Guys I'm so discouraged, P***** Off, ready to give up

[mandyplo]

I've put so much money and time into this tank trying to rescue it from my boyfriends and turn it around... It was finally starting to clear up and look good and I'm right back to square one. I don't know what I'm doing wrong I don't know how to fix it I don't even know WHAT IS wrong... All my tests come back fine, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to, I have a sump now, I have 45 lbs live rock 20lbs Eco rock, I have a skimmer I use RO/DI water I do weekly 20% water changes, I have high quality salt I have high end expensive test kits I have a filter from brs that doesn't bleeping work! They are taking for ever to replace it my MasterCard is maxed out I'm a poor-a** university student, I can't buy a new better filter until I get a refund for this if BRS will even refund me... In the meantime I have a tetra HOB filter with carbon and gfo media bags until I can get a proper filter again, I put filter floss (that poly-fil quilt batting stuff, yes the hypoallergenic kind) in my sump today in two places where my water is forced to flow through it...

My tank is cloudy green and I cannot clear it up. It was clear for about a week and now it's gone to sh-- again. One of my corals died from RTN last night in sure from my water. I'm at a loss, I'm frustrated exhausted discouraged hysterical and have spent the whole time typing this while crying. I do not know what to do.... :(

The time about a week ago when the tank finally went clear again was when I had my lights off for about a month... As soon as we turned the lights back on and lowered them over a weeks time is when this happened again.

Pardon my french and sorry for my poor language... I'm just so .... frustrated!!! :(

In need of some serious guidance here is my sad excuse of a reef tank:

http://i922.photobucket.com/albums/ad61/mandyplo/lLk7c_zps31eb2e06.jpg

[wmcinnes]

Okay, easy does it! No need to panic. The friendly folk of Canreef will help you through this.

First things first, what are your parameters that you are getting with your test kits. Calcium, Magnesium, Alkalinity, Salinity, Phosphate, Nitrate??

If the water is green like you say, a large water change ~50% may be in order.

Also, I am curious as to what kind of 'filter' you are talking about..? If you have a sump w/ protein skimmer. And are running some sort of carbon/GFO media you should be good without one. Canister filters tend to do more wrong than right when it comes to a reef tank. They have been coined the name 'Nitrate Factories'.

The picture of your tank shows me promise, so I would not worry too much. It can get turned around.

[Northernseacorals]

Do not fret about the canister filter, I've used them exclusively on reef tanks in the past with no problems, your filter is just fine :wink:

As another member said, I would look into a larger water change and possibly run a little carbon and GFO (Granulated Ferric Oxide) double check your temperature settings; also if possible try another test kit.

[Nizzmo]

perhaps some of your filter media wasn't properly cleaned prior to putting it in the tank? I've seen stuff like that before in my tanks if I don't wash them good... But it eventually goes away...

[wmcinnes]

The fact that her tank cleared up when the lights were out for a month and then went bad again after they were turned on leads me to believe that it is a nitrate or phosphate problem

[mandyplo]

Okay, easy does it! No need to panic. The friendly folk of Canreef will help you through this.

First things first, what are your parameters that you are getting with your test kits. Calcium, Magnesium, Alkalinity, Salinity, Phosphate, Nitrate??

If the water is green like you say, a large water change ~50% may be in order.

Also, I am curious as to what kind of 'filter' you are talking about..? If you have a sump w/ protein skimmer. And are running some sort of carbon/GFO media you should be good without one. Canister filters tend to do more wrong than right when it comes to a reef tank. They have been coined the name 'Nitrate Factories'.

The picture of your tank shows me promise, so I would not worry too much. It can get turned around.

I had the dual carbon & gfo reactor from BRS. It didnt work straight out of the box - gfo wouldn't tumble and no water would run out of the product line.

[wmcinnes]

Thats crappy. Is that what you meant by 'filter' in the first post?

I would at least get some media bags and put carbon in one and GFO in the other and put them in a high flow area of the sump for the time being. Until you get another media reactor.

