sarupp
Member
I had a problem with my nitrates. They were very high, in the red on the AP test kit. Probably around 80 PPM. they were very low before i skipped some water changes. I have a 125 with a 30-gal sump and 20-gal refugium. I did no water changes in November and December. It was the holidays and had a inefficient way of changing water. Mixing up five 5 gal. Bottles to change water...very tedious.
So I bought a 30 gal Rubbermaid trash can and mix the water and salt in this. I match up the temp, salinity, and pH. I did 7 water changes, One every other day. My Nitrates dropped to below 10. It’s hard to tell with AP’ s test kits. I also cleaned all my pumps and sump out.
I was using kalkwasser about every other night. My calcium was about 420 to 430 before the water changes. Then it dropped to 360-370ppm.
Then one week after the water changes, I changed my light cycle on my fuge to be on all night. I dripped my calcium like I always do and added some iodine (I add iodine about every 10 days).
here are my tank specs...
Tank—125 gal.
Refugium---20 gal (half full)
Sump----30 gal (half full)
mag 9.5---returns water back to tank from sump
rio 2100? it pumps about 700 gal per hour...just to move water in tank
1 small pwr head in the back of tank.
4 drilled holes in tank
1 large overflow box
165# of rock
3” aragonite sand
2-yellow tangs
2 coral beauty’s
2 engineer gobbies
2 6 line wrass
5 damsels
1 clown
1 scooter blend
2 pink tip anenome
1 rock anenome
2 feather dusters
3 brittle stars
1 cleaner shrimp
1 sally light foot
2 coral banded shrimp
30+blue hermit crabs
50+ snails
15-xenia’s
1-zoo polyp (30 polyps)
So here is the problem…The next day after changing my light cycle my xenia’s shrunk and looked terrible. They were doing fine and spreading like crazy. I had most of them for 3 months. And some for 6 months.
The zoo’s were about 6 months old. I bought it with 13 polyps it really started to take off.
Now it looks like the xenia is dead. The zoos are all shrunken in. one coral-banded shrimp died. The anenomes look sick; the feathers don’t look that great. I also had 2 big snails that died (not sure of name)
My copepods in the fuge look fine.
The water seems to look a little cloudy.
I have a ets skimmer, and run the water through a floss filter i made in my sump. I change this weekly. No other bio balls or anything like that.
My levels measured are:
Nitites-0
Amonia-0
PH- 8.2 to 8.4 (AP test hard to tell exact)
Nitrates under 10
Calcium 370
Temp 78.5
Iodine—could not even read a measurement using salifert test.
Any ideas what went wrong? Did I maybe get a pH spike from my lights not being off? I messed up bad!!!
I hope I gave enough info...sorry so long.
My lfs store says hold off on any more water changes.
Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Stephen
So I bought a 30 gal Rubbermaid trash can and mix the water and salt in this. I match up the temp, salinity, and pH. I did 7 water changes, One every other day. My Nitrates dropped to below 10. It’s hard to tell with AP’ s test kits. I also cleaned all my pumps and sump out.
I was using kalkwasser about every other night. My calcium was about 420 to 430 before the water changes. Then it dropped to 360-370ppm.
Then one week after the water changes, I changed my light cycle on my fuge to be on all night. I dripped my calcium like I always do and added some iodine (I add iodine about every 10 days).
here are my tank specs...
Tank—125 gal.
Refugium---20 gal (half full)
Sump----30 gal (half full)
mag 9.5---returns water back to tank from sump
rio 2100? it pumps about 700 gal per hour...just to move water in tank
1 small pwr head in the back of tank.
4 drilled holes in tank
1 large overflow box
165# of rock
3” aragonite sand
2-yellow tangs
2 coral beauty’s
2 engineer gobbies
2 6 line wrass
5 damsels
1 clown
1 scooter blend
2 pink tip anenome
1 rock anenome
2 feather dusters
3 brittle stars
1 cleaner shrimp
1 sally light foot
2 coral banded shrimp
30+blue hermit crabs
50+ snails
15-xenia’s
1-zoo polyp (30 polyps)
So here is the problem…The next day after changing my light cycle my xenia’s shrunk and looked terrible. They were doing fine and spreading like crazy. I had most of them for 3 months. And some for 6 months.
The zoo’s were about 6 months old. I bought it with 13 polyps it really started to take off.
Now it looks like the xenia is dead. The zoos are all shrunken in. one coral-banded shrimp died. The anenomes look sick; the feathers don’t look that great. I also had 2 big snails that died (not sure of name)
My copepods in the fuge look fine.
The water seems to look a little cloudy.
I have a ets skimmer, and run the water through a floss filter i made in my sump. I change this weekly. No other bio balls or anything like that.
My levels measured are:
Nitites-0
Amonia-0
PH- 8.2 to 8.4 (AP test hard to tell exact)
Nitrates under 10
Calcium 370
Temp 78.5
Iodine—could not even read a measurement using salifert test.
Any ideas what went wrong? Did I maybe get a pH spike from my lights not being off? I messed up bad!!!
I hope I gave enough info...sorry so long.
My lfs store says hold off on any more water changes.
Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Stephen
