What's my problem- calling all tank detectives

[DaveS]

Ok guys, here's my whole story.

 

I bought a house and moved into it last August. It had a beautiful 250G reef that was built into the wall above the bar. I used to be REALLY big into aquariums back in the early 80s, kept salt systems back in the dark ages and always wanted to get into reef systems. Naturally the house was a perfect fit for me and I was looking forward to taking over the tank.

 

Literally 3 days after our move, the tank crashed. The chiller fan seized up and basically heated the tank to 90 deg F. Most of the fish and corals died but a few survived. Shortly after the tank crashed and a few big water changes, things sorta stabilized. The hair algae went crazy for a couple of months but that is now under control. The zoos survived and also grew really well during that time. The coraline algae was also good. I just kept the lights on about 6-8 hours a day, feeding lightly waiting a bit for things to stabilize.

 

After a couple of months, things seemed stable. But just before I was about to add stock, seemingly overnight (ok, it was a few days but short nonetheless) the hair algae disappeared to be replaced by a slightly hairy brown algae that tends to coats the walls (not corals like the hair algae) as well as the appearance of some diatom spots. I replaced the DI cartridge, added an inline TDS meter and my makeup water is showing 1-2 but the brown algae is still there.

 

What I'm also noticing these days is that the coraline algae is not growing much (see qualifier below), the zoos are not growing much and most of the corals I add in the upper 1/3 of the tank don't do very well. I had a nice pink monti cap frag that basically bleached out after a couple of days as well as a pulsing xenia frag that melted.

 

As far as coraline algae, it does grow but mostly on the underside of the rocks. Most of the corals and rubble are white on the top side. If I turn one over, I see nice purple algae there. I add Purple Up as well as calcium. It used to grow alot on the walls. There is one section of growth on the middle right side but that is left over from a really thick section. I don't really see any new coraline growth. I just did some tests and the CA was a little low but ok, Nitrates, Phosphate and Alkalinity were all within normal ranges. The last few weeks I have also noticed that red slime algae is starting to grow and get worse.

 

 

 

So my specific questions (other than why can't my tank look as nice as everyone else's here) are:

 

1) Is there something wrong with my lighting? Too bright, too long, too old bulbs? I have an Aqua Medic T5/MH combo that has 3 x 250W MH and 4 x39W T5 bulbs. I keep the MHs on for about 12 hours a day and the T5s on for about an hour before the MH till an hour after. I wonder if it's too intense given that corals that don't like being in the top 1/3 of the tank as well as the coraline that doesn't grow on the top surfaces like it used to but does on the underside. If not too bright, maybe the spectrum is off? Between the brown algae and red slime as well as low Nitrate level, I'm wondering if the bulbs need changing. My guess is that the lights are over a year old by now. Also, if it helps, the brown algae tends to grow more on the wall section where my output flow is pointing to.

 

2) If it's a light spectrum thing, is there a way to diagnose this besides changing the bulbs? What's this PAR meter I hear about and can it help?

 

3) Aside from lighting, I got a ton of what I think are tube worms on the rocks. See picture for clarification. Some rocks are pretty out of control being just gigantic spike balls preventing other corals from growing on them. Any way to get rid of them?

 

For reference, I've uploaded a photo of my tank. Please keep in mind that I have been taking the long road nursing the tank back from it's crash and I know it's got a long way to go still so go easy on me. The previous owner had a lot of money but no time and the reef was just eye candy that they had serviced weekly. Naturally they have no useful information about the tank other than "make sure you feed the fish once a day." The servicing group more or less said "yea it's all good to go, you just need to drop in $2k worth of coral and you'll be fine." Needless to say, I'm taking a slightly different route.

 

Let me know if the image is too small and I can try to figure out how to get the 2MB one loaded.

