Arce's Tank

[Arce]

Hm... Order a triton test now, or wait till i move and do a restart? I just want to know if the measures i took got rid of the crap i had.

[Arce]

I take my last statement back. Thought things were getting better. The last acan i had was looking like it was recovering and now when i went to do my water change i noticed it detached all of its polyps. Nitrate and phosphate are still high and unchanged so i bumped the nopox up. I was trying to ease into the dosage so my dinos dont blow up. 

 

Im thinking im better of doing a hard restart on the tank. New rock new water, start over. Unsure if i should do it before or after the move. I want to start seeding new rock but still unsure if the metals and contaminants are coming from my water source. TDS is still reading zero but who knows if anythings getting through. The nitrate and phosphate problems im assuming came from the vibrant/dinos problem so atleast i know the source but now my rocks are saturated with it and leaching id assume since my levels wont drop.

[kimberbee]

 

How much life do you really have left? Can you create a "quarantine" in a bucket or small petco tank? Where do you get your water from?

 

With all these problems, if it were me, I'd probably start completely over a month or so after the move. Give everything time to be cleaned up and dried off. Then cleaned again... 

[Arce]

Just now, kimberbee said:

 

How much life do you really have left? Can you create a "quarantine" in a bucket or small petco tank? Where do you get your water from?

 

With all these problems, if it were me, I'd probably start completely over a month or so after the move. Give everything time to be cleaned up and dried off. Then cleaned again... 

All i have left are my fish, clam, gorgs and inverts. I think im going to just wait and do a restart after i move.

[Arce]

I've been doing some research on the metals that were elevated in my triton test, specifically the selenium. Now I'm sure I'm going a lot farther into this than i should, but i found some threads where hobbyists were getting the same issues as me and they were using brightwell neomarine salt. One even sent in a fresh batch for ICP tests and came back with the same elevated metals as i had. Coincidence, maybe. Could it be errors in the test, of course. But i need to buy new salt and at this point I'm willing to accept and try anything. These metals might not even be the source of my problems since i don't know what form the selenium is in or if the concentration is toxic but changing salts is a simple step i can try. I still feel like the dinos and nutrient levels were the cause of my tanks crash but having the high levels in these metals is concerning so figured i try something.

[metrokat]

9 minutes ago, Arce said:

I've been doing some research on the metals that were elevated in my triton test, specifically the selenium. Now I'm sure I'm going a lot farther into this than i should, but i found some threads where hobbyists were getting the same issues as me and they were using brightwell neomarine salt. One even sent in a fresh batch for ICP tests and came back with the same elevated metals as i had. Coincidence, maybe. Could it be errors in the test, of course. But i need to buy new salt and at this point I'm willing to accept and try anything. These metals might not even be the source of my problems since i don't know what form the selenium is in or if the concentration is toxic but changing salts is a simple step i can try. I still feel like the dinos and nutrient levels were the cause of my tanks crash but having the high levels in these metals is concerning so figured i try something.

I've been using Neomarine salt for 4 years. No selenium in my triton test. No heavy metals.

My recent ICP test from MACNA tested my RODI and my tank water. No selenium there either.

 

On 3/21/2017 at 9:00 AM, Arce said:

All i have left are my fish, clam, gorgs and inverts. I think im going to just wait and do a restart after i move.

Right, I thought you were feeling confident about this plan. Something changed?

[Arce]

Just now, metrokat said:

I've been using Neomarine salt for 4 years. No selenium in my triton test. No heavy metals.

My recent ICP test from MACNA tested my RODI and my tank water. No selenium there either.

 

Yea, i knew you used it but its the only conclusion i can draw aside from just saying that its an error in the ICP tests. In this concentration i highly doubt its coming from my RODI, or there would be some serious issues. Aside from that, introduction from supplements is what i assume is the cause.

[metrokat]

11 hours ago, Arce said:

Yea, i knew you used it but its the only conclusion i can draw aside from just saying that its an error in the ICP tests. In this concentration i highly doubt its coming from my RODI, or there would be some serious issues. Aside from that, introduction from supplements is what i assume is the cause.

Didn't your problems start long before you switched salts? Wasn't there a contaminant in your source water that needed remediation - carbon and prime? That was a problem with your RODI. Get your RODI tested.

