quote:


i feed pellets 4 times a day on a schedule
i try to feed once a day brine shrimp or mysis before they go to bed
I use to feed 1 5inx2in nori sheet once a day before all this pooping happened




how much of this have you changed?? how many fish are in your tank in total i browsed through your thread and i cant get a solid answer but i seen alot of tangs and clowns lol:):)

about 20 total fish, bunch of them are small with only 4-5 fish i would consider large (3"+)

I do 10% water changes weekly on the money

Salt is stirred for 1 week

Skimmer runs 24/7

Lights are on a timer

Autotop off is set with RO/DI water so the level is solid

Ive reduced feeding in the last week to almost nothing, enough that someone took a huge bite out of my xenia

I felt bad for the tangs so ive feed them a small piece of nori (1x5) last couple days.

I'm fine with not doing anything but this wasn't something that has been around this whole time, thats whats bugging me. All of a sudden all these things went wacko.

ill get a phosphate kit and test it out.

keep up your routine and keep everything posted im sure sooner than later somethings gonna give and youll see a reduction, during the first year of my small reef tank i had everything from cyano to 40+ nitrates heat problems and algae on the glass like crazy i kept up with the steady routine and never really got to worried about things, funny how sometimes less is more now i dont do anything lol maybe wipe the glass now and then and feed:) my 110 was a different story after a year i am still battling problems (was sold yesterday)im like yourself i need an answer i hate not knowing...but in truth not all the answers are known and with a little time things even out:):)

Milad when the equilibrium gets out of wack by overstocking overfeeding adding unecessary additives the tank goes wacko. This is even more the case in small tanks.

It is a newbie problem that we as newbies all faced.

If your ph is too low or your phospate is too high and you reach for a magic exilar to solve it it may be solved short term but the problem remains.

Test your water and let us know and you can make slow adjustments and with water changes will get your tank perfect. You will see.

naesco what im saying is If ive overfed, ive overfed since day 1. If i over stocked I overstocked since the first month. I basically did nothing and it showed up like this really really fast. Its not like I just started feeding 4 times a day the week all this algea started and I havent bought a fish except a small powder brown tang in the last few months.

i just feel i didnt do anything but remove the rowphos and start dosing a few zeovit products to help kill the cayno and boom, something happened. So its definitely one of the two things I did (I would think) because nothing else has really changed for a long time.

again like Wayne said....."with respect".......20 fish in a 5 month old tank is the reason you have high nitrates.....your tank simply cant keep up with the rapid increase in bio-load and thus is in a constant state of trying to catch up.....

which is also why you cant get rid of it with water changes as fast as your wanting ,like fishytime said your tank is constantly playing catch up and since your never really removing the problem they never go down,if it does more nitrates are produced faster than you can change them out:)

i would be iffy on having 20 fish in a fully established tank let alone one that hasnt made the 6 mth mark yet.size is a factor of your fish but between a big fish and a lil clown a lil clown still excretes lots of waste may not be as much but waste is waste and your system needs to adjust.thats why i use the rule of thumb of no more than one fish a month ,not that i would buy a fish every month lol because it gives your system a chance to even out and thats your goal is to get things stable, once stable you allow time to pass then you know youve reached "equilibrium" once youve reached that stage you can get another fish but your system has taken a change and now needs to stabilize again and find equilibrium.

personally untill a system establishes(up to a year sometimes more)you should stick with a low amount of fish.20 fish must be hard to feed without feeding the tank and i bet your getting alot of your nitrates there too:)



go slow milad buddy sit back and wait for your system to establish, youve already got alot of fish and the damage is done so keep up with your routine regular water changes light feedings stop adding stuff to your tank as its not needed (yet) and possibly think of getting rid of a few fish and buy some coral:) in time your going to have trouble with all those clowns, if they get along now fine but when maturity hits and territorys are getting established the fights are gonna break out and if theres alot of tension your going to end up with disease, and you dont want that.:):)

If there are no corals suffering, I wouldn't worry too much about the nitrate levels being at that level. Fish are not nearly as sensitive to 20ppm nitrates as say sps or some lps corals.

Is your tank mainly fish or is it a mixed reef setup?

mixed reef

I haven't lost a coral or anemone yet. im not an expert but the corals seem to be doing fine, a kenya tree i put in a couple months ago is now triple the size, the zoas seem to be growing. my birdsnests are really growing.

Here is the fish list:

Purple tang
mimic tang
yellow tang
powder brown tang
foxface
6 line
yellow coris wrasse
cleaner wrasse
2 cinnimon clowns
2 true percs
2 black occ
2 maroon
2 bagaii cardinals
lawnmower blenny

inverts
cleaner shrimp
Porcelain shrimp
black brittle star
serpent star (which i have idea what happened to, havent seen this guy since i put him in around the time this stuff happened)
tuxedo urchin
black long spine urchin


im not planning on adding anymore fish (most likely will be removing 4 clowns), and I have a shipment of corals coming this weekend and I think I should be set for corals, fish, inverts.

I think a big problem is going to be the stuff that is rotting in your rocks and not getting taken out of the system.

If you 've overfed which you stated that you have it takes a long time for all that food to completely decompose and be skimmed and filtered out of the system.

You say you're testing Nitrates at 20 which is after you take into account the nitrates the algae is using to grow.

My recommendation would be to get some rubbermaid bins and take out all rock and wash them off in one bin of saltwater to get all the crud out then leave them in some more bins full of saltwater.

After all rock has been removed siphon the water out of tank while removing all fish and creatures left into another rubbermaid bin.

While siphoning this water into the bins make sure you have some filter floss on end of hose to filter out crud in water.Once you remover all the water down to about 1" inch of the sand you should be good.
( If you remove all the water and vacuum sand you will kill alot of good sand dwellers that you don't wanna kill)

This should clear out almost all of the the rotting stuff you have in there that I believe is giving you these problems.

I have done this multiple times in my 125 6 foot tank and it has been very effective at getting rid of nitrates and phosphates and I have never lost a coral or fish.

The water that I washed the rocks off in by shaking them was nuclear green by the time I washed all the rocks.

I can almost guarantee that by what you've said your problem is rotting food and waste that is not getting taken out the system.It is being left to fully decompose and therefore polluting the tank slowly over a long period of time.

A less effective but easier way to help would be to blast out all your rocks with powerheads and a turkey baster then use some HOB filters with floss or spongers to filter out the stuff you blow out of rocks.After a day or so of use and your water is clear take off filters and garbage floss and rinse out sponges.