Archive for July 2007
Water Quality Problems
Posted on Tuesday, 24 July, 2007 at 3:51 PM by miskairal
Well things haven't been going so good. I ended up with high nitrates (60) and phosphates (1.0) which seems to have killed off a few coral and most of the corallimorphs aren't looking too crash hot. They're not dead but are more closed up and not multiplying. The coral I've lost are both galaxeas and both favias that all came as hitch hikers on my original live rock. I've also lost the Gonipora that was the rescue from Kingaroy and my beautiful green cynarina has bleached as have two corallimorphs that were also hitch hikers. My Pavona I got from Alf_D has also been a casualty. I also have 3 hermit crabs missing in action along with the peppermint shrimp.
I'm not sure of the exact cause of the elevated nutrients but it has also caused a mild outbreak of cyanobacteria on the sand and another brownish algae on the rockwork. The other contributing factor was changing the MH bulbs and adding in another MH light making 3 x 150w MH and one actinic fluoro. I mostly did that because I have 2 braces on the tank and didn't want the MH lights sitting right over the braces.
On a good note I have managed to get the nitrates and phosphates under control using purigen and rowaphos. Nitrates are now undetectable and phosphates are 0.25. I am using it in my canister filter that I have attached to my sump again. I have also done some large water changes managing to get through 1000 of water in just 10 weeks. I did 125 litre water changes once a fortnight for most of that time with a larger 175 litre change last time. I've decreased that to 40 litres weekly now though as it's too much stress on ME doing such large changes. It is difficult to get the water warm enough and some of the coral are left high and dry during the process and do not appear to like that at all.
Water testing a few days ago showed Calcium 430 and KH of only 6. Don't know why the KH is so low without the Ca dropping so I've added some Seachem Reef builder I already had here.
I am also sick of the constant disturbance of the sand both by the tunze pumps and the fish so on Pete's advice (100%ReefSafe) I have started overlaying with calgrit, a calcium carbonate product. It may well mix into the beach sand but so far so good. The funny part of this is that the calgrit is made by unimin and there is a lime quarry here on our farm and guess what the address on the bag is? Yep, our road in lil' ol' Murgon. I'm pretty sure they don't actually make it here though as I've not seen it. So over the last 2 days I've been slowly adding this calgrit down a piece of poly pipe directed where I want it. Despite rinsing heaps the tank still gets cloudy for a few hours so I wait until it clears and start again. I noticed that the coral seemed to like the cloudiness so I have just retested the KH and it's up to 8. Yippee!
I attended the MASQ meeting at Turbo's in Noosa on the 21st of July, 3 days ago, so took the opportunity to buy some more goodies off Pete and Sue who were coming up from Brisbane. Oh what a blast to get home with all this stuff. I got 6 micro hermits, 4 enormous Trochus snails, 1 urchin which I think is of the burrowing variety, 1 lobophyllia, 1 yellow fungia, 1 medium acanthastrea lordhowensis and some lovely zoanthids (orange centre, green outside), and I won a little green mushy.
A couple more things....my bicolour blenny is now in the display and has doubled in size since I got him. The two mandarins are doing great, Angelina looks like a little sausage and Whoopi no longer has any bones showing. Both are taking frozen mysis and brine shrimp and Angelina also eats Formula 1 and 2 pellets.
Edited on: Tuesday, 24 July, 2007 4:59 PMPosted in Tank in general (RSS)