[mandyplo]

Do not fret about the canister filter, I've used them exclusively on reef tanks in the past with no problems, your filter is just fine :wink:

As another member said, I would look into a larger water change and possibly run a little carbon and GFO (Granulated Ferric Oxide) double check your temperature settings; also if possible try another test kit.

I am running carbon and gfo I stated that in my post.

[jagermaier]

What kind of lights are you using? It might just be a lighting problem you have. How old are your bulbs?

[mandyplo]

Thats crappy. Is that what you meant by 'filter' in the first post?

I would at least get some media bags and put carbon in one and GFO in the other and put them in a high flow area of the sump for the time being. Until you get another media reactor.

This is exactly what I did, yes my "reactor" is not working so I have carbon and gfo in media bags in a HOB tetra filter which is running on my tank.

[mandyplo]

What kind of lights are you using? It might just be a lighting problem you have. How old are your bulbs?

Running 6 month old kessil a350W LEDs. Two of them.

[KevinK]

Gust step by step.

You talk about the. Tank,

-what size is it ?
-what sand do we se on the bottom, and how old is it ?
- you tell you try to fix it froth your friend, did you move the tank? And thus moved /stirred the sand

- why where the lights off ?
- during lights off for a month, was everything Ells running ?
- what pumps douse it have and how manny to move the water ?
- ar there fish ? And do you feed anything ? And what and how often do you feed.

-is your live rock new and cured, or existing

For now my 2 cents would as mentioned by others be that some how your phosphate is way up.

It's because green water means lots of food for algae to grow, lots of food means lots of phosphate.

So when the lights where off for a mont, and now on, the tank got a shock, and things did not had. Time to settle when you put them on, and a algae bloom is poising you now.

But it is of most importance to find what is feeding your algae.

Lets not talk about bad hardware or good, lets first put everything o the table, so we can se what is all inf.uancing the operation of your tank

It could e gust a little thing, that you gust did not know, or something little you have to change.

[mandyplo]

First things first, what are your parameters that you are getting with your test kits. Calcium, Magnesium, Alkalinity, Salinity, Phosphate, Nitrate??


Hi here are my params.
Ammonia 0.00 ppm
Nitrate 0-2.5 ppm
Nitrite - 0.00 ppm
Magnesium 1300 mg/L
Alkalinity 11 dkh
pH 8.2
Calcium 400-410 mg/L
Salinity 1.024
Phosphate 0.0 ppm
Temp 78 F

[MMAX]

What test kit are you using for phosphate?

[Northernseacorals]

I am running carbon and gfo I stated that in my post.

right you are...

[kien]

I wonder if maybe your clams spawned? You may have to aggressively run more carbon to help clear it up.

[KevinK]

right you are...

+ 1 at east you try to get the food forthe algae out of the water. But I'm a bit baffled by 0.00 phosphate.

Sometimes rock can leach phosphate into a tank, not enough to measure, but enough to course algae growth, but than at least I experienced a hear algae, not a algae water

[ocean diver]

How long are your lights on for, how many hours a day.

[Frankly Canadian]

Ya, I felt like that when I first started this hobby. The folks here really know their stuff. One of the most important things I learned here is to be patient. If your a PHD (poor hungry desperate) student, I would get a wish list for Christmas and Birthday's. You will want to ask for light bulbs, media material, such as phosphate remover and charcoal, salt buckets, and fish that help your situation, for example sand sifting golbies, or crabs and snails. Oh one more thing shop on boxing days and always look on this web-site for good deals. Good luck and happy holidays.:wink:

[Coleus]

what brand of carbon are you running? if i were me i just run lots of carbon for now until water clear up. Then start gfo again. Also make sure you power head does not pointing at the sand

[daniella3d]

did you leave that clam without light all this time?

It needs light to survive.

Could it be a bacteria bloom? if you left the lights out for a month, maybe some corals on the liverock died?

Hard to tell where the cloudy water is coming from, bacteria bloom or calcium precipitation, or something else.

[ScubaSteve]

I share your pain. I too am a poor-a** student. This hobby combined with school ain't the best combo at times. But... we can get through this. I've had my share of s****y times with the tank too. Just gotta persevere.

