Originally Posted by
Al Mc
http:///forum/post/2458243
Probably. How old are the tanks? Sand versus crushed coral? How much rock? Type of filtration and skimmer? How many/what size fish? All these can be part of the issue(s) too.
The 55 is 15 months in my possession and a couple of years in another person's. A good 30 gallons of water came with the tank so it was like a water change when we put it back up.. (No livestock, rock and .5" sand at that point). Now, there's nearly 100lbs of live rock and 4-5" of live sand.
Filtration is one of the penguine type hob filters, a skilter setup as a filter, (using the skimmer part just to airate the water bascially), and an old magnum 350 with live rock only in it. For a skimmer I'm running a Seaclone 150.
Livestock wise:
A small volitan (yes, she's small still)
a very small yellow tang (just added)
a small hardwicky Wrass
a medium bird wrass
a medium bangaii cardinal
a sm-md 3stripe damsel
a medium-largish dragon gobby
a medium coral beauty
and a sm-md pink tail trigger.
I know I'm in need of some more cleanup crew. At the moment there's a stray hermit crab or 2 left, a fighting conch, a sand sifting cucumber, a large yellow brittle star, a medium black brittle star, a sm-md green brittle star, and a skunk cleaner shrimp, (maybe 2, haven't seen the second one in awhile but they hide well). Also have a black spiny urchin and a pencil urchin. The only non-mobile occupants at the moment are a pair of tube anemones.
Feeding for most of the residents is every other night, the volitan gets a couple very small silver sides every 3 days or so.
I suspect the nitrate problem is inherited as the sand came from a dirty 120, same with the rock. The 55 originally housed some silly large/dirty animals for its original owner, (think he had a lamprey and some sort of shark in it for instance).
The Nano Cube has one small false perc, (all it can sustain is one small fish at a time.).
Also the tank houses a very small pink "bubble tip" brittle star, a smallish red serpent star, a orange flame scallop, a cleaner clam, an orange Medusa worm, like 3 conical snails, an unidentified snail, (long white shell with red spots). Also there is a medium-to-large LTA and a purple tipped anemone that I haven't gotten a positive id on yet as well.
This tank is primarily a coral holding tank while I prep my new 57Gal column. As far as corals go: A medium sized white bubble coral, a small fragg of black sun coral, a handful of watermelon mushrooms, a pair of blue mushrooms, a lavender with brown "polyps" gorgonian, and my most recent possession and my prize coral: a Duncan fragg with 6 heads.
This tank has a good inch and a half or more of sand in it but only has a few small pieces of live rock. Most of the filtration in it is bags of medium that's grown into biological filters. The sand bed and live rock, (as well as the skeletal structure of the hard corals) is just infested with bristle worms and baby brittle/serpent stars. I'm not real sure on the 'pod' population anymore, but I know it used to be quite high. This tank doesn't get as frequent water changes as it should, but it gets them more often than the 55 still. Also, there seems to be a disturbingly large population of very small conical shaped snails which I don't believe are the samel kind as the algae eating ones I introduced. I believe these smaller ones are the parasitic type that have been known to do in large decorative clams.
