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Innovative Marine Aquariums

IM 30L Pro Frag & Quarantine Tank


Coolbreeze

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Tank was moved this weekend to its new resting place and everything is doing just fine. I will wait a day or two and do another water change as I did not want to make to many changes over the weekend.

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  • 3 weeks later...

So I needed to make one small change as I was keep getting Cyano and I believed it to be that my water movement was too low. So I made a change to both Nero 5 and thought that I will need to siphon some water out while cleaning the sand and to my surprise when I get up this morning I no longer have to as I made the water flow to high and it cleaned the sand for me 😂. So I made one more small adjustment to the downside and now it looks much better. All in all everything is looking healthy and ready to transfer to new DT when they are ready. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well it has been awhile on an update. So here it is.

 

I purchase two Biota Captive-Bred Seal's Cardinalfish and both are doing very well. Once the WB110 is up and running they will go into there. Here is a picture of what they look like now and what they will look like when fully grown.

 

They hide a lot now so I have to use a stock photo for now

 

image.thumb.png.c3dad287589d0009d4375f544e8e84ff.png

 

When fully grown they will look like this

 

 

image.thumb.png.eec61db42dc2856c2b9d0de28dc201ba.png

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Over the past several weeks I have been getting brown diatoms on the sand and it seemed to be getting worst. I have not changed anything at this point in time. I guess you could say it is on autopilot.

 

After doing two 5g water changes one week apart it still was not helping so I did a Nitrate test and it was at 10 ppm. So I ordered a bucket of Tropic Marin SYN-Biotic Sea salt. This has some types of probiotic bacteria for fish and inverts and special prebiotic bacteria food to promote probiotic bacterial growth and to create low-nutrient conditions in the aquarium. Basically it is claiming that it can lower nitrates and phosphates.

 

I did a 5g water change on Monday and as of today all the brown diatoms are gone. I have ordered a Hanna Nitrate checker so that I can get more accurate reading in the future. But for now it seems to be working for now.

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2 hours ago, Coolbreeze said:

Over the past several weeks I have been getting brown diatoms on the sand and it seemed to be getting worst. I have not changed anything at this point in time. I guess you could say it is on autopilot.

 

After doing two 5g water changes one week apart it still was not helping so I did a Nitrate test and it was at 10 ppm. So I ordered a bucket of Tropic Marin SYN-Biotic Sea salt. This has some types of probiotic bacteria for fish and inverts and special prebiotic bacteria food to promote probiotic bacterial growth and to create low-nutrient conditions in the aquarium. Basically it is claiming that it can lower nitrates and phosphates.

 

I did a 5g water change on Monday and as of today all the brown diatoms are gone. I have ordered a Hanna Nitrate checker so that I can get more accurate reading in the future. But for now it seems to be working for now.

I had considered using that probiotic salt... eager to hear how it works out. Agree with Tired that a nitrate level of 10 ppm can be fine foe many tanks. 

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21 hours ago, Tired said:

What are your phosphates currently? Low nutrients can cause algae problems, not just high nutrients. 10ppm is a good nitrate level for most tanks.

I do not have a reading on phosphates as I am waiting for my replacement reagents to arrive.

 

Also I do not realize that low nutrients can cause algae issues.

 

19 hours ago, banasophia said:

I had considered using that probiotic salt... eager to hear how it works out. Agree with Tired that a nitrate level of 10 ppm can be fine foe many tanks. 

I wanted to give it a try as I am not using any other methods for nutrient export. Currently I am only exporting using water changes and protein skimmer. 

 

I really want to use the Hanna checkers for both Nitrate and Phosphate for their digital readouts. Then I can see if it really makes any difference. So far it has been clearing up the diatoms as of this morning about 3/4 of the sand bed is back to normal, so it is looking very promising so far.

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The reason low nutrients can cause algae issues is because they cause your tank's various non-pest algae (slower-growing, less invasive species that usually behave themselves on your rocks instead of growing over coral) to decline. That leaves space for pest algaes to run rampant, as they can tolerate the lower nutrients. In a healthy, mature tank with a reasonable level of nutrients, all the algaes are busy trying to outcompete each other, which keeps the pesky kinds in check. 

Also, low enough phosphates will kill photosynthetic organisms eventually, including your corals. Phosphate should never be undetectable.

 

For that matter, nitrates shouldn't drop below 5-10ppm for most tanks. Some tanks do OK with lower, but it's usually tanks that have a near-constant stream of nutrients being fed in, so the corals always have nutrients available. 

 

In short, I don't know that dropping your nutrients lower is a good way to tackle this algae. You might catch your corals in the crossfire. And the trouble is, it can take corals quite awhile to start showing the effects of low nutrients, but it's hard to get them back once they start declining from starvation. 

 

Diatoms are generally harmless. They don't smother corals or poison snails. It's better to go easy when fighting them, taking measures that are unlikely to harm anything else in the tank. One good option is to make sure you have a decent number of snails that turn over the sand and feed on diatoms. Ceriths will shift the sand around some, for one.

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Thanks for the clarification. I just received my UPS notification for my reagents for my phosphate and Hanna Nitrate checker will arrive tomorrow. I will take samples and see what it says.

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  • 2 months later...

It has been a long time since I have given an update here. Mainly I was trying out a few items so that I can make my final decision on how I was going to setup both WB builds.

 

The Tropic Marin Probiotic salt I was using for five months never gave me what I was looking for and the additional cost of this salt did no justify its costs so I have gone back to using Tropic Marin Pro salt moving forward. All parameters was doing well until I was not able to care for the tank for a few weeks.

 

I had a full fledge long hair algae breakout, aiptasia and other non desirables.  I have been spending all my free time to get this thing back into shape.

 

IMG_0086.thumb.jpeg.0da2798d10992e1f2dd3d335b3e57942.jpeg

 

 

I started by changing out all of my filter media in my RODI system and then making water changes every three days (5 gallons). After phosphates and nitrates drop down to my preferred levels I was able to then attack aiptasia. I tried al the different ways refers were recommending to remove them, and it really caused those things to replicate like rabbits, I bought  four Berghia Nudibranch and within a few months they were all gone.

 

Now that things are back into control and looks much better I am working on getting all parameters in line so I can start to move these corals over to my WB 20 build.

 

IMG_0087.thumb.jpeg.0b44ce337b1ffe045694d7c1ec449f26.jpeg

IMG_0169.thumb.jpeg.abe5552dd33e0463c32838bf37e71b44.jpeg

 

I will have to admit that running a smaller tank is way much harder then I had ever thought. Kudo's to those on here that have awesome tanks. I really need to work on my camera skills as well.

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