Reef Discussion

[joey13]

Ok so things have taken a further dive for me on my Reef Keeping quest and I think I'm about to blow my lid.

Tank has been up and running for 12 weeks or so now. Recently confirmed a case of white spot which was introduced on a wrasse I failed to quarantine.

I've experienced a massive outbreak of what I'm certain is Cyno. I had recently increased my lighting intensity when this began. It's starting to take over the tank.

Corals have been looking very average as of late which I put down to the Cyno growth and obvious high phosphates.

Found a big piece of rotten clam foot last night whch I removed.

Today my elegance looks on the brink so i decided to test for ammonia and nitrite and have a reding of between 0.25-0.5 ppm for each. Nitrate says 0!

I don't understand how this could have happened or why this is happening. I wouldn't have thought the clam flesh could have caused such spike? There is at least 50kg of LR in the tank. I have not added anything into the tank for at least 6 weeks or so.

Is it true that Cyno dying off can cause an ammonia spike? I recently did a 25% water change and did notice it starting to fall away this week.

At wits end atm

 

[joey13]

Other water parameters

Temp: 25.2
Salinity: 1.025
pH: 8.3
Alk: 139ppm (7.784 dKH)
Cal: 410
Mag: 1290 ppm
Phos: 0.24 ppm

 

[Buddy]

Clams are very messy when they die so it doesn't surprise me that it would cause an ammonia spike especially in such a young tank.
To me it sounds like there is too much nutrients fueling the algae. I think a lot of water cages are your best friend at the moment.
Get all your readings to where you want them to be, then wait at least another month after that before adding any stock. Your tank really needs to finish its cycle and stabilise first.

 

[holly]

Is your alk down as well?

Agree with buddy, early on while things are not 'balanced' the littlest things are an issue. I would consider adding some prime to ease the burden on your stock.

You might be able to help things by adding a competing source for nutrients: marine snow, macro, algae scrubber, source of plankton . I can't remember if you have phosphate control on this tank?

 

[joey13]

Dosed some prime earlier in the day to help detoxify it and have just ran the tests now and have 0 amm, 0 nitrite and a very slight reading of nitrate

Have a friend coming to re locate all coral for the time being until I can stabilize this tank. Considering doing hypo to treat the white spot which would remove the need to chase and net the fish but don't think this is the best idea with the live rock in there.

May completely drain the QT and re fill with display water and get them into there for hypo. I'll manage ammo with small water changes as required.

I'll leave the display fishless and without any coral for 8 weeks while the fish are in QT. I'll clean up all the excess algae by hand and let things settle down and re introduce slowly and see how we go

 

[holly]

Live rock will still be live with hypo treatment - still an option to keep them in your QT. I hope you don't feel like you didn't plan enough for your tank as I know you put a lot of effort into this. A lot of problems are just due to luck and the more you can learn from the experiences the more you'll be prepared for the future. I'm sure you've gotten a lot of that type of experience from your 'day' job. :cool:

 

[OSCAR85]

Hi Joey,

Agree with Buddy Lots of water changes for the moment. You may want to invest in a two little fish phos reactor to really get that phos down and to keep it down.