Tank crashing slowly .. help

[newfly]

Side tips:
Vaccum-siphon sand bed. It might be full of crud.
A series of moderate water changes over a week or two might help.

I have a bare bottom. @H2OPlayar says its 'too clean'. I'm doing 2x a week 10-12% water change.

 

[Kensington Reefer]

10-12% water change is a waist of time and has little effect on the system.
do 25-50% if you want it to matter.
new “ideal” water never hurt

think about a bad fart in an elevator…
would you only want to dilute that foul stench by 10-12%?

 

[Srt4eric]

I have a bare bottom. @H2OPlayar says its 'too clean'. I'm doing 2x a week 10-12% water change.

Yea, I would up the volume and lower the frequency.

 

[Scott Sweet]

Just as a side note...since you are dosing 2 part....what is your salinity? Many 2 parts have Na in them and your salinity will slowly rise if you don't keep an eye on it.

 

[xCry0x]

A water change in that range is really more of a bioproduct of cleaning the tank more so than a mechanisms to impact the water directly.

Changing twice a week seems really excessive unless you have it automated. But that's just me!

That said, your tank being bare bottom, new in January, using all dry rock -- to me, that is the biggest reason why things are going sideways.

It takes some real time to get a bare bottom tank fully ramped up, especially if you started with dry everything.

I had similar experiences when I went barebottom where all the numbers were correct but stuff kept dying.

Not saying bare bottom doesn't work, it very obviously does work. But the ramp up time to a successful reef is longer.

Do you have a refugium? Any extra bio media like siporax or seachem matrix etc?

Do you do any bacteria in a bottle dosing like microbacter 7 etc?

Personally, I'd reduce the water changes. Get the doser dialed in. Stop dosing nitrates. Feed more.

And I'd leave it to people with more bare bottom experience.. but I'd try to get a live rock from an established reef with some nice sponges etc growing on it to help establish some real life in the rocks if you haven't already done that. Have to be careful there not to import a bunch of garbage like aptasia though.

 

[newfly]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

My setup allow me to do semi automated small ~8g water change with minimum effort . I agree doing larger water change have bigger impact .

However, let me know if the following logic is incorrect. Assuming the tank have 10ppm pollutant. First 10% water will reduce it to 9ppm. Second 10% water change will get me to 8.1ppm. A single 20% water change will results in 8ppm. The different btw the 2 approach is very small. I don’t think I have space and setup to do 50% WC.

If I can easily do 20% water change, I would.

I used microbacter7 during the cycle. Added some life rock pieces ( supposed clean)for microbs diversity from a company I can’t remember right now.

Salinity is pretty stable at 1.025-1.026.


Thanks for all the feedback. I’m new to this. The tank seem more stable in the last week. I’m sure it will take many more weeks to turn things around.

 

[thephoreefer]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

My setup allow me to do semi automated small ~8g water change with minimum effort . I agree doing larger water change have bigger impact .

However, let me know if the following logic is incorrect. Assuming the tank have 10ppm pollutant. First 10% water will reduce it to 9ppm. Second 10% water change will get me to 8.1ppm. A single 20% water change will results in 8ppm. The different btw the 2 approach is very small. I don’t think I have space and setup to do 50% WC.

If I can easily do 20% water change, I would.

I used microbacter7 during the cycle. Added some life rock pieces ( supposed clean)for microbs diversity from a company I can’t remember right now.

Salinity is pretty stable at 1.025-1.026.


Thanks for all the feedback. I’m new to this. The tank seem more stable in the last week. I’m sure it will take many more weeks to turn things around.

I used biospira for every startup to seed the tank, currently I added a bottle in my waterbox 20g to quickly seed the sand with some bacteria. Keeps ammonium and nitrite in check.

 

[newfly]

I used biospira for every startup to seed the tank, currently I added a bottle in my waterbox 20g to quickly seed the sand with some bacteria. Keeps ammonium and nitrite in check.

Thanks for the info. I don’t think the problem I have related to lack of nitrification bacteria .I cannot comment if biospira or microbacter7 is better. At one point I’m having 0 nitrate and resort to dosing. Stopped nitrate dosing in the last week or two. Strictly on 2 parts dosing . All. Mag and ca.

just noticed the rainbow monti from chromist started to bleach. Arg… it’s a beautiful piece. It color up nicely and started to encrust the rock.

hopefully I’ll still have some coral left in a few weeks.

 

[JVU]

If your nitrate is really 0 you should be dosing. Corals don’t like to be starved.

I use Salifert to measure nitrate. It’s cheap, accurate, fast, and goes low enough to tell the difference between low and 0, unlike some bargain test kits.

 

[newfly]

If your nitrate is really 0 you should be dosing. Corals don’t like to be starved.

I use Salifert to measure nitrate. It’s cheap, accurate, fast, and goes low enough to tell the difference between low and 0, unlike some bargain test kits.