You might have a couple of things going on here. The first being the algae itself. Algae is incredibly persistent and can survive with very little in the way of nutrients. There is a reason why algae has gone, more or less, un-evolved for millions of years and still kick ass. It is really good at what it does - unfortunately for you. Before you moved the tank it was in a sorry state of affairs and over run with algae. You went lights out for a few weeks and killed off the algae (or so you think). This die off released nutrients into the water and rocks. As soon as the lights came back on BAM! algae comes back with a vengeance because it has the nutrients to do so. Algal spores can pretty much survive a nuclear holocaust, so they were just sittin' there waiting for the lights to come back on.

You're probably not measuring much in the way of nutrients in the water because, well, the algae is consuming it all. Even as algae dies off, there are new cells forming that scavenge the nutrients. It's the circle... circle of life...
http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/ad114/Nergetic/rafiki-9_zps42580337.jpg

Gotta break that cycle up! The worst thing about algae is also its best: it's really good at scavenging nutrients! Right now all of your nutrients are, more or less, locked up in the waterborne algae. This makes it really easy to remove. Do HUGE water changes (50%+) every couple of days to try to export as much of the algae (and along with it, the nutrients) in one go as possible. Take your more delicate corals over to a friend's place (someone here will probably be willing to coral-sit) and go to town on your tank. Do a few really big water changes over the course of a few days to really cut down the population and reduce nutrients. Hopefully the GFO can then start to compete with the algae for phosphate and wipe out the population. And the BRS reactor, whenever it gets there, will do an even better job of that. You might have to do this a couple of times but eventually the algae will exhaust it's own food supply, especially if the GFO is doing its thing.

Basically, good ol' fashioned water changes is what you have to do. Adding GFO to your tank will remove nutrients from your water as they are produced (be it from feeding, dying corals, or dying algae).... assuming the algae doesn't get to it first. Typically just adding GFO in a reactor works for algae growing on rocks because you can remove the phosphate before the algae can get it. But right now, with waterborne algae, you probably have more algae than GFO (in terms of surface area). They're winning the battle simply by sheer numbers. Water changes will, literally, divide and conquer.

Remember, a tank is a closed system. Accumulation = Mass in - Mass out. Even if you kill off the algae, that mass has to go somewhere else in your tank. You need to take it out of your tank via skimming, water changes and GFO. Water changes are the big guns in your case.

Also, if you're looking for a cheap maintenance method consider vodka dosing or VSV + MB7. Serious, what student doesn't have an excess of vodka around the house. This has been incredibly effective for me in keeping the tank in good order.

[Skimmerking]

Canister filters tend to do more wrong than right when it comes to a reef tank. They have been coined the name 'Nitrate Factories'.

.
i disagree with you on this one lots of people are using cannister filters to polish the water and run CArbon and floss to help clear up . I have know some to run rock in there in smaller tank to help out with the Bio load. That is depending on the size of the cannister filter of course.

[Skimmerking]

I share your pain. I too am a poor-a** student. This hobby combined with school ain't the best combo at times. But... we can get through this. I've had my share of s****y times with the tank too. Just gotta persevere.

You might have a couple of things going on here. The first being the algae itself. Algae is incredibly persistent and can survive with very little in the way of nutrients. There is a reason why algae has gone, more or less, un-evolved for millions of years and still kick ass. It is really good at what it does - unfortunately for you. Before you moved the tank it was in a sorry state of affairs and over run with algae. You went lights out for a few weeks and killed off the algae (or so you think). This die off released nutrients into the water and rocks. As soon as the lights came back on BAM! algae comes back with a vengeance because it has the nutrients to do so. Algal spores can pretty much survive a nuclear holocaust, so they were just sittin' there waiting for the lights to come back on.

