water quality issues

eaze333

eaze333

Member
Hi,
I am new at the saltwater set up(5 months) and all had been going well for the first 3 months and now I am in a jam of sorts. maybe these are common issues but I am at my wits end here and help, advice would be appreciated as I am confused on how to proceed. Here we go.
I have been at a battle with cyanobacteria for 2 months. It is mostly covering my sand.I have not used any medicines for it. I remove as much of it as I can every week with a 10% water change. I did purchase online, but have not received Rowa Phosphate remover. Can't find it a LFS. I switched a month ago to RO/DI water. Tryign to get my phosphates down, but wont go any lower than 0.34 ppm. I have been so focused on the cyano that I have been neglecting to check my other levels regularly. Now everything is out of wack and I don't know how to proceed. I can't get the calcium up or the DKH. I don't know if I should add a buffer. What happend to my PH. Where is the phospahte coming from still if I us RO water. The cyano is making me crazy. Any help would be appreciated
This is what everything was before
PH -8.2
Dkh -7
Calcium - 350
Ammonia -0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 15
Phospahte 1.78 ppm

and what things are now
PH -7.8
Dkh -5
Calcium - 300
Ammonia -0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 10
Phospahte 0.34 ppm

I have
75 gal
60 lbs of LR with tons of growth on it
60 lbs of sand
AquaC remora protein skimmer
2 Koralia powerheads totaling 1500 gph
Hang on power filter (I had a canister as well, but busted a leak)
T5 lighting (1 blue actinic 460 nm and 1 white 10,000k- 54w each)
2 True percula clowns
1 psuedocromis
1 blue damsel
1 Purple M. doreensis (surviving very well for 2 months despite all the turmoil)
After reserching I know the anenome was a premature purchase, but it is doing amazingly well. How?????
 
Jeremy0322

Jeremy0322

Active Member
I know this sounds odd but test your RO/DI water for us, first pure and then after mixing with the salt mix, just so see what numbers you get from that. Its surprising but I have seen before people using water to mix with the salt, or the salt itself, not coming out to perfect levels.
 
Eric

Eric

Google Warrior
PREMIUM
you may want to run phosban in your hangon filter along with carbon and replace bi weekly or so :D, also if you are using a filter pad in that hangon filter that should be cleaned every other day, that could be one source of your high phosphates.

Since your skimmer is on the small side for a 75 and your not running a fuge or really any other type filtration I would step up the water changes to 25% weekly.

You may also want to look into a different brand of salt.
 
Jeremy0322

Jeremy0322

Active Member
I know that in alot of salts if you dont mix the bucket up you can get an uneven distribution through the life of that salt mix looking at certain elements and stuff like that. As the salt gets moved around particles distribute on different levels in the bucket, so eventually all of your finer particles settle on the bottom with the larger ones on the top, just like anything else. I always shook the bucket up before mixing the salt. I have also seen people using water that was from an "Ro/Di" source that was not clean, more than likely just because the cartridges/filters werent doing their job or the source water was just THAT bad that not everything could be taken out of it.
 
A

Adalius

Member
Out of curiosity, what are you running for a lighting cycle? Too much could be causing the cyano growth, too little will cause a bigger drop in pH...
 
eaze333

eaze333

Member
I will check the RO/DI water tonight. The only thing I did check was the phosphates coming out RO/DI water, which was 0 ppm.
I had cut my lights back form 12 hours to 9 hours.
I did start a new bucket of salt so I will give it a good shake as well.
 
Eric

Eric

Google Warrior
PREMIUM
If your using a Hydrometer especially "Deep Six" make sure it is accurate, mine was reading 1.024 and it was actually 1.031 just to give you an idea of how bad these things can be off, definitely worth investing in a refractometer just for a piece of mind.

A phosban reactor is also a good idea to reduce phosphates but you still need to find the source of the problem, I believe aquarium specialties has them on sale right now.

other things you could look for is dead spots behind the rocks where excess food and debri can lay and rot, are you over feeding by chance this is another common mistake.

Typically it's not one thing but a series of problems that all need to be addressed to fix the issue, with your setup you may want to consider running a 3rd power head blowing in behind the rocks to eliminate any dead spots.
 
eaze333

eaze333

Member
I do have a refractometer, which I calibrated with distilled water. Hopefully it is correct.
I am going give it a try with all this information and see if I can make things right. here. I really want to get into corals, but I just want to make sure I can get everything as close to perfect as I can.
 
