[Mike01z]

I'm trying to get rid of a red slime bloom which if from what I have read this is being fueled from phosphates,

I bought a TDS meter and tested my ro di water and it was 17 tds so I changed out the resign unit as well as the first carbon cartridge and flushed the membrane, Now I have TDS down to 2 but if possible would like to lower it down all the way to 0. What do you guys think should I replace membrane as well or at maybe even the 2nd carbon cartridge?

I feed every other day but I do mix in alot of stuff to try and give the fish some variety, I first feed a little flake food, then I mix some mysis/bloodworms together and feed that. This totals about a half a cube.

I was thinking maybe this is still too much but I actually cut down to this after realizing that the bloom was bad, I was feeding daily before this.

I also usually thaw in RODI water but I have never rinsed the food first, Is this a good idea rinsing before putting it in?

I have my skimmer which is a coralife 65 filling up its cup every other day with tea colored skimmate.


Some tank specs

60 gall long,

I have a DSB 5-6 inches

inhabitants

1 royal gramma (large)
1 blue spotted goby (meduim sized)
1 false clown (small)
3 chromies (really small)
1 blue tang (small )

my clean up crew consists of

1 mexican turbo
4 astrea snails
7 nassarius snails
1 cleaner shrimp
1 conch

I have no corals but I do have about 65lbs of live rock.


I do have a alot of fish but they are still pretty small and I do plan on upgrading to a bigger tank especially if I can get this one under control.

The normal water params always test fine
0 ammonia
0 nitrite
0 trate
ph 7.8 - 8.0

I don't have a phosphate kit
I don't have an alkalinity kit nor do I fully understand its purpose yet

I have 10 gallon sump which is where my skimmer sits in ( I do want a bigger/better skimmer but no room in sump for it, I also cant get a bigger sump cause it won't fit in stand cause its too narrow )

The sump has a bio ball section that is about 50% full but with the ceramic type bio balls (pond type)


I change out my sponges alot and fill up with RODI as well, granted my TDS has been a little high until I swapped out filters.


Coraline is growing pretty good and I do have a good amount of pods,

the slime bloom is only in one corner of tank which I guess might have low flow but still I must be fueling it with something.

I do a 10 gallon water change every two weeks and I do syphon off the sand, Last time I forgot to blow off live rocks but I normally do this also.




So thats pretty much all my specs

Question is what can I do to limit phosphate intake here?
What other husbandry duties can I do to help out?


I could get another skimmer maybe HOB type and run two of them if my one is not enough.


What do you guys think?

 

[Little Luey]

I would increase the flow in the tank, aim at that corner where you see the cyano. Also do WC every week at least for a while. How many fish do you have? I would probably go 2 days between feedings, the fish will be ok. Adjust the skimmer to skimm wet, meaning to get more like green tea on the cup, not too solid. Any prefilter sponges and bio-balls got to go, slowly so the tank can adjust.
Your ph seem a little low, can you increase it to 8.2? do so slowly.
this may/will take some time but looks like you already started to do what you need.

Cheers

 

[tims]

sounds like your on a good road,
please note..
the tnag how eats often and the food given will help cause this, also the Bio ball area and prefilters are a great area to trap gunk to help feed it.
with the RO TDS. the only way you can get it further woudl be to add more prefilters or have really ,really good water going to it

 

[Spanky]

Mike, the easiest way to get your P lowered is to keep your tank clean. Don't let dirt sit and rot.

Even P introduced by adding fresh water, will first be taken up by bacteria and migrated into that dirt and stored there. As it sits, it will rot and release it again.

That's your storage. Remove where it's stored.

 

[Mike01z]

ok I'll do another water change today and try to syphon more of it out,

Ill try to get another powerhead in there somehow going so that I can blow detritus around and get it trapped somewhere else.

So spanky you say remove the sandbed huh? Is that what you are hinting at?


How can I raise my ph? Is it ok to add the buffers for this? seems like most of the time you guys are always agains putting anythign in the tank.


The tang eats every other day as well, but what I want to try to incorporate is some seaweed, but this is hard to do since I feed them every other day and I don't want to add more stuff.

I need to find that balance.

 

[Spanky]

Ill try to get another powerhead in there somehow going so that I can blow detritus around and get it trapped somewhere else.

Try to get it to the skimmer and remove it from the system.

So spanky you say remove the sandbed huh? Is that what you are hinting at?

No, not really. But sandbeds will trick you. In the beginning they will sink a lot of things. That can give you the illusion that you are doing something right. Later, when they run out of room, they can cause you problems.
Sandbeds are not as forgiving as most people think.

How can I raise my ph? Is it ok to add the buffers for this?

Alk will stop a lot of fluctuation, and will raise pH if the alk was low.

The tang eats every other day as well

Tangs have extremely high metabolisms and they need to eat a lot of the foods they eat to get what they need out of it. Mine eat 3-4-5 times a day.

I need to find that balance.

Yep.

 

[tdwyatt]

Low pH may be a measure of the heterotrophic activity in the tank's sand as well, as it will release the carbon it metabolizes as CO2. This results in dropping your pH levels and consuming your alkalinity as the carbonate/bicarbonate system attempts to maintain a pH near 8.2 while neutraizing organic acids produced by the sand's benthos. Think of it as a terrestrial mulch pile, it will produce many organic acids and release much CO2 into the water as the carbon it processes in the metabolic pathways moves to completion. Unfortunately, the detritus it processes leaves behind the phosphates and other mineral compopnents as the carbon and nitrogen are moved either to biomass or are exported from the system. Some of these end-detrital products are converted into biomass as well, but are still not exported from the sand, as IF the biomass is contained in the benthic creatures your sand contains, then they return these substances to the intersticial water mass when they die, and the cycle of bacterial uptake to end benthic organisms starts again, with some loss to permanent sinking either as bacterial biomass, as adsorbed calcereous compounds, or as residua end-detritus, possibly to be released into the systemic water column by phosphatases as well. This usually results in a cycle compartmentalized within the sand, but continual additions of phosphates, etc., exceed the ability of this cycling to contain these substances within the sand bed, and eventually they end up as available nutrients to feed potential algal blooms . Keep in mind that the sandbed is not some abyssal geothermal processing unit that removes phsophates from the watr permanently as the ocean bed subsides below the bottom (unless your system is A LOT bigger than I would think it to be...) .

Your system may be at the initial edge of this saturation point in processing phosphate. Probably a good idea to begin siphoning out a 1cm layer of the sand with the algae in the cyano bloom corner. It will be up to you as to whether you want to permanently remove the sand or replace what you remove with fresh sand to maintain some sense of a sinking compartment.


Just 2cents worth from a DSB supporter ('cuz I like the sand bed critters).


HTH