You're probably not measuring much in the way of nutrients in the water because, well, the algae is consuming it all. Even as algae dies off, there are new cells forming that scavenge the nutrients. It's the circle... circle of life...
http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/ad114/Nergetic/rafiki-9_zps42580337.jpg

Gotta break that cycle up! The worst thing about algae is also its best: it's really good at scavenging nutrients! Right now all of your nutrients are, more or less, locked up in the waterborne algae. This makes it really easy to remove. Do HUGE water changes (50%+) every couple of days to try to export as much of the algae (and along with it, the nutrients) in one go as possible. Take your more delicate corals over to a friend's place (someone here will probably be willing to coral-sit) and go to town on your tank. Do a few really big water changes over the course of a few days to really cut down the population and reduce nutrients. Hopefully the GFO can then start to compete with the algae for phosphate and wipe out the population. And the BRS reactor, whenever it gets there, will do an even better job of that. You might have to do this a couple of times but eventually the algae will exhaust it's own food supply, especially if the GFO is doing its thing.

Basically, good ol' fashioned water changes is what you have to do. Adding GFO to your tank will remove nutrients from your water as they are produced (be it from feeding, dying corals, or dying algae).... assuming the algae doesn't get to it first. Typically just adding GFO in a reactor works for algae growing on rocks because you can remove the phosphate before the algae can get it. But right now, with waterborne algae, you probably have more algae than GFO (in terms of surface area). They're winning the battle simply by sheer numbers. Water changes will, literally, divide and conquer.

Remember, a tank is a closed system. Accumulation = Mass in - Mass out. Even if you kill off the algae, that mass has to go somewhere else in your tank. You need to take it out of your tank via skimming, water changes and GFO. Water changes are the big guns in your case.

Also, if you're looking for a cheap maintenance method consider vodka dosing or VSV + MB7. Serious, what student doesn't have an excess of vodka around the house. This has been incredibly effective for me in keeping the tank in good order.


Well Said Steve

[whatcaneyedo]

Am I the only one who thinks that the skimmer is grossly inadequate for this tank? Based upon the picture it also looks quite immature, especially for coral and clams.

[ScubaSteve]

Am I the only one who thinks that the skimmer is grossly inadequate for this tank? Based upon the picture it also looks quite immature, especially for coral and clams.

I couldn't find an exact spec on the skimmer but it looks to be of a CPR BakPak style design, which for this tank I wouldn't call grossly inadequate but certainly on the lower end. That said, I grew SPS happily for many years skimmerless and with a CPR skimmer on a similar sized tank.

Mandyplo: what kind of skimmer are you running there?

I agree with you though: tank looks young. I don't think that's the problem at hand but without the tank's "immune system" at full speed, it's more of a battle keeping things in check.

I bet the clams are lovin' the excess phyto though :lol:

[whatcaneyedo]

I've yet to see a tank with a good skimmer turn into green soup. I've also run the CPR BakPak, Aqua C Urchin Pro, Red Sea Prism, and some other horrible piece of crap that no one else has heard of. They're alright for aerating a nano but I'd spend the money on good liverock before I'd purchase one again.

[mandyplo]

I couldn't find an exact spec on the skimmer but it looks to be of a CPR BakPak style design, which for this tank I wouldn't call grossly inadequate but certainly on the lower end. That said, I grew SPS happily for many years skimmerless and with a CPR skimmer on a similar sized tank.

Mandyplo: what kind of skimmer are you running there?

I agree with you though: tank looks young. I don't think that's the problem at hand but without the tank's "immune system" at full speed, it's more of a battle keeping things in check.

I bet the clams are lovin' the excess phyto though :lol:

Hi tank is a year old in January. Should I keep the clams in and let someone babysit my corals? Also I am running the octopus BH-2000 skimmer.

[ScubaSteve]

Hi tank is a year old in January. Should I keep the clams in and let someone babysit my corals? Also I am running the octopus BH-2000 skimmer.

That skimmer should suffice for now but in the future you should try looking for something more powerful like a Vertex, SWc, etc (I know, more money, right?:razz:)

I was going to say that if you're good at matching the temperature and salinity of the tank when doing water changes then you could leave the corals and clams in when doing big changes but I'd feel better saying just get someone to just look after them for a couple weeks while the battle rages on. I do 50% water changes in an SPS tank every once in a while without issue (taking great care to match parameters) but I've got a better feel for my own tank and feel comfortable enough hitting the reset button in the tank (and the possible consequences).

