I need answers guys!

clownme

Member
Here's the deal....
36 gal bowfront corner. Established 5 weeks, Fully cycled in three weeks. Plans are for a reef tank.
100 lbs LS, 48 lbs LR, Aqua C Remora hang on skimmer powered by a Maxi-Jet 1200. Two MJ 600's for water circulation, 24" Coralife compact lights with lunar lights. Lights are on a timer. 10,000 k and actinics run 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., actinics run alone 7:30 a.m. to 9:30a.m. and again 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. then the lunars 9:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. Light sits directly on the glass lid because no-one makes the plastic legs to fit a corner tank to get the light up off the top of the tank. I also run a small fan 24hrs a day, tank does not drop below 78. We are having a recent heat wave here in MA, hotter than usual.
My initial setup was tap water (bad I know), all water changes have been R/O since then.
I have completed two water changes, 4 gallons each for the past two Thursdays, this Thursday will be my third.
I am currently treating the tank with Phos-Guard, phosphates have been 0 for almost a week. I am also using Kent Marine Liquid Calcium because the calcium reading dropped below 400. Has been 420 for almost a week now, and Kent Marine Coral Builder because the kH was at 6dkH so I have raised it to 11 over a period of 5 days. I am feeding Kent Marine ChromaPlex, 3 drops once a week for the past two weeks. I had a lot of hitch hikers on my LR, I figured my filter feeders were running out of stuff to eat.
I currently have two peppermint shrimp, 2 Mexican turbo snails, 6 astrea snails, and 6 hermits. There also appears to be a small black sea urchin, 3 clams, and lots of live corals with small, almost transparent arms, or tentacles. I also had diatoms appear in the tank approximately 14 days ago.
Here are the numbers

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0
pH 7.8 low was 8.0 on 8/7
Ca 420
kH 11 dkH
phosphate 0
SG 1.021
Sal 29
temp 78-83 increases from 78 with the 10,000k's running
Here are my questions...
1) Why would my tank start to grow green algae?

2) With all that I have read, nothing tells me HOW to raise my SG and Sal. Should I be using more r/o water for the water changes and less pre-mixed saltwater?
3) I thought I acclimated well, not drip method, but an hour or so of adding tank water while floating the critters, but I seem to have lost 3 Astrea snails over a period of a 8 days. Acclimation wrong?
4) Running the lights too long?
5) I have maroon bubble things growing on one of my clams, could it be the dreaded bubble algae? :scared:
Is there anything else I am doing wrong? I am insitent that I am going to master water chemistry before I spend a dime on a fish!
Give me some tips.....god knows I need help!
 

msd2

Active Member
few things I would do:
bring up the ca level a bit more to around 430-440, its close to balanced but not quite.
stablize your temp, thats too big a swing so set your heater for 82 at night.
your salinity is too low, slowly bring it up to 1.025
clearly your ph is still low which is something to investigate further why, but it should be around 8.3
When you do the water changes are u letting the saltwater sit for at least 24hrs before exchanging it?
What kind of clams and corals do you have. Not to sound like a nag but thats really fast for such a young tank, its not even stable yet and clams are very picky. If one goes south I hope you catch it quick because it could quickly sour your entire tank.
 

airforceb2

Active Member
1)Young tanks will grow algae...especially using tap water.
2) Mix some hypersaline water (around 1.028) and pour that in the tank. It will slowly raise the tank SG.
3) Acclimate for 3 hours using the same method of adding tank water and floating the bag. When the bag gets full, dump the water down the drain.
4) Cut your 10,000K back 2 hours at least.
5) Bubble algae is green usually...not red. What kind of clams do you have? Are they hitch hikers or store bought?
DO NOT supplement Calcium until you get an Alk test. Your Alk is probably high because your Calcium and pH are low.
Everything else looks good.
 

