Battling water parameters!!!Help!!!!

[Justin McDevitt]

Ok so I am not new to reefing and I'm at a loss. Just did a 25% water change last weekend due to same issues. The fish and coral seem ok. Tank has been setup for 3-4 months
Tank Stats: 57 Gallon Column,
2 Orbit current usa reef led and a T5
Cascade 1000- 1 filter pad- 2 nitrate pads, 1 bag carbon, 1 tray bio and -2 floss pads.
Power heads- 1-450gph and 2-650gph
Instant ocean protein skimmer
Hang on back small tank with cheato algae.
Live stock- huma huma trigger,
Stars and striped puffer, moon head wrasse, 2 clarkis, small snowflake eel, moray eel and file fish. 1 large carpet anenome and several softies.
The following is what my parameters are:
Salanity 1.25
PH 7.9
Ammonia between .25 and .50
Nitrite between .50 and 1.0
Nitrate close to 160
Phosphate .50
Calcium 375
KH over 215

Any ideas what is going on? What should I do to get parameters in check.
Also any suggestions in cleanup crew that the wrasse and puffer wont kill.

 

[DaveK]

Any reading other than 0 for ammonia and nitrite indicate a serious issue. You don't mention the size of the fish, but I think you are way overstocked. You have quite a few fish iin there that grow large, and have tank size requirements far beyond 57 gal. Your trigger, puffer, and wrasse all grow large, and these fish produce a lot of waste. Also I'm counting 8 fish in there, even if all of them are fairly small, it's going to be asking a lot of a tank that size.

Other things to check.

How much live rock do you have in the tank? You may not have enough to support the bacteria needed to process the fish waste.

Is your filter clean? Canister filters should be cleaned weekly to avoid them turning into dirt traps.

Did anything die in the cank? This can often cause an ammonia spike.

Between the trigger, wrasse, and puffer there are no typical clean up crew members that they will not eat or kill. In a tank like this with large predator fish, most of the cleanup is going to need to be done by you.

 

[PSU4ME]

Plus +1 to the above. I think it comes down to fundamentals here, you have too much bioload for the tanks ability to process it. Adding in 75# of rock would be appropriate but that takes up a lot of room.

water changes will help you manage the parameters but you gotta fix the root cause(s) here