My biggest concern with leaving the clams in when doing this is that you might stress them out and they spawn as a result (weird stress reaction mechanism, eh? Such a reaction would make exam time far more exciting... errrr... awkward...). The resulting spawn would just exacerbate the current issue (in fact when I first looked at your tank I thought the clams had spawned until you said the water was green).

[Aquattro]

I've got a slightly different take on this. The tank is young, but not new. It's settled, biologically, for the most part. The cloudiness also looks like clam spawn, but if you say it's green, ok, maybe algae.

If this was my tank, and I'll probably get some disagreement, I would leave it alone. I would take the filter off the back, add some carbon to a bag and toss it in the sump. With no measurable PO4, I wouldn't worry about GFO right now.
I would not be doing large water changes, and in fact, would do no water changes. If it's algae, let it burn itself out. Feed sparingly. Keep the tank aerated. Buy a real skimmer for in sump. Stop messing with it, there is nothing in your parameters that dings any alarms.
I would remove the glass tops, let the light in. Don't move the lights around, don't change their cycle. Make a pot of coffee, relax. It's not an emergency or something to quit over. It just needs TLC.
I assume the fish are fine? Not gasping for air at the surface? Then algae isn't consuming excess O2. Still not sure that's algae. Is it green? Or is the water just cloudy?
Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Often you can cause more problems than you solve by trying to fix everything overnight.

[Aquattro]

My biggest concern with leaving the clams in when doing this is that you might stress them out and they spawn as a result (weird stress reaction mechanism, eh? Such a reaction would make exam time far more exciting... errrr... awkward...). The resulting spawn would just exacerbate the current issue (in fact when I first looked at your tank I thought the clams had spawned until you said the water was green).

Yes, and I would move the clam to another tank. Maybe the LFS can watch it or I'm sure you can get a raise of hands here.

[Skimmerking]

I've got a slightly different take on this. The tank is young, but not new. It's settled, biologically, for the most part. The cloudiness also looks like clam spawn, but if you say it's green, ok, maybe algae.

If this was my tank, and I'll probably get some disagreement, I would leave it alone. I would take the filter off the back, add some carbon to a bag and toss it in the sump. With no measurable PO4, I wouldn't worry about GFO right now.
I would not be doing large water changes, and in fact, would do no water changes. If it's algae, let it burn itself out. Feed sparingly. Keep the tank aerated. Buy a real skimmer for in sump. Stop messing with it, there is nothing in your parameters that dings any alarms.
I would remove the glass tops, let the light in. Don't move the lights around, don't change their cycle. Make a pot of coffee, relax. It's not an emergency or something to quit over. It just needs TLC.
I assume the fish are fine? Not gasping for air at the surface? Then algae isn't consuming excess O2. Still not sure that's algae. Is it green? Or is the water just cloudy?
Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Often you can cause more problems than you solve by trying to fix everything overnight.
Brad I agree with you too since I phone Mandy and talked to her for about 45 mins on FaceTime and got to see her tank first hand. Lots of advice I gave her pretty much the same effect on what u have said here. Pretty much let it take it's course and do the basics to get by.

[asylumdown]

The water in that tank is what my 40 gallon QT started to look like when I had 7 large fish in it and was feeding heavily every day. It would take 70% water changed to get it to clear up, though with that many fish it would look like that 4 days later again.

I'm not suggesting that you do such huge water changes, but what I am wondering is along the same line as Daniella, it looks like a bacterial bloom caused by an overload in nutrients in the water column without enough robust benthic processes to process/lock them up. I can't find it on the boards, when did you move the tank? Depending on what happened during the move, a tank move can be like re-setting the clock on your live rock, if it got too cold, too dry, or was out of water for too long. It might be re-curing right now. From what I can see, you've got enough biological activity going on in the tank to be masking out of whack nutrient profiles, as your test kits can only test what's free and available in the water, not what's bound up in the cells of bacteria and algae. It's not uncommon for tanks with the worst algae problems to test the 'cleanest' for nutrients.