[ifarmer]

hi ar-see,

dino are not easy to conquer.  Very few poeple have luck with doing black out.

My full sps tank was affected with Dino and I did a 5 days black out and those stupid dino disappears and no where to be seen.

With a 5 days black out completely. my corals color went pale  but its okay, their color will come back eventually.  Just cant stand the dino and keep loosing sps frags to dino.

 

good luck.

[Arce]

Deep cleaned the tank the end of last week, i pulled out all of the rock and crap i had in my sump because a good amount of detritus was accumulating in the refuge. Not enough to cause my problems with nutrients but I'm sure it didn't help. Ended up tossing all of the rock rubble i had in there to prevent the build up again. I'm going to do a 10 gallon change either today or tomorrow and probably another larger change next week. Trying to see if it will put a dent in the high phos and trates.

[Arce]

Nitrate and phosphate finally moved in the right direction. Did some testing last night and the nitrates are down around 10ppm but phosphates are still a bit high around 0.1. Good news is things are working and coming down. I dosed 1 drop of phosphaterx just to see if it helps knock some of it out. I also did a larger water change so lets see what happens by next week. I haven't increased the nopox and i don't think i will, I'm sitting at 2ml a day so i think ill leave it there. I really just don't want the dinos to explode.

 

I had an extremely slow day at work yesterday so i went through the first like 50-70 pages of my thread. Man i miss my 29g tank and all my beautiful sps. Had to fight the feels, they were too strong.

[vlangel]

I know that nostalgic feeling of seeing an old tank and wishing you still had it.  However, the bright side is, that since you are moving soon, think what a wreck you would be worrying about all those SPS and how they would survive the move.  

 

Now that you know it is SPS that really stirs your heart when it comes to reef tanks, don't waste your time trying to keep anything else.  It will always feel like you are just settling.  You did it once and you can do it again.

[metrokat]

6 hours ago, Arce said:

Nitrate and phosphate finally moved in the right direction. Did some testing last night and the nitrates are down around 10ppm but phosphates are still a bit high around 0.1. Good news is things are working and coming down. I dosed 1 drop of phosphaterx just to see if it helps knock some of it out. I also did a larger water change so lets see what happens by next week. I haven't increased the nopox and i don't think i will, I'm sitting at 2ml a day so i think ill leave it there. I really just don't want the dinos to explode.

 

I had an extremely slow day at work yesterday so i went through the first like 50-70 pages of my thread. Man i miss my 29g tank and all my beautiful sps. Had to fight the feels, they were too strong.

Awww man, why you gotta bring up that sick tank? I was reading the articles we did together for Marine Depot which had your pictures.

[Arce]

6 minutes ago, metrokat said:

Awww man, why you gotta bring up that sick tank? I was reading the articles we did together for Marine Depot which had your pictures.

Right in the feels 

 

[metrokat]

You will get back there Arce. I know you will.

[Arce]

1 minute ago, metrokat said:

You will get back there Arce. I know you will.

I hope so...

[Arce]

Just when i thought the nonsense with my house was going to end something else comes up. I will be so happy when this process is done and i have my keys in hand. We have a little over two weeks left so its getting close, im hoping we can set a date for closing before easter and not after, i cant wait anymore.

[teenyreef]

1 hour ago, Arce said:

Just when i thought the nonsense with my house was going to end something else comes up. I will be so happy when this process is done and i have my keys in hand. We have a little over two weeks left so its getting close, im hoping we can set a date for closing before easter and not after, i cant wait anymore.

Good luck! Buying a house is the most stressful thing you can do in your life short of getting married, having kids, and dealing with life-threatening illness. Because of the stress, every setback and delay get magnified all out of proportion. 

 

I miss your old tank too, it was amazing. I get that same feeling sometimes when I look back at my 4g before it crashed. It's really hard to decide whether to keep working on fixing something that's wrong or just start over from scratch. I've been going through the same struggle with my 10g tank and the weird bacteria/and or white algae thing. It would be easier in the long run to start over, but then I'll never know what the real problem was, and, more importantly, how to keep it from happening again.

[markalot]

Good luck with the house.  Expect drama until the very last second and hopefully things will go better than expected.