Boomer

Boomer

Reef Sanctuary's Mr. Wizard
eaze

It has been pretty steady at 1.024

To low needs to be ~ 1.026 ( see below)

I do have a refractometer, which I calibrated with distilled water. Hopefully it is correct.

Who's refract do you have ? Most will be 1.5 ppt to low or .0015 to low

So, that 1.024 = 1.022 = 29 ppt and NSW is 35 ppt/ 1.026. No reef is as low as your tank and the reason the Calcium is so low also. That refract needs to read 1.027 - 1.028 (1.026 + 0.0015) to equal most reef waters or a least 1.025 on that refract for RO/DI. What you need is to recal the refract in Pinpoint 53mS. You put a drop of this on the refract and turn the cal screw till the refract reads ~ 1.026.

You can get that cal solution here or other places

Refractometers
 
Rhodes19

Rhodes19

Active Member
Boomer said:
eaze

It has been pretty steady at 1.024

To low needs to be ~ 1.026 ( see below)

I do have a refractometer, which I calibrated with distilled water. Hopefully it is correct.

Who's refract do you have ? Most will be 1.5 ppt to low or .0015 to low

So, that 1.024 = 1.022 = 29 ppt and NSW is 35 ppt/ 1.026. No reef is as low as your tank and the reason the Calcium is so low also. That refract needs to read 1.027 - 1.028 (1.026 + 0.0015) to equal most reef waters or a least 1.025 on that refract for RO/DI. What you need is to recal the refract in Pinpoint 53mS. You put a drop of this on the refract and turn the cal screw till the refract reads ~ 1.026.

You can get that cal solution here or other places

Refractometers
Click to expand...

Good info. Thanks. :thumbup:
 
eaze333

eaze333

Member
Hi Rhodes19,
I am not sure of the brand of refractometer. I bought on ebay from Easy Life Product.

Now I not quite sure when you say I should recal it at 1.026. When I calibrated it with distilled water, I did so that it read 1.000 or 0 ppt. Was that correct?

So if recal it with the solution at 1.026 it wouldn't read basically 35 ppt higher than it is? or am misunderstanding that.

I did manage to get all my other levels better this past week.
Ph is back to 8.2
phosphate down to .05ppm
nitrates 10 ppm
dkh close to 8
ammonia and nitrites 0 ppm
cleaned my sand again, which is slowly disappearing from sucking up so much cyano. I think I am down to about an inch of sand now.I had gotten it all for the most part and now I can see spots here and there coming back, a little but growing.
 
Rhodes19

Rhodes19

Active Member
eaze333 said:
Hi Rhodes19,
I am not sure of the brand of refractometer. I bought on ebay from Easy Life Product.

Now I not quite sure when you say I should recal it at 1.026. When I calibrated it with distilled water, I did so that it read 1.000 or 0 ppt. Was that correct?

So if recal it with the solution at 1.026 it wouldn't read basically 35 ppt higher than it is? or am misunderstanding that.

I did manage to get all my other levels better this past week.
Ph is back to 8.2
phosphate down to .05ppm
nitrates 10 ppm
dkh close to 8
ammonia and nitrites 0 ppm
cleaned my sand again, which is slowly disappearing from sucking up so much cyano. I think I am down to about an inch of sand now.I had gotten it all for the most part and now I can see spots here and there coming back, a little but growing.
Click to expand...

Hi eaze333, and :welcomera to RS. I think our post was meant for Boomer.

I think what Boomer was trying to get you to do (if I'm wrong, please let me know) is to have you calibrate your refractometer to 1.026 or 35 ppm (same level but different measurement system. Like inches vs metric.) so your measurements will be more accurate. If I recall from my younger days in communication systems, calibration equipment is typically calibrated for center range of what they normally test. The further away from center you go the more inaccurate the testing equipment becomes. Some meters' inaccuracy's are minuscule and in others they are big. It really depends on the quality of the material used and workmanship used to make the meter (better made testing equipment is more expensive). Using distilled water to calibrate your refractometer to 1.000 or 0 ppm is correct however, if you use calibration solutions at 1.026 or 35 ppm, that will make your refractometer more accurate. Hopefully, that is a little clearer than mud. :D

When you clean your sand, try holding the hose over the sand and let the siphon pull the cyano up and off the sand and try to leave as much sand as you can. Swishing the hose just over the cyano is often enough to get it to lift up off the sand and makes it easier for you to siphon out. HTH.
 
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