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Tank help

R

reef boy

Hi everyone! Hope all is well.
I have been having trouble with my fish tank lately and I was hoping somebody could give me some input and advice.

Months ago my tank was doing amazing and my tank was SPS dominated. I had a crash and everything died and I've been trying to repair my reef to the point that it was at before but I have been having trouble doing that. Right now my anemones are not happy at all and they have been shriveled up and sort of look like they are bleaching. And there are a few zoas and palys that are not opening all the way. And there are some that look to be bleaching also. So what I want to know is if there is anything that I should be checking or considering that I am not. My lights have a controller built into them and they run like the sun would as in they get brighter during noon and slowly darken for night time and the highest percentage intensity the I have on them is 45%. All of the corals that I still have have been in there for a while so I don't think that the LEDs are the problem for bleaching.

As of the 11th of last month I have started to document everything that involves my fish tank. I started to test daily to figure out how much I needed to dose each day so I could start to really get my parameters in check because they were not acceptable at all. At the bottom are some pictures of how the parameters changed throughout the month. I also started to do water changes every three days until the nitrates and phosphates were alright. The parameters are for the most part under control but still a little shaky.

Here is as much info about my tank that I could think of. I have a 144 gallon tank with a 40 gallon sump. The equipment includes an ASM G3 protien skimmer, two little fishies reactor with bio pellets, reef octopus reactor with GFO, coralife UV Sterilizer, tunze wave makers, and a reefbreeders photon 32 LED light. There are nine fish with the two largest fish being a yellow tang and tomini tang that are not full grown. I would like to eventually keep a mixed reef but as of right now I have mostly softies, a few LPS and 1 SPS. I have over 100 pounds of live rock and a good amount of live sand. I keep the temperature at 78 degrees, salinity at 1.026, alkalinity at 9, calcium at 420, magnesium at 1350, and the PH at 8.1-8.4. I use the bulk reef supply additives and the bulk reef supply 2 part dosers. I use reef crystals salt and do weekly water changes.

View attachment 9666View attachment 9667View attachment 9668

I'm not sure what to do at this point so anything would help.

Thanks for taking the time to read,
Andrew
 
TanksNStuff

TanksNStuff

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Andrew, sorry to hear about your troubles but hopefully we can help you get back on track.

The attachments didn't work. Maybe you can just copy/paste them instead?

Until we see that we can't give much advice.

Question though... when did you start the bio pellets and which brand are you using? I've heard quite a few stories of tanks crashing after trying them so that would be my first area of concern to investigate.
 
NikkiT

NikkiT

Andrew, how large are your water changes?

Are you testing for nitrates, nitrites, phosphates?

When was the last time you calibrated your refractometer?
 
J

john90009

NJRC Member
when i had a 75 a few years back my params were perfect but with an alk spike most of the sps had burnt tips. since getting the params back to normal the corals never turned around untill i saw the back on my tank trim was broke. I then preceded to empty the tank and start over with all new water- new sand with a little from the old tank. when i put all new water back in the tank everything exploded with growth and didnt stop. Because of this i have a fealing that there was something in the water undetectable(possibly just something the corals sent out and they didnt like it and the 100% water change cleaned it out.) When you started over did you do any water changes or just the normal routine w/c?
 
Pimentinha1987

Pimentinha1987

Hi all.

The two little fishies reactor is not meant to be used with bio pellets if I remember right...

Second, the bleached and shriveled up anemones are most likely due to the bio pellets as well...

Everyone has it's own ways of doing things but if it were me I would remove the Bio pellets ASAP and do a very large water change.

For how long have you being using bio pellets?

By now you have probably guessed I don't trust bio pellets... Lol

Anyways, wish you the best of luck
 
R

reef boy

image.jpgimage.jpgimage.jpg
Hopefully the pictures worked this time.


I am using warner marine bio pellets and I believe I started them around May. I do test my phosphates and nitrates. Downbeach, I'm not too sure what GAC means??? My water changes are weekly and I do 30 gallons. I try to calibrate my refractometer every time I use it because I do know that I had a problem with salinity before. When everything crashed I have a feeling there were multiple reasons why. The salinity was not right, nitrates and phosphates were high, and probably other problems too. That is why I set up the bio pellets in May and the GFO about a month later. When I tried to start to get my tank back up to par I was doing 20 gallon water changes every three days to get the Phosphates and nitrates down. I am hearing a lot of negative things about bio pellets and I've heard this from other people too. I am still learning and never will stop so I appreciate all of your help.
 
trivan

trivan

GAC - granular activated carbon

As with all things in this hobby, there what works for some, doesn't work for others. A lot of people have success with Bio-pellets, I am one who did not, the only time I had a small crash was when I put one on line. I'm sure other things contributed to it, but I took it off, did a lot of WC and then my tank started to come back.
 
R

reef boy

I am not running carbon and I never have. I do understand that different things work and don't work for different people, it just gets frustrating at times with so many variables to account for. I guess that's just one of the reasons why this hobby can be difficult at times lol. As of right now what is everyone's opinion on whether I should take the bio pellets offline or not? Is there anything else that I should be thinking about?
 
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