 

I would stop NOPOX, a high bacterial load is not what you need right now IMO.  Get PO4 around .06 and let nitrates stay at 10 to even 20 and things should do well.  If nitrates end up dropping lower great, but 10 is very workable IMO.

 

The biggest issues happen when PO4 is above Nitrates.  As soon as this happens all hell breaks loose in my experience and the experience of a lot of SPS keepers on RC.  It's not that a ratio is that important as long as PO4 stays below the Redfield ratio.   16:1

[teenyreef]

2 hours ago, markalot said:

Good luck with the house.  Expect drama until the very last second and hopefully things will go better than expected.

 

I would stop NOPOX, a high bacterial load is not what you need right now IMO.  Get PO4 around .06 and let nitrates stay at 10 to even 20 and things should do well.  If nitrates end up dropping lower great, but 10 is very workable IMO.

 

The biggest issues happen when PO4 is above Nitrates.  As soon as this happens all hell breaks loose in my experience and the experience of a lot of SPS keepers on RC.  It's not that a ratio is that important as long as PO4 stays below the Redfield ratio.   16:1

Mark, thanks for this - I think it's the clearest way of putting it that I've seen so far. I used to worry that my PO4 was too low relative to nitrates because it wasn't in the 16:1 neighborhood, but that's just chasing numbers. The way you put itreally fits what we observe - if nitrates get really high relative to PO4, usually the worst thing that happens is we get brown sticks. But if PO4 goes high compared to nitrates, Bad Things almost always happen.

[Arce]

On 3/30/2017 at 0:40 PM, markalot said:

 

The biggest issues happen when PO4 is above Nitrates.  As soon as this happens all hell breaks loose in my experience and the experience of a lot of SPS keepers on RC.  It's not that a ratio is that important as long as PO4 stays below the Redfield ratio.   16:1

 

But my phos and trates were never out of the 16:1. or atleast the phosphates werent above the ratio

[markalot]

2 minutes ago, Arce said:

 

But my phos and trates were never out of the 16:1. or atleast the phosphates werent above the ratio

 

Maybe,

 

I am a little unclear on the units used in the Redfield ratio.  My point was that you need to lower PO4 more that N and bacteria is mostly good for lowering N, not PO4, so eventually you will need to compensate.  If you bottom out N and still have .1 PO4 things will be bad.  Generally it's difficult to get out of balance but when we start adding stuff suddenly you have the tools to really screw things up.

 

RHF does not think redfield applies to reef tanks, others think it applies but only in the sense of making sure Nitrates never drop below the 16:1 ratio.  

 

[Arce]

8 minutes ago, markalot said:

 

Maybe,

 

I am a little unclear on the units used in the Redfield ratio.  My point was that you need to lower PO4 more that N and bacteria is mostly good for lowering N, not PO4, so eventually you will need to compensate.  If you bottom out N and still have .1 PO4 things will be bad.  Generally it's difficult to get out of balance but when we start adding stuff suddenly you have the tools to really screw things up.

 

RHF does not think redfield applies to reef tanks, others think it applies but only in the sense of making sure Nitrates never drop below the 16:1 ratio.  

 

Ahhh gotcha, ok. Yea i dropped my dose to 1ml from 2ml, going to shut it off by Sunday. Just want to slowly ease into stopping so i dont cause a bloom/mass die off or anything. Im going to keep up with the phosphate rx to drop the po4 down and leave the nitrates alone.

[Arce]

Been so busy packing and getting ready for the move i haven't had a chance to test trates and phos since last week. Hoping things are still moving in the right direction. I'm going to my LFS sometime this week to stock up on some supplies so i don't need to buy anything for a couple months. Were still waiting to hear when our closing date is but hopefully its mid next week.

[Arce]

Tested yesterday for trates and phos but didn't have water ready for a change. Trates were down to 2-5 and phos was less than 0.1. I stopped the nopox when mark had mentioned it earlier so hopefully the trates level off. I'm going to continue the phosphaterx dosing until i get the phosphates in the lower range. I'm sure ill have to do this all over again when i move because the move is bound to start up a mini cycle and blow up my levels again but what ever. Were hoping to hear today from my bank/lawyer and have a finalized closing date.