lauraleighx3
New Member
Hi there!
I set up a 75 g tank 2 weeks ago. It's running an oceanic trickle filter, I originally had just carbon in the sump. I started getting a serious bloom of diatoms, which I'm fairly certain was due to me using tap water to start it. Didn't know my tap water would cause a diatom bloom, but lesson learned. I've only been putting small amounts of live rock in the sump to help with the cycling, I probably only have 10lbs in there now (finances and space considerations). After I noticed the diatom bloom, I tested and got high nitrite and nitrate readings (I can't remember the exact parameters). I did some research about the diatoms and found that it could be due to silicates and phosphates, so I switched my carbon to chemipure elite. And did a water change for the high readings. That was about 3-4 days ago, Retested today and did a calcium and phosphate reading, calcium was off the chart, so somewhere in the 600ppm range and phosphates were 0.5ppm. Nitrites and nitrates were down to 60 and 3. The diatoms definitely slowed down, but the calcium is weird for me.
I have nothing in there right now because I want to be very cautious with the cycling. But the tank was my parents old set up, so I reused the crushed coral/sand mixture on the bottom and it has some gorgeous pieces of bleached coral in there. Hence why I'm currently not adding live rock to the tank itself and just the sump. And I reused the sand due to a limiting budget currently.
Would the old sand/crushed coral cause the calcium to be super high?
And I plan on only doing a large aggressive tank: not sure on the stocking yet, I definitely want to get a Picasso trigger and a few tank buddies who will be happy together, and a small CUC. No corals though. So with that being said, is a high calcium going to affect the fish? How can I get it down, if I should?
Thanks in advance for any help/advice!
I set up a 75 g tank 2 weeks ago. It's running an oceanic trickle filter, I originally had just carbon in the sump. I started getting a serious bloom of diatoms, which I'm fairly certain was due to me using tap water to start it. Didn't know my tap water would cause a diatom bloom, but lesson learned. I've only been putting small amounts of live rock in the sump to help with the cycling, I probably only have 10lbs in there now (finances and space considerations). After I noticed the diatom bloom, I tested and got high nitrite and nitrate readings (I can't remember the exact parameters). I did some research about the diatoms and found that it could be due to silicates and phosphates, so I switched my carbon to chemipure elite. And did a water change for the high readings. That was about 3-4 days ago, Retested today and did a calcium and phosphate reading, calcium was off the chart, so somewhere in the 600ppm range and phosphates were 0.5ppm. Nitrites and nitrates were down to 60 and 3. The diatoms definitely slowed down, but the calcium is weird for me.
I have nothing in there right now because I want to be very cautious with the cycling. But the tank was my parents old set up, so I reused the crushed coral/sand mixture on the bottom and it has some gorgeous pieces of bleached coral in there. Hence why I'm currently not adding live rock to the tank itself and just the sump. And I reused the sand due to a limiting budget currently.
Would the old sand/crushed coral cause the calcium to be super high?
And I plan on only doing a large aggressive tank: not sure on the stocking yet, I definitely want to get a Picasso trigger and a few tank buddies who will be happy together, and a small CUC. No corals though. So with that being said, is a high calcium going to affect the fish? How can I get it down, if I should?
Thanks in advance for any help/advice!
