Help Please

[cweber]

Ive talked to a few members about some problems ive been having with my tank. I know its hard to find a prob without seeing it but i will give as much info as i can. I have a 20g w/10g sump. I have a protein skimmer and cheato in the sump. The tank has been up since March, livestock since June. For the past 2 or 3 months nothing has been real happy. Almost all of my zoas and palys arent opening, i tryed some SPS and all but one monti cap frag has died. A couple shrooms are doin good and my toadstool has its days. I used to do 3-4 gallon water changes with distilled water every week sometimes every other, and top offs were with tap water. I have a lot of cyano right now with tons of bubble algae and some hair algae. I stoped do topoffs with tap water and use RO water for changes and topoff now. That has been 2 or 3 weeks ago. The last two water changes were 5 gallons back to back. My params as of right now are

pH-8.4
Trates-15
phos-0
calcium-480
alk-8
salinity-1.025

Sorry for the large post, i just want some more opinions. I know my ph is a little high but it stays steady, and i could use more cleanup crew. Can the algae be causeing probs?

[Percula9]

Cyano can hurt corals if it grows on them. You made the mistake of using tap water. Buy R/O water from your local fish store. It's cheaper than bottled distilled water. The pH is at the top of the scale but still within limits.Don't let your alk go any lower. In fact you can raise it a little. I find algae doesn't like high alk. Raise alk to 10dkh.

[mbbuna]

i would step up the water changes a little as long as you source water is good. nothing wrong with a PH of 8.4. you also might want to look into some type of phosphate remover. i know your test says your phosphate is 0 but your growing algae so you have more phosphate then you want. getting your nitrates below 2 by water changes, cleaning your substrate, cleaning any sponges or detritus in some or tank and things should start to perk up

[dileggi]

Originally posted by cweber
Ive talked to a few members about some problems ive been having with my tank. I know its hard to find a prob without seeing it but i will give as much info as i can. I have a 20g w/10g sump. I have a protein skimmer and cheato in the sump. The tank has been up since March, livestock since June. For the past 2 or 3 months nothing has been real happy. Almost all of my zoas and palys arent opening, i tryed some SPS and all but one monti cap frag has died. A couple shrooms are doin good and my toadstool has its days. I used to do 3-4 gallon water changes with distilled water every week sometimes every other, and top offs were with tap water. I have a lot of cyano right now with tons of bubble algae and some hair algae. I stoped do topoffs with tap water and use RO water for changes and topoff now. That has been 2 or 3 weeks ago. The last two water changes were 5 gallons back to back. My params as of right now are

pH-8.4
Trates-15
phos-0
calcium-480
alk-8
salinity-1.025

Sorry for the large post, i just want some more opinions. I know my ph is a little high but it stays steady, and i could use more cleanup crew. Can the algae be causeing probs?

I was having almost the same problem you were with the bubble, hair and cyano. I wasn't losing any corals or zoa's or anything, but I was "blowing" them clean every single day with a turkey baster.

I was doing the water changes using tap water and also using it for top offs.

My params at the time were close to yours, but my PH was 8.2 and my alk was 11 and my salinity was 1.023. They were about the only difference.

I was told it was high phosphates from tap water, uneaten food and frozen food that was being used in the tank. I was also told that even though my phosphates were reading 0 with my test kit, the tests weren't accurate enough to actually pick up on them. This was about 3 weeks ago.

I changed to rodi water, started thawing my frozen food before placing it in the tank, added a phosban bag and also a skimmer. It took about a week to notice a difference, but as of now, it's almost all cleared up! I was also doing weekly water changes to try and dissolve or neutralize any remaining tap water that was in the tank. I was doing about 20% change per week.

You said you had the skimmer running, right? And, that you also changed to rodi water as well? I would try raising your alk to somewhere between 9-12...water changes should do this, and adding some phosban too.

Keep blowing the corals clean with a turkey baster....lightly. You could start seeing results for the better shortly.
Also, check out the zoanthid forum. There's an interesting thread going on there about dosing vitamin c to the tank. That seems to be helping plenty of people to get there colonies opening up that otherwise aren't. I know it's helped me out a bit, especially with my gsp.

Good Luck

[cweber]

Thanks for the advice!