Need help with water chemistry

bigfishtoo pm'd me yesterday:

I have tried all I know how to get my nitrates down, fighting the red slime and I have done water changes, clean skimmer, replace light bulbs, use carbon, shut lights off for three days, my cheato will not grow and i have two 65 watt 6500k light on refugium. You can see from my pictures of my set up. I tested all my water and all is good but nitrate is 25 to 30. I can even keep snails alive. I removed all the live rock and cleaned off red slime and cleaned glass and now its back. Please can you help get this gone, what do i need to buy or do. No one around here has any clues. I live in Elko Nevada, and my pictures of my tank are under reef chemistry, page two, topic need help with water chemistry. I took a lot of cabbage coral out as requested. Please any help would be great.

Well I had over 20 turbos and 100 ceriths and 20 bubble bee snails, I gave the extra cabbage coral to friends. The red slime is all over everything, nothing else has happened since I lost the anemone.

Tank is 48"x24"x24" 120 gallons

Lights are four 110watt vhos with 2-actinic white & 2-actinic blue and 2 175watt 14,000k halides.

Have two koralia 3 and 1 aquaclear 901 in main tank for water movement, plus have the return pump a quiet one 4000.

Have a octo 200 skimmer in sump, bag of carbon and a bag of phosguard and I use oceanic natural sea salt mix. I have some cheato and some crushed coral, about 2 inches in sump, last night I removed all the crushed coral and cleaned all the muck out and put the algae back in with some live rock.

So if anyone can help I would be very greatfull, do I need some other reactor or what, please help.
You can see the pictures above of tank and sump.

Les

My bulbs are almost new and i have tried red slime remover in little bottle powder formula.

FWIW, I don't see a dirty Refugium. I'm afraid that messing with it may only cause more of the problem you are trying to fix.

I would like to know:
How did you go about cleaning the Refugium sand?
Are you vacuuming the sand in the display?
How long has the rock been in that position?
I also see hair algae. How long has that been growing. Is it increasing?
What color is the Phosguard? White, tan or brown?
What fish are in the tank?
How much of what type of food do you feed?

Red Slime Remover is just prolonging the problem. Try to resist the temptation to use it. We will help you get to the root of the problem so you don't have to use chemicals any more.
Sorry for all the questions.


Edited by Mark Peterson - April 16 2011 at 7:42pm

Hi Les,

Edited by bfessler - April 17 2011 at 9:18am

How did you go about cleaning the Refugium sand?
Well all I did was pick out any dead plant materials, refugium had 2 inches of crushed coral.
Okay, it sounded like you took out the crushed coral and rinsed it. Is that what you did?

Are you vacuuming the sand in the display?
I use clear pipe with vacuum from hose to clean sand.
Vacuuming the sand in a reef tank is best if it limited to the top 1/2" of sand only once in a while. Engineer Gobies are tough on sand beds. This is, I believe, the major reason for the algae problem. If you want to keep the Goby, we can work around it and probably do it without any added expense. Water changes? How much how often?

How long has the rock been in that position?
The rock has been in tank for over two years now.
In usual circumstances a more open sand bed improves filtration. Don't change it right now, because that could cause more problems that you don't need right now. Put it on a list to do later.

I also see hair algae. How long has that been growing. Is it increasing?
The hair algae started the same time red slime started.
That what I expected. The tank had been doing it's best to process the waste but once the Algae got going it all got out of control. We have all been there. Have you read my sad story?
http://www.garf.org/ugly.html

What color is the Phosguard? White, tan or brown?
I change my phosguard when it turns tan in color as per instructions maybe to soon.
You can let it get a lot darker, but it's not a big deal. The Phosphate is not the major cause of the algae problem.

List of fish;
1- engineer goby 10" long
2- tomato clownfish
2- yellow damels
1- purple dottyback
1- black & white butterfly fish

My engineer goby is forever digging the sand bed, moving the sand out from under the rocks, thought this is ok--maybe not?
Yes that's part of the problem, but we can work around it. The bug eating Goby and Dottyback are eating any algae eating bugs they can find. This sets the tank up for an algae problem. Don't feel bad. We all had to learn this and most of us including me, learned it the hard way. I killed $1000 worth of animals in my first 18 months of keeping a reef tank.

How much of what type of food do you feed?
I feed my fish frozen mysis shrimp, krill, brine shrimp, julian seaweed, I dont feed all this at once I rotate feeding two cubes after I defrost and wash food with plain water from sink and then feed fish. The seaweed I attach 1/2 sheet to a clip once a week.
Do they eat the Seaweed? How often and how much of the shrimp at each feeding?


Edited by Mark Peterson - April 17 2011 at 6:53pm

I think that cleaning out the Refugium will help in the long run, but usually that kind of disturbance causes a temporary increase in pollution. I would turn on the refugium light 24 hours a day for 3-4 days to help eat up the pollution. More flow within the Refugium is good because algae grows better in faster water. More flow through the Refugium would also help, because more "dirty" water passes over the algae to feed it more and faster.

The hobby in general doesn't seem to realize this, but new saltwater actually helps algae grow. 10% per month is plenty of new water for today's reef aquariums. Part of the reason the hobby doesn't realize it is because in the past, we did water changes to reduce pollution, mostly Nitrite and Nitrate pollution. Now that we have developed good biological filtration processes, like algae, LS, LR and even LW, we don't have to depend on water changes so much anymore. But the tradition dies hard. Fewer and smaller water changes is good news for you. 10% per month is going to reduce the amount of time and money that's going into the tank. 

Do you need ideas on easy ways to catch the Goby? Yes, snails is a very replacement at this time. Later when the algae is decreasing, if there are so many snails that they are too hungry and out all day, they can be traded to someone else. Will you be coming to Salt Lake to get snails?

I would cut the Nori (Seaweed) to only as much as is eaten in 10 minutes. The extra is actually adding to the Cyano algae problem.
I can't say for sure that you are overfeeding, but in general most hobbyists I meet are overfeeding. It's easier to understand feeding if you realize that in the wild fish eat anytime they can and will eat until their bellies are about to pop. They never know when their next meal will be. In our tanks we have to exercise some control or we would be constantly dealing with massive pollution.
Is that two cubes/day? Can you cut back to one cube a day? Don't bother about rinsing it, just feed the entire cube. The different particle sizes in the food actually feed all different kinds of animals in the reef. I agree with feeding slowly so that they get it and less falls to the bottom uneaten. Skip a day of feeding each week. This reduces pollution and causes some of those fish to eat some algae.


Edited by Mark Peterson - April 17 2011 at 7:31pm

1 thing i missed you say you are using Phosguard. did you know that you are suppost to change it every 3-4 days?(seachem anyway)

Chad here on this MB lives in West Valley City and sells Snails and Hermits for about 50 cents each. It's the best value if you are coming to SLC anyway.

Phosguard is a chemical called Aluminum Hydroxide. It attracts Phosphate and some Silicate. Completely exhausted it is a very dark tan almost brown. The supplier would have you change it often so they can make more money.

MB = message board/forum.
Chad is his first name and also his name on this MB.