If you can find a temporary home for the things you're worried about losing, I would also have to agree with Brad and Skimmer King. Bacterial blooms/pelagic algae outbreaks are a stage you see in the early months of a tank's life-cycle, but they're almost always stages that start out small, build to a peak, and then subside. The worst thing you can do is suddenly go and change a whole bunch of other parameters in a knee jerk reaction which will only confound a process that is likely going to work itself out in time anyway. If you've got all the elements that normally keep a tank running - heat, rocks, flow, lights, and a nutrient export system that matches the level of input, eventually this will work itself out. I know the tank was almost a year old, but considering what you're seeing since the move, it honestly looks to me like you should be thinking about this as though it's a new system, and 99 times out of 100, all you need to do for a new system is wait.

[wmcinnes]

i disagree with you on this one lots of people are using cannister filters to polish the water and run CArbon and floss to help clear up . I have know some to run rock in there in smaller tank to help out with the Bio load. That is depending on the size of the cannister filter of course.

youre right, it just depends how you run it!

[mandyplo]

did you leave that clam without light all this time?

It needs light to survive.

Could it be a bacteria bloom? if you left the lights out for a month, maybe some corals on the liverock died?

Hard to tell where the cloudy water is coming from, bacteria bloom or calcium precipitation, or something else.

Hi daniela, when I had the tank lights out for a month we had no coral or clams yet only fish - the corals and clams are a new addition. Probably should have waited on them, I'm going to try and find a sitter.

[Skimmerking]

Hi daniela, when I had the tank lights out for a month we had no coral or clams yet only fish - the corals and clams are a new addition. Probably should have waited on them, I'm going to try and find a sitter.
mandy you never told me that you had the lights out for a month and no live stock........


shame on you how is your tank doing today i will call you later ok.

[shootingstar]

Hey Mandy,
you know where I am :lol:
Call if you need a critter-sitter.
Cathy

[ChizerBunoi]

Algae water. This happens with freshwater high tech planted tanks all the time. If you could borrow a uv steralizer or a diatom filter, it will clear up in a day. If not, just keep up with water changes.

My endlers would love this type of water.

[lastlight]

Algae water. This happens with freshwater high tech planted tanks all the time. If you could borrow a uv steralizer or a diatom filter, it will clear up in a day. If not, just keep up with water changes.

My endlers would love this type of water.

+1

My freshwater buddy uses his uv every now and then for what appears to be the same issue. Assuming it's algae and not bacteria or clam soup maybe see if you can borrow someone's uv?

[mandyplo]

Hey Mandy,
you know where I am :lol:
Call if you need a critter-sitter.
Cathy

Hey Cathy, thanks a ton - Frank called me right away and I brought my corals&clams to his place. Thank you though I know I can always count on you for help and advice!!

[mandyplo]

Update: I'm feeling a little better guys - SkimmerKing (Mike) has been holding my hand through this daily and really helping me along. I'd still be extremely lost without him! The tank isn't looking any better yet but I've learned patience is key if you want to survive in this hobby. I currently have the tank wrapped up, filtering with carbon, GFO and filter floss like crazy, as well as cutting back the lights. I'm going to let it run it's course for now and not do any big water changes just yet. Tests are still coming back fine - I double tested today and still very low nitrates and undetectable phosphates.... Weird, I know but that's how my life seems to work out. Nothing ever makes sense. But I'm hoping we have this thing under control finally. Thank you again so much Mike, I'd probably be drowning myself in my sump by now if it weren't for you saving me from madness. Thanks to everyone on canreef aswell for lending a helping hand and giving your advice in my time of need!!

To answer any questions: no I do not have or know anyone with a UV sterilizer. Yes my tank is definitely very very very green, not just cloudy. I do not have the money right now for a better skimmer but when the time comes that I plan to replace this one I will not trade out price for quality, I will get a skimmer/pump that can fully handle my system, I promise.

Thanks again everyone.