 

Edited April 25, 2007 by DaveS

[Ne0eN]

Hi Dave,

 

Welcome to WAMAS. I'm sure the collective brain will figure out specific problems that you may be currently experiencing. But for now, can you please post your water parameters (including test kits you're using). Are you dosing any additives? Also, can you list your filtration equipment - skimmers, uv, what you got in the sump (LR, bio-balls...) etc... How often are you performing water changes? What salt mix do you use? What kind (color temp) are your MH bulbs, and are you using the UV filters that come with the fixture? (I'm assuming 250W DE bulbs).

 

For now, you may want to reduce the light period - I think 12 hrs is a bit too long. You may want to try 9-10 hr period plus 1hr actinic. Also, increase the volume of your water changes - on a 250g system thats a lot of water you need to change, but it may ultimately be the culrpit of your problems.

 

Regards,

 

--Rob

[lanman]

Ok guys, here's my whole story.

 

I bought a house and moved into it last August. It had a beautiful 250G reef that was built into the wall above the bar. I used to be REALLY big into aquariums back in the early 80s, kept salt systems back in the dark ages and always wanted to get into reef systems. Naturally the house was a perfect fit for me and I was looking forward to taking over the tank.

 

Too cool! Wish I'd been so lucky...

 

After a couple of months, things seemed stable. But just before I was about to add stock, seemingly overnight (ok, it was a few days but short nonetheless) the hair algae disappeared to be replaced by a slightly hairy brown algae that tends to coats the walls (not corals like the hair algae) as well as the appearance of some diatom spots. I replaced the DI cartridge, added an inline TDS meter and my makeup water is showing 1-2 but the brown algae is still there.

 

. . . .

 

I just did some tests and the CA was a little low but ok, Nitrates, Phosphate and Alkalinity were all within normal ranges. The last few weeks I have also noticed that red slime algae is starting to grow and get worse.

 

I will be fascinated to find out the answers to this question. You can look at my thread - I seem to have a very similar problem. http://www.wamas.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=14058

 

Perhaps your different point of view on the same or similar situation will spark someone to figure it out.

 

As far as the coraline - it does NOT much like bright lights, preferring to grow on 'shaded' areas. GARF says that you should run nothing but actinics on a tank of live rock to purple it up (I hope I got that right). My brown algae started growing much slower when I cut down my lights on period by an hour. I may cut it down again, seeing as nothing else seems to care so far. There is an article posted here which shows that MH lights lose about 30% of their output in the first 6 months, and then stabilize - losing only about 1% per year after that. I've found no such statistics for T5's - so I would suggest they may very well need replacements. Tube worms; you can always just knock them off if they are really in the way; but I've never had them interfere with any corals, and I have a couple of rocks heavily covered with them. I'm sure that the experienced reefers will want ALL of your tank's exact statistics in order to hazard a guess.

Beyond that - I hope someone figures it out! For both of us!

 

EDIT: Someone posted that MH light information again. The 'yellow' light in the study was already a year old when they started it: http://www.wamas.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=14238

bob

Edited April 25, 2007 by lanman

[Bendalat]

Did you just increase the light hours?

IME, if you suddenly increase the light period, the coral line will die off and the algae will bloom for a while, until the tank get use with the new light condition.

[DaveS]

Ok, let me try to get all this info:

 

Calcium- about 320 but raised these last few days to 400

KH- 8dKh

Nitrate- 0

Phosphate- 0

Test kit is Aquarium Pharmaceuticals

 

PH- 8.0 using an older SeaChem dry reagent kit

 

Additives- Purple Up, Combi-San and Tropic Marin Bio calcium. I try to do it weekly but in reality is slightly less often than that.

 

Filtration- got a skimmer in the sump and a UV light. The brands are unknown. Nothing else is in the sump except a foam block to help reduce noise.

 

Water changes are once a month, about 30-35 gallons with Tropic Marin salt.

 

I don't know anything about the temp of the bulbs but my guess is that they are the stock bulbs that came with the Aqua Medic fixture. I don't see any kind of UV filters over the lights. There are glass panes over the MH bulbs and some plastic "strips" over the T5's.

