How much live rock/sand do you have? You should have at least 1.5-2 lbs per gallon of water. so for a 55 gallon, you'd need about 80-110 lbs of L/R, and about 3 inches (deep) of live sand. How often do you clean your filter and do water changes? Because those parameters are too high. Oh yeah, do you have a protein skimmer?...and if so what kind? You should only feed your fish once a day. This is a highly debated topic on SWF.com (and everywhere else). Bu if you took a poll, you'd find out that the majority of (marine) aquarists feed their fish/inverts only once a day..
Here's my advice.
1. Use prime plus
2. Do a 30% water change
3. Clean your filter & media (get new sponges, carbon, etc)
4. Buy more L/R, L/S (only add in about 4-5 lbs of L/R at a time. If you add too much, you will get ammonia spikes and mini cycles over and over again
5. Buy more l/s ammount does'nt matter; make sure you have a total of 3"
6. Add about 4-5 lbs. of L/R (this will be about a normal sized piece) every week until you have about 100lbs.
7. If you don't have the $$$$ make your own L/R, it's SUPER easy and it's about .12 cents a pound!!! Look under "DIY & Equipment here on SWF. com scan until you see a post titled "SCOTTY 9311" he's the guy you want to listen to;trust me, I followed his recipe and am now making $$$ selling the stuff to fish stores.
Get a decent quality protein skimmer...Bak paks & Aqua C remoras are a few of the best for the $$$.
8. Keep up W/a regular maint schedule.
9. Use R/O D/I water. Most decent LFS sell it, it's about .30-.65 per gallon. Or you could buy a R/O filter for about $100, but right now, I would spend the $$$ on a decent protein skimmer.
10. Buy EVERYTHING online, especially your expensive items, unless of course you need it now
11. Write back and tell me how it went/goes.
12. GOOD LUCK and remember, this is a learning process
and can anyone help??
You need some:help: Oh yeah...use Prime plus. It makes the ammonia, nitrates, nittrites non toxic. However, it does NOT remove them, that's nature's job.
