Nitrate troubles

[ryansweet]

Not to be “that guy”, but no one has mentioned patience in this situation. Nothing good happens fast in this hobby. Your algae issues need to be solved at the base level. Adding too many nutrients (over feeding, light schedule too long, etc) and improper nutrient removal (not doing proper water changes, no skimmer, etc) need to be solved as well as making adjustments to things such as no pox, proper scrubber algae growth, and the likes. 
But even with all the right changes you need to stay consistent for a long enough time period that everything evens out. If you’re making changes constantly and not allowing things to settle, in my experience, you aren’t going to see many positive changes. 

[cmbaker82]

26 minutes ago, ryansweet said:

Not to be “that guy”, but no one has mentioned patience in this situation. Nothing good happens fast in this hobby. Your algae issues need to be solved at the base level. Adding too many nutrients (over feeding, light schedule too long, etc) and improper nutrient removal (not doing proper water changes, no skimmer, etc) need to be solved as well as making adjustments to things such as no pox, proper scrubber algae growth, and the likes. 
But even with all the right changes you need to stay consistent for a long enough time period that everything evens out. If you’re making changes constantly and not allowing things to settle, in my experience, you aren’t going to see many positive changes. 

So at this point my biggest issue is the algea growth.  I've got the water changes and nutrient measurements down.  Not using nopox until the skimmer is functioning.   

Do you suggest I just maintain as is for now, or what to do to beat the algea?

 

Definitely not over feeding.   

How long should I have the light on for?

[tanknovice]

look at hydrogen peroxide dosing lots of articles on it 

you can also maybe start by taking a rock out and dipping it in the peroxide bath. I did this on my 1st and 2nd tanks 

I personally would not do this and nopox at the same time

[Apeterson]

I definitely agree with @ryansweet. The best way to think about algae is that it took you months to get there, so it will take you a lot of time to get back. 

I agree the hydrogen peroxide will be beneficial, but should be done once the parameters are stable. Your first concern should be stabilizing your nitrate and phosphate. The problem with nopox is that it will starve out your algae in your turf algae scrubber. I'd be more worried about that, keeping your nitrates under 20, and phosphates under 0.1. Your phosphates will probably be the hardest since your rocks will start leaching the stored phosphates.

At this point, you want stability to get your tank healthy and able to support the growth of the beneficial bacteria and such, and then you can start knocking out the hair algae. If you don't wait for it to stabilize, you'll have hair algae problems again.

[cmbaker82]

15 minutes ago, Apeterson said:

I definitely agree with @ryansweet. The best way to think about algae is that it took you months to get there, so it will take you a lot of time to get back. 

I agree the hydrogen peroxide will be beneficial, but should be done once the parameters are stable. Your first concern should be stabilizing your nitrate and phosphate. The problem with nopox is that it will starve out your algae in your turf algae scrubber. I'd be more worried about that, keeping your nitrates under 20, and phosphates under 0.1. Your phosphates will probably be the hardest since your rocks will start leaching the stored phosphates.

At this point, you want stability to get your tank healthy and able to support the growth of the beneficial bacteria and such, and then you can start knocking out the hair algae. If you don't wait for it to stabilize, you'll have hair algae problems again.

It's not so much the hair algea that's a problem. It's this slimy stuff. Possibly cyanobacteria?

[ryansweet]

15 hours ago, cmbaker82 said:

So at this point my biggest issue is the algea growth.  I've got the water changes and nutrient measurements down.  Not using nopox until the skimmer is functioning.   

Do you suggest I just maintain as is for now, or what to do to beat the algea?

 

Definitely not over feeding.   

How long should I have the light on for?

That would be my suggestion. You’re making the correct changes, now you just need to keep those changes constant and let things correct themselves. 
There are options that can help move things faster (carbon dosing, chemical additives) and they work great. But you have to continually use them, and that still takes months sometimes. 