 

I know that the calcium is low and that doesn't help. However that doesn't quite explain that coraline does grow, just on the under side of rocks. In addition, corals below the tope 1/3 of the tank seem to do ok. They don't grow fast but they don't die either.

 

Hope this additional info helps.

 

Thanks again!

[Black Mammoth]

Coraline is kind of weird. It likes to grow wherever it likes. There are several factors that come in to play. It could be lighting, flow, calc levels, etc. Your calc levels seem OK. I don't think your coraline growth is out of the ordinary.

 

Are you sure that the brown hair algae isn't dead green hair algae? Also, when green hair algae starts, it can look like brown hair algae and then it will turn green. Unfortunately, you can't really do an accurate test for phosphates with all the green hair algae. You can try testing your RO/DI water for phosphates to see if there is anything in there.

 

I'm also interested to hear about the bulbs. My guess is that lighting has nothing to do with your problem. Every time I've heard something like this (or experienced), it was due to something being out of whack...whether it was Ph, Alk, Calc, etc, something was wrong.

 

How's your cleaner crew doing? If you lost a lot of corals and fish, I imagine you lost a bit of your cleaner crew. I would make sure you have enough critters helping out.

[Ne0eN]

I don't think your Calcium is too low, or is the problem here. Overall your parameters seem to be fine. One thing I would recommend is getting a pH probe so that you can acurately monitor your pH levels. The glass panels over your MH lights are the UV filters. Double-Ended bulbs require them. If your bulbs are original then they are probably Aqualine AB 10K. One of the best bulbs out there. They should last more than a year. A PAR meter is a good reference point and if you manage to get your hands on the club meter (perhaps Howard knows where it's at) you could compare your readings at different depths to see if you're in line with other tanks that we measured. As far as other issues, make sure you have good flow (judging by the pic looks like you have enough) Make sure you check your skimmer output. On the tank your size, you should have a good size unit. Personally I would avoid any commercial additives and simply invest in a Kalk or Ca reactor if your goal is to keep lots of SPS corals. But for now simple A/B formula that you can mix yourself is the chepest way to keep Ca and Alk in balance.

 

--Rob

[davelin315]

Welcome to the club!

 

You've found a wealth of knowledge here as well as a lot of helpful people. First order of business is to say that your tank doesn't look bad! The picture you posted doesn't seem to show a whole lot of problems, but from what you say is there, I have a few guesses as to what is going on.

 

First, Aquarium Pharmaceutical test kits are not necessarily the highest quality on the market. They are relatively inaccurate and could be misleading you. I wouldn't worry about the nitrate levels themselves, as those are probably in the right neighborhood no matter what test kit you have, but the phosphate might be inaccurate. These test kits don't really accurately give you a picture of the amounts of phosphates that can affect your system. Even a tiny bit of phosphate can lead to problems when you add in other factors.

 

Speaking of the other factors, you mentioned that you believe the bulbs are about a year old. This can really have a bad affect on your overall tank. As bulbs age, they shift in color spectrum and output. This can lead to light that is more suited to the growth of undesireables such as nuisance algaes. When you have a combination of excess nutrients and lighting that is past its prime, the result is often nuisance algae.

 

Also, looking at the water flow in your tank, you seem to have good flow at the top but almost nothing below the top 10 inches or so of the water. This could be leading to the problem of detritus settling at the bottom of your tank in the sand bed and not being suspended in the water column long enough to be pulled into the filtration area. Not sure if the PVC returns are connected to anything like a SCWD, Wavy Sea, or other alternating current device, but since they all shoot water out perpendicular to the face of the glass, you're probably not generating a whole lot of flow further down in the water column. The powerheads are also doing the same basic thing, although they are pulling some water from below to spread it out. I would lower the powerheads in the water column and see if this helps to generate more agitation down low. You are most likely getting some growths of algae in spots of low flow because nutrients are settling there and encouraging the growth of algae.