Nitrate at 5-10ppm right now. I’ll check weekly. Feeding more frozen, hopefully it will keep the nitrate up

 

[xCry0x]

Thanks for the info. I don’t think the problem I have related to lack of nitrification bacteria .I cannot comment if biospira or microbacter7 is better. At one point I’m having 0 nitrate and resort to dosing. Stopped nitrate dosing in the last week or two. Strictly on 2 parts dosing . All. Mag and ca.

just noticed the rainbow monti from chromist started to bleach. Arg… it’s a beautiful piece. It color up nicely and started to encrust the rock.

hopefully I’ll still have some coral left in a few weeks.

Ug that's frustrating.

I had a similar thing happen where my tank basically spontaneously combusted. Been a while but I think I basically starved everything by aggressively carbon dosing while trying to kill off red turf algae.

It's funny to look back on. But my first nano tank was wildly successful and I barely even remembered to do water changes let alone actually paid attention to alk/CA levels.

Seems like the more I tried to control/force things, the more sideways it all went!

My current tank is still reestablishing, but trying to just in general keep things a lot more simple this time around.

 

[newfly]

Ug that's frustrating.

I had a similar thing happen where my tank basically spontaneously combusted. Been a while but I think I basically starved everything by aggressively carbon dosing while trying to kill off red turf algae.

It's funny to look back on. But my first nano tank was wildly successful and I barely even remembered to do water changes let alone actually paid attention to alk/CA levels.

Seems like the more I tried to control/force things, the more sideways it all went!

My current tank is still reestablishing, but trying to just in general keep things a lot more simple this time around.

I had a nice run for 6-7 months by just doing water change and no dosing. When coral start to grow, it consumes more that I can replenish with WC alone. Then it went downhill from there .

I think this is the challenge of reef keeping. At least in the beginning The ecosystem is not stable as the growing corals will demand more nutrients and you have to adapt. I failed to do that in the past month.

Lesson learned. I was trying to a avoid dosing in the beginning and then decided on a ‘simple’ 1 solution approach. Should have just bite the bullet and go with 2 parts from the beginning.

 

[newfly]

Just though of something. How crucial is it to keep a constant temp in the tank?

I set my heater at 78F. I have a sufficiently large heater to keep the tank at 78. However, on a hot day, the tank temp will rise to ~82F. the temp swing 4F in a day consistently.

I don't plan to getting a chiller.

I think i should increase the temp slowly (in a couple of days) from 78-->80. This will minimized the swing. I cannot control the high temp, but if the min is 80 , the delta is 2 degree swing.

What is the general opinion?

 

[Bolicks]

Just though of something. How crucial is it to keep a constant temp in the tank?

I set my heater at 78F. I have a sufficiently large heater to keep the tank at 78. However, on a hot day, the tank temp will rise to ~82F. the temp swing 4F in a day consistently.

I don't plan to getting a chiller.

I think i should increase the temp slowly (in a couple of days) from 78-->80. This will minimized the swing. I cannot control the high temp, but if the min is 80 , the delta is 2 degree swing.

What is the general opinion?

Have you tried a fan? This helps keep my tank within ~1F during hot days.

 

[Patio]

Can you run a fan over water surface on days you'd expect high temps? Fans are great at lowering temps by evaporation. Some people are shocked at the effectiveness after their first try cooling with fans.

 

[Coral reefer]

Just though of something. How crucial is it to keep a constant temp in the tank?

I set my heater at 78F. I have a sufficiently large heater to keep the tank at 78. However, on a hot day, the tank temp will rise to ~82F. the temp swing 4F in a day consistently.

I don't plan to getting a chiller.

I think i should increase the temp slowly (in a couple of days) from 78-->80. This will minimized the swing. I cannot control the high temp, but if the min is 80 , the delta is 2 degree swing.

What is the general opinion?

4 degrees seems too large.
li got hers said. Use a fan on a temp controller. It will work as long as tank isn’t completely covered.

 

[newfly]

I have a USB fan. WIll try that. In the meanwhile, i'll also increate the temp to 79

 

[thephoreefer]

I have inkbird WiFi controller keeps my tank at 78-79. I use a clip on fan and connect it to the controller

 

[xCry0x]

Ideal vs tolerable.

Ideal is that everything is consistent.

That said, in not a marine biologist or ocean expert, but I'd imagine corals in the ocean get exposed to currents pushing warmer water in randomly.

I've had my tank go from 76-82 in a day and nothing freaked out.

Now is that ideal? Absolutely not. My inkbird probe was broken and thought it was 95* in the tank and as such wasn't running the heater. Then I think my skimmer pulling hot afternoon air from outside in turn contributed to heating it up.

Fans work great, just be ready to go through top off water a lot faster and if you use kalk in your ato you need to adjust accordingly.

 

[JVU]

Having a fan set to 1 degree above your target will keep you perfect. For example, heater set to 78 and fan set to 79. If you are using an Apex you can use a smaller difference. Evaporative cooling is amazing. Just keep up with fresh water top off. No need for a chiller in our climate.

4 deg swing every day during the warmer months is too much of a swing in my opinion; that is not happening on tropical reefs or in long-term successful reef tanks as far as I know.

Setting your baseline temp higher will not decrease the temp swing as much as you think, and in fact is more likely to have it swing up into truly dangerous territory, so I wouldn’t do that.