[cmbaker82]

39 minutes ago, ryansweet said:

That would be my suggestion. You’re making the correct changes, now you just need to keep those changes constant and let things correct themselves. 
There are options that can help move things faster (carbon dosing, chemical additives) and they work great. But you have to continually use them, and that still takes months sometimes. 

Should I attempt to manually remove any of these slime at this point?

[SilentNight1793]

You can use a turkey baster to blow off the slime build up on the rocks. As you do water changes, I would try to siphon out as much as you can. If you have/had a sump, you can put the end of the siphon in the filter sock to collect all the gunk without drastically affecting the water level. Then just change out the sock and dump the gunk. It will be a long battle, but eventually it will taper off as you get the rest of the nutrient issues in check. 

 

[Apeterson]

On 1/27/2023 at 10:51 AM, cmbaker82 said:

Should I attempt to manually remove any of these slime at this point?

I would manually remove what you can with a syphon and then make sure your GFO is working. Only do a little at a time. It'll take a while for the cyano to go away. Sorry, life has been busy!

[cmbaker82]

On 1/27/2023 at 2:01 PM, SilentNight1793 said:

You can use a turkey baster to blow off the slime build up on the rocks. As you do water changes, I would try to siphon out as much as you can. If you have/had a sump, you can put the end of the siphon in the filter sock to collect all the gunk without drastically affecting the water level. Then just change out the sock and dump the gunk. It will be a long battle, but eventually it will taper off as you get the rest of the nutrient issues in check. 

 

The turkey baster worked wonders!   Never thought of that before. Thank you.

4 hours ago, Apeterson said:

I would manually remove what you can with a syphon and then make sure your GFO is working. Only do a little at a time. It'll take a while for the cyano to go away. Sorry, life has been busy!

 

I removed a good 60% of the slime.  Its coming back again.     Going to check numbers again on the tank tomorrow.  Life's been too busy 

[Apeterson]

15 hours ago, cmbaker82 said:

The turkey baster worked wonders!   Never thought of that before. Thank you.

 

I removed a good 60% of the slime.  Its coming back again.     Going to check numbers again on the tank tomorrow.  Life's been too busy 

We all have been there!

[cmbaker82]

Here are the latest Changes

• Measurements on Jan 25th:  
  • Nitrate 23.5
  • Salinity 1.023
  • Phosphate 0.19
• Measurements today February 3rd:
  • Nitrate 7.8
  • Salinity 1.0245
  • Phosphate 0.13

Between the measurements

• Added a nano protein skimmer on the 26th
• On February 1st, Removed about 60% of the slime algae (not the hair) from the surface of the rocks and sand.  

 

The slime algea is back almost as much as before i cleared it.

The Algae scrubber appears to have a decent portion of hair algae growing on it now, instead of just slime.  There is still some slime growing on it.

[ryansweet]

Definitely headed in the right direction. Keep current on your water changes for nutrient export and let things settle in. You’ll be back to enjoying a clean tank before you know it

[cmbaker82]

Getting a new refugium/sump together to replace the canister filter less then $120.  $20 for the tank. Kit for $93 and aquarium sealant for $4.   Uses 4in socks.

 

[cmbaker82]

The nano Scrubber has been broken in and is working well producing some dark liquid 

The new sump is in to replace canister filter. I did the kingofdiy upgraded diy pvc overflow for it.   Can't seem to get the flow rates he advertised on it without it starting to siphon, but the pump I have can't keep up with how fast it drains when siphoning so it gurgle very loudly whenever breaking siphoned every second.   Turned the flow on the return pump down to keep it from going into siphon and now it is quiet and working but flow rate is not as high as i would like.

Overall I think I spent around $250 for all the parts for the sump kit, tank, sealant, pvc, return pump, skimmer, and air pump for the skimmer.

Definitely took longer to get ot together then it seemed in the video.

Skimmer has been running for about 2 weeks. 