 

Another thing to think about is your sand bed itself. Not sure how old it is or how deep it is, but I can see that you had to blend two pictures in order to get the full tank shot into one. Since it's in-wall, I would also guess that some of the tank is hidden by the wall itself. If you have a very old sand bed that has been allowed to trap a lot of nutrients, you will probably have lots of excess nutrients in your tank that will encourage the algae to grow. The fact that you lost some corals is only exacerbating this.

 

One last thing to consider is also the type of salt you are using. Sometimes switching salt brands (not sure what they used before you bought the tank) can have adverse affects on your tank health. Of course, yours all started with a chiller problem...

 

Oh, and as far as the coralline is concerned, it grows in lesser light conditions (typically actinic light will help it to grow faster) which is why you're seeing it where you do. Also, don't worry about the tube worms. They are helping out your system by filtering and cleaning your water. They are taking up some calcium and alkalinity from your water as they build their tubes, but they don't attack and they don't secrete an noxious chemicals, so if they're in the way, just snap them off, but overall its good that you have them.

 

One other thing is to adjust your photoperiod. I think you said it was at 12 hours, I would decrease that significantly and go with a peak of around 8-10 hours total photoperiod, throwing in a dusk to dawn effect with the supplementary lighting.

[DaveS]

This is all great info. Here's what I'm going to do and some follow up questions:

 

1) I'll reduce my lighting period. On thought tho, doesn't every place on the planet get an average of 12 hour so sunlight a day? Why would it be "better" to have a shorter period? I guess there's the dusk/dawn time but still, I would think something close to 12 would be appropriate.

 

2) I'll clean the sand some during the next water change. That hasn't been done since I owned it and probably wasn't done before then either.

 

3) Cleaning crew- yes I haven't replaced any of the losses there. I estimate that I have about 15 snails of various varieties and about 20 hermits. I also have a sand sifting star, 3 emerald crabs, a fire shrimp and maybe a pistol shrimp. Do you guys think I need more?

 

4) Water flow- The PVC outputs are hooked up to two SCWDs (1 for each pair of outputs on a side) and I agree that most of the flow is going across the top and then down the front or side panes. I could look into redirecting the output downward more or move the power heads down as suggested. Some questions that comes to mind are:

 

a) aside from the bottom rear of the tank, I would think that the current flow direction provides a good amount of churn. Again, it's mostly directed from top back to the top front pane and down to the bottom from there. I see a decent amount of movement whenver I place soft corals on the sand bed in the front. From there I can't tell exactly where the water flows but it would appear to be on to the rocks that are a little further back. Yes this does cause debris to settle at the bottom rear of the tank (a place I can get to for cleanup). I guess what I'm asking is what the desired flow like? Just current everywhere- like a big blender keeping all the particles in suspension?

 

b) the current flow patter seems to allow me to have places of higher to lower flow. This allows my zoos and other corals to have slower movement which seems to make them happier. Again, I'm just wondering what the desired arrangement should be to allow different types of coral to grow and still get the detritus out.

[Black Mammoth]

3) Cleaning crew- yes I haven't replaced any of the losses there. I estimate that I have about 15 snails of various varieties and about 20 hermits. I also have a sand sifting star, 3 emerald crabs, a fire shrimp and maybe a pistol shrimp. Do you guys think I need more?

 

 

15 total snails or 15 of each variety...even if it is the latter, that's still probably not enough. That's not even enough for my 90g. I would stop by Fins & Feathers (closer to you) or Blue Ribbon Koi and talk to Sean or Johnny about your situation and setup. They can help you out with getting the correct stuff and right number of each They know their stuff.

[Rascal]

Hi and welcome to the club.