clownme

Member
Ok on the Ca level I will bring it up.
If I dont run the fan all day the tank will get almost 85 or higher with the lights running, so you want me to battle between the fan and the heater to keep the tank at 82?
I would love nothing more than to bring my salinity up, BUT HOW, that's what I need to know, specifically what is the procedure. Everything I read tells me to keep it at a certain level, but no instructions......
Should I be using something to raise the pH?
The saltwater was actually in a bucket with a powerhead for 4 days
All clams and corals are hitchikers. I do not know the specific names of them. The only thing I added to the tank was the cleanup crew. I did that in two stages. 1 shrimp, 1 turbo, 3 astrea, and 4 hermits, (really tiny ones) When I lost 2 snails, I checked water, completely fine with the exception Ca and phosphates. LFS thought since lights were recently being put on that Ca dropped because the corraline was staring, advised him of the phosphate numbers gave me Phos-guard, and gave me test kit for alkalinity. Upped my numbers, got one more shrimp, 2 more hermits and a some more astea and a turbo. The peppermint shrimp eats the carcus's so fast there is nothing left! I thought the peppermint shrimp were bumping my snails off on purpose! :hilarious
 

birdy

Active Member
To raise salinity, very easy, instead of adding fresh water for topoff (evaporated water) add saltwater. It will come up slowly just like it should.
Your Ca, dkh and pH look just fine to me, don't let people freak you out. Those are actually very close to NSW levels. As long as you are doing weekly water changes they should stay just fine, be very careful with Ca and Alk supplements and IMO don't mess with pH, if you maintain Ca and Alk you don't need to worry about pH.
The snail deaths are just one of those things, your salinity is a bit low that could be it, you will probably never know the cause.
Temp- You need to take the glass top off your tank, get some egg crate grid from the hardware store, then have the fan blowing over the top of the tank, it should keep the temp stable, Figure out your daytime high without glass tops and then turn your heater to up to keep the level stable (try to keep it around 80).
Algae growth, one of those things, research refugiums, single best thing you can do to keep nusiance algaes out of the tank.
 

clownme

Member
As you may be able to tell from the pic, I will not be able to do a refugium. Many thanks on the salinity question. It seems like all books say that when evaporation occurs, salt is left behind, therefore in theory adding r/o water for top offs should technically bring the SG up? Also if I am going to add a higher SG water at water change time, will I kill anythign in the tank, is it like too much at one time?
Birdy do you agree with cutting light back at least 2 hours, sounds like it makes sense to me....
 

birdy

Active Member
Okay, you need to raise the salinity as in add MORE salt, so it would make sense to add salt water instead of fresh water to raise the salinity right, you are increasing the amount of salt in the tank.
Cutting back your lights if you are having algae problems is always a good idea.
You don't have much room for a fuge, but where there is a will there is a way. I built a shelf for one of mine and put it above the tank.
 

clownme

Member
Thanks for the compliment. We are waiting to have to have the face on our fireplace redone, do I will have more room. In the opposite corner will be our new BIG plasma or LCD screen TV (we haven't decided yet)!
Explain this refugium a little more to me....... how would this benefit me. I have read that it provides a "quiet place" for the aquarium, Am I going in the right direction with this?
 

birdy

Active Member
I set up my fuges as a natural algae filter, mainly with chateo (a type of macro algae), basically you just have a tank that has slow water flow through it, a simple light (grow lights for plants work fine) and macro in it, a lot of people put a sandbed and some LR in it for pods to grow. If you have an above tank fuge then you need either a drilled tank (I used an acrylic eclipse tank for mine) or something you can drill, basically you pump water up to the tank and then it gravity feeds back down to the display. The macro algae absorbs the excess nutrients and uses nitrates and phospates to grow, You remove some of the algea to remove these things from the tank. And the sell it to your LFS for store credit. Basically you grow algae in the refugium so that you aren't growing algae in the main tank.
Hope that makes some sense, there are threads and threads out there explaining fuges.
 
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