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About ready to give up


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I just read that large water changes can cause amonia to accumulate and that causes nitrates to raise due to beneficial bateria being removed. Rule that out and its a good thing so just tossing out ideas.

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I hate the BB look so I haven't really thought about it. That would pretty much require a tear down as well. Before the massive water changes, I was doing about a 10-15% change every day or every other day and it didn't go down. Still this is just treating the symptoms. Shouldn't be having to do this. Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

 

The water change defiantly won't hurt it. have you considered getting a phosban reactor? I would do that before dosing. I have 2 if interested fairly new.

 

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Do phosban reactors help nitrates? I thought they were for phosphates. Just curious.

 

I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that if the live rock is leaching, it's the two loose rocks in the sump. All the rest of them have coral attached to it so I'd rather not go killing coral just to pull rocks out.

 

On a side note, the test today showed about 25 nitrates which is a drop. That was the first inconsistent test I've ever had since I didn't do a water change so I don't know why they would have gone down.

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Make sure before you're changing everything that you're using good test kits. Not cheap or even lower end kits simply bc they're off

 

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I am thinking along the same lines as Tim. I have had dry rock leach phos for months and months, then i just pulled it out. As far as what Orlando mentioned, i will never use sand in a reef tank again. All the tank's ive had set up the bb tank's were the easiest to care for and corals thrived in them. After 6mths or so your bottom is covered in coraline so it doesn't look like its bare. But seeing all the work you do on a daily basis, i would have just gotten rid of the tank or let it go at this point. I do maybe 1-2 water changes per year if that.

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Thanks for you help everyone. I'm still wondering about the connection of phosphates and nitrates. Several people have suggested methods of lowering phosphates, but they are undetectable in my system. I'm only battling nitrates.

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Your live rock can leach phoshphates and or nitrates. If you have any algae they will eat up your phosphates. It has to be your live rock imo. Now how that's caused I don't know...Usually from over feeding. Did you buy live from someone else with a dirty tank?

 

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I've gotten live rock from so many places, I have no idea. Half of it was dry base rock and half of it was live. A lot is from the reef, some is from uncle bills, and some is from another indmas member. The only algae in my tank is my cheato. I don't have any nuisance algae anywhere in the tank. I'm pulling out a couple piece of rock today that are in the sump, we'll see if that does anything.

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Been busy and haven't done a water change in awhile but my nitrates don't seem to be growing as fast. It appears that the growth rate has slowed to about 1 ppm per day. I'm on week 2 of vodka dosing. My cyano disappeared and I even stopped getting algae on the glass, so there's literally nothing wrong visually. My skimmer was pulling lots of crud when I started the vodka hit the last two days its not pulling anything. The bubble line is clean which is weird. My nitrate kit is showing 25 to 30.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Nitrates are still in the 25 to 30 range and growing about 1 ppm per day. I'm trying to crow out my cheato more. Its now on a timed 16 photo period. Its starting to brown, wondering if the cfl is going bad. Can you use those till they burn outgoing or you have to change them out? I've been noticing alot of air bubbles coming from my sand bed. Hoping its nitrogen and the sand bed finally grew enough bacteria to take some nitrates. Also switched from led to t5. Polyps are more open than ever before and their color is better. My acropa is the best it's ever looked and my anenome is the best I've ever seen. Still can't figure this out.

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Okay so I've done only one water change in the last month and nitrates are the same, which is much better than the mess I had. Unfortunately, I started like 4 programs to lower nitrates so I don't know which one worked or if they all helped. I'm going to wait on doing another change because everything looks great. Trates are 20 - 25. Looking better!

 

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enynymeq.jpg

 

Here's my results since I started this thread. I forgot to put in a couple tests last month but they were both in the trend line. Water changes are accurate. The last three water changes were huge, the rest were like 10%. Seems like the less I do, the better it gets?

 

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enynymeq.jpgHere's my results since I started this thread. I forgot to put in a couple tests last month but they were both in the trend line. Water changes are accurate. The last three water changes were huge, the rest were like 10%. Seems like the less I do, the better it gets? Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

Keeping things simple is sometimes the best approach.

 

My lil pico just gets a 1g (15%) a week change, literally nothing else and it does great for what it is. No algae, no cuc whatsoever. There are pods everywhere....nothing to eat them of course. I dont think I have cleaned the glass in 3 weeks now. It just works.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Another trip another overflow. Might need a temp house for my livestock cause I'm not going to wait till my new tank cycles to tear down. This is getting ridiculous. I'm probably going to have to rip out the subfloor.

 

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You obviously have not tested against a power outage or syphon lose. When I had an over the back overflow, it did not matter if it lost syphon or not. You adjust your sump level that it does not have enough water to keep pumping up to flood the tank or flood the sump if the power goes out. Its a fine line but can be adjusted!

 

Or do you have your top off on a gravity feed or no safety measures in place?

 

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You obviously have not tested against a power outage or syphon lose. When I had an over the back overflow, it did not matter if it lost syphon or not. You adjust your sump level that it does not have enough water to keep pumping up to flood the tank or flood the sump if the power goes out. Its a fine line but can be adjusted! Or do you have your top off on a gravity feed or no safety measures in place? Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk

This is how mine is setup. If I were to lose siphon, there is not enough water in the last chamber of my sump to overflow the tank and if I lose power, the overflow box is set at a height that will not allow it to overflow my sump.

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Never had a pump fail, only once lost syphon. It's either the skimmer starts going crazy (which I'm going to fix by not having an external waste bucket), snail gets in overflow, cat moves ato, overflow height adjustment breaks, it's always something dumb.

 

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Agreed with Shane, test out all scenarios imaginable. If you have a failure point, It's not if it will fail....It's when?

 

Don't leave this to chance, spills often lead to electrical fires so I'd not keep putting off fixing it right.

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