 

If your flow is strong enough so that it is bouncing off of the front glass and still reaching down to the sand and then across to the back of the tank and up (the "churn" you referred to), that sounds pretty good to me. Colliding currents tend to produce nice random, turbulent flow on their own. The fact that you've got 2 scwds working makes it even better. Simple way to tell is to just watch the food and fish poop. If it stays suspended in the water column and then finally makes its way over the overflow, that's good. If it swirls around for a while and then settles in certain few spots of low flow, that's an indication you need to change something. Having said all that, I will also say that almost any tank can probably be improved with more flow.

 

As for lighting, . . . some thoughts.

 

Corals usually need to be acclimated to different lighting conditions, whether the differences are in the form of intensity, duration, or even spectrum.

 

The frags you are getting are not used to the lighting on a tropical reef. They are used to the lighting in whatever tank they were in when they became a frag.

 

Even on the reef, corals are not exposed to the most intense sunlight continuously for 12 hours of the day. The strenght of the sun at 9 am, while still visibly very bright, is a whole lot different than it is at 1 pm.

 

IMO it would take quite a while to acclimate your corals to 12 hours of 250W MH lighting. 8-10 hours might be a better goal. You might also consider a break in the photoperiod during the day, having the MHs go off for an hour or two while the actinics stay on.

 

Bottom line: if you stick things up high and they start to show signs of bleaching / burning, move them and/or reduce the photoperiod. Lessons I've learned the hard way. A tell-tale sign that your problem is too much light, as opposed to some other variable, is if the corals bleach on the parts directly facing the light, but still look healthy on the parts that are shaded.

 

Sand:

 

Get rid of the sand-sifting star. It is a carnivore instead of a detrivore. You want the latter. The star is eating them. Nassarius snails are a much better choice for sifting duties. It may take a while for your critter population to bounce back once the star is gone. Inland Aquatics and Indo Pacific Sea Farms have some nice packages. You want the bristle worms and spaghetti worms. Other good detrivors are serpeant and brittle stars. Just stay away from the green ones. For a tank your size, I would get at least 5 of various types.

 

In general, you don't want to clean the sand yourself -- because doing so disturbs the habitat for all of your critters and at the same time can release a lot of nutrients. Syphoning some detritus from the surface is OK, but don't stick a "sand-vac" in there and stir it all up. If you really think it needs some serious cleaning, consider a sea cucumber or two as part of your clean-up crew.

 

Oh, and if your rocks are covered with little "spikes", you probably have vermetilid snails, not tube worms. http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-01/...es/image005.jpg

IMO still nothing to worry about, though many differ on this.

Edited April 27, 2007 by Rascal

[quazi]

I agree with Rascal's comments.

 

Let me add one other thing: do more frequent water changes. If it was me, I would change 30 gallons a week until things settle down. Tropic Marin is excellent salt, I have used it with great success. Since I am suggesting a lot of water changes for a while, I would switch to Instant Ocean, as you can get it for ~ or $35 for 200 gallons at BRK or F&F. I have found that frequent water changes cure a host of problems.

 

Also, you do not mention (or I missed it) anything about an RO/DI filter. I assume you are using one. What is the TDS on the output. Changing water with poor fresh water will not help.

Edited April 27, 2007 by quazi

[DaveS]

15 total snails or 15 of each variety...even if it is the latter, that's still probably not enough. That's not even enough for my 90g. I would stop by Fins & Feathers (closer to you) or Blue Ribbon Koi and talk to Sean or Johnny about your situation and setup. They can help you out with getting the correct stuff and right number of each They know their stuff.

 

Ok so I was looking around at some of the cleaning crews offered online. Petsolutions has a sand sifting crew for 180G where they include 36 Trochus Snails and 84 Cerith Snails in the crew. For the algae cleaning pack they recommend 90 Margarita snails in addition to 90 Zebra and 45 Scarlet hermits.

 

No I'm guessing you wouldn't get need as many of each species if you got both cleaning packs but nonetheless, man that seems like alot of snails and hermits!! I don't have nearly that many for my 250 and it already seems like the tank is mostly a snail/hermit habitat. Is this more about them trying to sell stuff or are these numbers reasonable estimates?