Urgent help needed Tank is stressing me out

Quintonv

Quintonv

Joined
18 Sep 2008
Posts
936
Reaction score
185
Location
Centurion
I have 2 tanks my little cube ( my gem tank) and my std 1.2.

The cube is running zeo and the 1.2 is running NP.

Now the Problem,
This tank crashed in the beggingng of April this year. After the crash i cleaned everything propperly and put it back.


Ever since then my No3 and Po4 has been sky high. i have been running 250ml of pellets for 4weeks now and still no result. i am affraid that if i don't do something about it that i am heading for another crash.

i am using Salifret test kits that aren't old, i use the same kits on both tanks one is a ULNS and that it shows.

No3 100 ( it is a serious dark pink)
Po4 >1

How can i reduce this, as i do religious water changes every week of 25L
 
What kind of skimmer are you using , pellets only work if you have an excellent skimmer
 
Ill get a better skimmer if you can afford it, Get a second opinion on the Water Tests. get a tropic marine test kits just to double check.. Check the RO water. Then do some good water changes..

Replace your Phosphate Media and Carbon
 
There may be unusally high impurities in one of your rocks? Are you maybe using rubber hosing anywhere in the system?
 
Last edited:
Try using a tropic marine test kit. At one stage i had a problem with my RO water so to be sure just test that and if that is the problem change the RO units filters. If the problem is not with the RO unit do a 20% water change every second day to drop the nitrate; nitrite and phosphate levels. Buy yourself purigen; nitraguard and phophoguard and drop it in your filter system. Those 3 sponges are all rechargeable so it won't be a waste of money at all. This should help to bring your tank back to where it should be. Also; PLEASE CHECK FOR ANY DEAD CORALS OR FISH THAT COULD BE RELEASING TOXINS!

I hope that everything comes right with your tank
 
Try adding some probiotics and vodka for reducing your nutrients. The bio pellets do take a while to kick in
 
Np pellets do take 3-6 weeks to kick in which then pretty much becomes your carbon dosing. Do you have enough bacterial surface area, as in live rock or something of the sort?
 
Last edited:
Tony said:
Try adding some probiotics and vodka for reducing your nutrients. The bio pellets do take a while to kick in
Click to expand...

problem is that he has a TS2 skimmer.
 
Are you running 250ml of pellets on a 1.2m tank?
If so that is never enough pellets
Also a TS2 on a 1.2m tank with a NP filter system is never big enough
I say that for the pellets to work you need at least 100ml per 100L (absoloute minimum) also your skimmers minimum rating needs to be like double the volume of your tank (E.G If you have a 300L system your skimmer needs to be one fore a 600-1000L system)
 
I have about 25kgs of lr in the tank and for the past 2 weeks i dosed stability every day just to increase the life in the tank.

I will check what i can do about the skimmer.

Thanx guys!!!!!
 
@Quintonv

sorry if this has been asked but what exactly did you do when you cleaned the tank out?

Did you alloow the substrate to dry?
Did you steralize it prior to adding it back?

As for the pellets you do need a bigger skimmer to be able to handle the mulm produced by the bio pellet reactor.. and starting off with a small amount isnt a bad thing rather cautious than overconfident..

check your top up water TDS and your salt mix.. and as suggested your test kits.. they can get us all running around frantically but be the inaccuracy most of the time :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
leslie hempel said:
@Quintonv

sorry if this has been asked but what exactly did you do when you cleaned the tank out?

Did you allow the substrate to dry? No I did not i thought it was ok
Did you steralize it prior to adding it back?Nope
Click to expand...

on thursday i started adding some seachem prime to the tank, i checked params Po4 was still at +1 and No3 was still at 100ppm.

I did not do a water changes this weekend.

On Sunday i checked params again and it is coming down!!!!!!!:thumbup:

Po4 at 0.75 and No3 at 50ppm ( i also used new kits Salifret)

I also checked ammonia which is 0, how does that work.

At the end of the day, i will dose prime at 1ml in the morning and 1ml in the evening.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Did I miss something here, did he actually give the system volume for this tank? Because you guys are saying the TS2 is not going to cut it, but for all I can see he may have a 100L cube and a TS2 would be more than ample for that. The fact that he is only doing 25L water changes a week suggests to me this is not a very big tank and that the skimmer he has should be fine.

@Quintonv what is in fact the volume of this tank?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom