My terrible salty tank!

[bigoscarmom]

I have had a saltwater tank for about 8 months now and it has had many incarnations. It all started in a ten gallon, then moved to a forty breeder, then to a 29 tall, and now back to a 10.

Okay. I love having a saltwater tank and have had some delicate corals but have had to scale back after a crash. I followed some bad advice and used distilled water to mix salt with and ended up with hair algae that wiped EVERYTHING out, except of course, my puple and green palies, and some mushies. Oh and I have one massive red legged hermit left. My ten is currently lit by 2 t8s, one 50/50, one 10k. the palies are coming back nicely, the mushies a little bit more slowly. But I have brown algae on the glass and still the thrice cursed hair algae! I do not feed this tank but once a week and it is one shrimp pellet. It is filtered with an ac70 and one small powerhead.


I want to rebuild, but I don't want to get my heart broken again! I am now using tap water water, which is still les than perfect bc I have ammo and nitrates, but I also have calc at 400ppm and ph outta the tap at 8.0 ? If I could deal with the Nitrates and ammo, it would be perfect. I am using the Accu-Rel ammonia removing filter media that comes in a sheet that you cut to fit your filter and it says it works on marine environments as well. I do not skim. I have heck of evap so I don't change very often bc I am topping off about a gallon a day. MY sg runs high at 1.026 no matter how much I tinker. If I do manage to pull it down, stuff starts to die.

Help please

[callen]

What brand of salt are you using? You may have to convert to R/O water.

How old are your lights? The bulbs may need to be changed.

Hair algae is a pain. Is it on you rocks? If you can pull the rocks and scrub them in a bucket of salt water mix that would help.

[bigoscarmom]

I use Instant Ocean. The 50/50 is about 4 months old old and the 10k is a little old at six and a half months. the hair is thick mostly right in front of my powerhead, on some LR I got from a friends tank whos was a massive overfeeder. Btw, sorry for the double words if I do not catch them, as well as bum kidneys, I have a seizure disorder that mucks around with me a bit when i type. I do manually remove as much as I can, but in such a small volume, it causes massive swings in nitrites and nitrates when I put the LR back in. I have a 20 gallon I am planning on moving everything to, and buying new bulbs. I have the phosphate test, API, but I have not been able to figure the dernthing out. I get wild readings. How big are hermits supposed to get? I ask bc my red-leg is now occupying an adult apple snail shell that I put in there for him, and by the next molt, it will be too little.


I'd say I have about 12 pounds of Lr atm, and have plans to add more. Would it be better to just bin the most algae-ridden lr and buy more? To be honest, thats what I did before. I didn't bin it, I just gave it to my lfs. He said it was full of food, which I do not understand bc I don't feed heavily. Even when I was fully stocked, I only fed thrice a week, one cube of mysis one time, flake the size of child's pinch one time, and the Instant Ocean sea veggie strips one inch square clipped to the side the other. I had 2 clowns, 3 green chromis, branching hammer, palies, duncans, open brain, pipe organ, frogspawn, rose anemone, and so many different morphs of mushies it was crazy. I ran t5 then as well. vho. I skimmed then, too. I used rowaphos in minute amounts in my Cascade 700, and only supplemented with coral vite and purple up. And all was well, growing like crazy, I was having to frag my duncans, my frogg went from two heads to six, my hammer went from 3 heads to seven, I had mushies growing on the glass, and then... oh and then ... I started using distilled water to do water changes. cuz "It's the same thing as R/O, and if you think you are seeing good growth now, just wait!" Why oh WHY did I listen? The not so smart pet store is NEVER right!

[callen]

Instant ocean has been known to cause issues so it could be the salt.

Have you tested you tap water with the phosphate kit?

I'm so sorry your tank crashed it does sound like amount of great growth was happening.

IMO would do some major water changes and wave your hands over the rocks to stir up any fallen food.

Your hermit crab can get up to 1 1/2 inches.

IMO you feed to much at one time. Smaller portions and feed more often is best. That may be why there was a lot of left over food. I feed once sometimes twice a day but only feed what the fish would eat.

No worries about the double words.

[bigoscarmom]

It's been about three months now since the crash, and I've been only feeding one shrimp/crab pellet a week plus a 50% wc every 2 weeks with massive lr scrubs each time. The residual food I guess is fueling the comeback of the palies and mushies. So the brown algae on the glass is a sign of old bulbs? Or high phosphates? My corralline algae on my rocks is extremly thick and healty, and is growing.


So how would you suggest I move forward in building the 20 tall? I know t8 is prob not gonna be enough light so I'm gonna have to buy a t5 ho at LEAST, but should I buy another lot of lr and cure it and then add my existing stock and rock? That's probably the best plan, as far as I can tell. Instant Ocean is just about all I can my hands on where I live, reef crystals is another option, but it's just another variant, right? Is there any specific problem you can name with it that I can mitigate with either longer aeration before addition, or supplementation?


And how do you feel about the bio cube skimmers? Cuz that's what I've got. If you think it is better than nothing, I'll plug the beast back up. Would skimming help control the hair algae?

[callen]

Sorry It's taken me so long to get back to you. When I have more then 5 minutes I'll reply. Hoping tomorrow.

[Tim]

I would think by the symptoms that this has more to do with nutrients (phosphates/nitrates) than lighting at this point.
running a good quality protein skimmer is a very important first step to getting it under control but if your rocks are leaching nutrients then you will have to look into some extra nutrient control measures.
Are you running a protein skimmer? if so, what is it?
It is tricky to get on top of nutrients if you are not running a sump but it can be done with some creativity.

Growing macro algae to feed off the nutrients can be very helpful but ideally you would want to do that in a sump to avoid the macro algae taking over your tank.

[bigoscarmom]

I am not currently skimming, but I do have a Bio-cube skimmer that says it's effective up to 29 gallons that I can put on . To recap, I have an aqua-clear 70 on my 10 gallon tank with about 9 to 12 pounds of lr, it's hard to guessitimate, small powerhead, medium colony pf palies and small recovering colony of mushies plus one sumo sized hermie. I can't get my hands on r/o water, but I can buy the pre-mixed stuff from pet store. It is guaranteed to be nitrate and phosphate free. I can use this when I fill the 20.

[Tim]

Definitely get the skimmer going as it will really help to cut down nutrients.

[andrew45]

For the saltwater tank, there is need of much care for maintenance of tank and keeping the required percentage of tank.
For the tank size over 20 gallon the requirement of salt is increased to much. But for 10 gallon it is quite easy to maintain
the required salt in the tank.