Sump has been running for two days.

I have 2x 100 micron 4in filter socks in it now.  I have not added charcoal or gfo back in yet.

Took new measurements today.

Nitrate 0.0, Hanna instrument is only accurate to +/- 2.0ppm  with resolution of 0.1. So it may not actually be zero.

Phosphate 0.12

Salinity is a little low, 1.0215, due to an accidental flood while setting up the sump and refilling with RO instead of saltwater but I'll get that corrected soon. 

Turf Scrubber seems to be growing some hair algea and a new yellow slime looking stuff. I scrapped the yellow off and left the green.

[Drumsscott]

I had problems with high nitrates and I feed heavy.

Use to use AZNO3 even have a new bottle if you want to try it.. it works great but was getting expensive so now I only add

a tablespoon of simple table sugar 1xweek.  Keeps my nitrates now below 5ppm.  

[cmbaker82]

43 minutes ago, Drumsscott said:

I had problems with high nitrates and I feed heavy.

Use to use AZNO3 even have a new bottle if you want to try it.. it works great but was getting expensive so now I only add

a tablespoon of simple table sugar 1xweek.  Keeps my nitrates now below 5ppm.  

How does sugar help with nitrates?

[Drumsscott]

1 hour ago, cmbaker82 said:

How does sugar help with nitrates?

It similar to vodka dosing, it lowers the nitrates. Check out the subject on the reef forums.  It will explain it way better than I could for you (i.e. the nitrates feed on the sugar)but I’ve had great results. Check out> Rotter Tube Reef on YouTube.

I didn’t want to go to anymore trouble or add more equipment so this was my cheap remedy and trying to keep everything simple & consistent.

[Apeterson]

How is that tank doing @cmbaker82?

[cmbaker82]

On 6/5/2023 at 9:10 AM, Apeterson said:

How is that tank doing @cmbaker82?

Sorry I missed the notification.   It has been going better.  Still not perfect.   But current readings are 0 amonia, 1.025 salinity, 9.5 nitrate. 1.6 phosphate which is down significantly from july which was 30.8 nitrate and 2.4 phosphate.  

Algea is still out of control

[Apeterson]

On 11/21/2023 at 11:04 AM, cmbaker82 said:

Sorry I missed the notification.   It has been going better.  Still not perfect.   But current readings are 0 amonia, 1.025 salinity, 9.5 nitrate. 1.6 phosphate which is down significantly from july which was 30.8 nitrate and 2.4 phosphate.  

Algea is still out of control

I would not worry about the nitrate. I'd get some GFO and lower the phosphate slowly and manually remove the algae.

[cmbaker82]

Got some fluval clearmax and put two of the pouches in my sump in between bubble trap baffles between the mid section and pump section of the sump.  Seems to be the highest flow area i could get it to stay put.   Its been in about a week and has dropped phosphate to 0.9.   Nitrate is down to 0.0. 

[cmbaker82]

Here are some pictures.  for some reason i cannot seem to add pictures here directly any more.   Water has a green tinge when viewed from the side.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mvQFkvvQFGGN_nYM-OyFdmFyzgvKLXFb/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mvQFkvvQFGGN_nYM-OyFdmFyzgvKLXFb/view?usp=sharing

 

 

[Apeterson]

On 1/16/2024 at 10:20 AM, cmbaker82 said:

Here are some pictures.  for some reason i cannot seem to add pictures here directly any more.   Water has a green tinge when viewed from the side.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mvQFkvvQFGGN_nYM-OyFdmFyzgvKLXFb/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mvQFkvvQFGGN_nYM-OyFdmFyzgvKLXFb/view?usp=sharing

 

 

That looks great! How's the nitrate and phosphate now? You want detectable for both or else you are asking for dinos to start taking over. The green tinge should go away on it's own, but is hard to diagnose without a microscope. Many things can cause this. UV typically helps, but can be pricy.