous HOB skimmer, 80 or so lbs of LR, and 80 lbs of aragonite (exact type is escaping me, it's been a while). So, here are my issues. My sand looks terrible!

Sorry for the cell phone pics, it's all I've got at the moment. It hasn't always looked this bad, but it seems like there are lots of little brown rocks in it. I'd like to get it looking white again... I started with adding a bunch of nassarius and cerith snails but they don't seem to help. I'd love a diamond goby but have had very bad experience with them. They keep the sand looking great, but 1 found a hole to jump out of, one disappeared, and one starved because he refused to leave his cave. The difference in temperment of the three of them was pretty incredible. I'd love to get another but I think I've done enough harm to the species. I've got 3 Koralias, the skimmer return, and a HOB filter pumping so I think I've got enough flow. I know my bulbs are shot and I'll be ordering a 6 bulb T-5 fixture this week. Other than that, I try and siphon off of the bottom whenever I do a water change. It looks better for a couple days in the sections that I do but the problem returns.

Also - anyone here using an octopus HOB? I've had mine for about a year and it's been great, but recently the return chamber has been filled up past the return tube.

I checked the return for clogs but didn't find anythign. I'm not sure if this is hurting anything but it seems strange to me. Any ideas?

Cheers
Adam

 

Clean out your skimmer, clean its pump, and blow out or replace the air line.

 

Check your phosphates. Water changes and some PhosBan.

 

In addition, I would replace out all your air/water lines. Even the big ones. After a year, this is just regular maintanence.

 

Thanks for the tips guys. I took the skimmer apart and cleaned everything up but ran into a problem while putting it back together. I hooked it up on a bucket to test things out and it is draining properly now. But after about a minute of running, the pump output changed from the nice milky froth to just a steady stream of bubbles. I'll do a search and see what could cause this but I wanted to post here with an update first.

 

Does the bucket contain Salt water or fresh water?
Also check the airline intake to be sure that no water is getting into it.

 

Bucket has fresh water in it. I'm guessing this is a problem?