Ammonia and nothing else?

[liz3]

OK I asked in my local reef club and had no answers. I had a couple things happen last month. First my return pump went. Tank sat for 12 hours still and 24 with only power heads. Then a two weeks later, my skimmer pump went out. Replaced a day later. Then....getting boring... I stuck my hand in the refugium and had voltage going into my fingers. Tracked it down to the titanium heater. Pulled it out of the sump, it was starting to leak some sort of corrosion.

Since, after the first pump went out, most stuff looked ok, it really wasn't until the heater problem was caught that mushrooms started to die. I have several other, hardier corals that are doing fine. I have been doing a 15 then 20 gal water change every other day for about 10 days and now every other day. Nothing was out of the ordinary except the ammonia at .25 one day and .5 the next, back down to .25. It seems like everything is stabalizing, but my question is....I have had red slime, mostly on sand, and now it is green. Tests for nitrite, nitrate, and phosphate are all at undetectable. Why am I having the algae bloom? Is the algea feeding off available nutrients, thus the tests read 0?

[surfy]

Have you cut back on feeding?
The only thing I can think of is maybe the tank is going through another cycle and since you are doing water changes every other day it isn't leting the sycle do it's thing.

You may have had some die off on the rocks which in turn is causing the cycle.

[liz3]

Well I kind of have done that. I removed some large hairy mushroom, and let them die off. I am really controlling the feedings. I was thinking maybe something in the corrosion is still working, but I don't see it??? The last of the die off seemed to happen Sunday and I did a water change then. Today, nothing is showing oozing or decaying. Sorry the first 10 days I did a water change every day, 15, then 20 the next. Went through a ton of salt.

[surfy]

Yeah 180g is fairly large so if you have alot of ammonia accumulating it will take quite a bit of new water to dilute it.
Usually if quite a few corals die they can put alot of ammonia into the water.
I would just keep up with the water changes until the levels are undetectable.
Maybe try a little larger water changes every other day, say around 40%.

Another thought, are you testing the water yourself? If so you may have a bad test kit.

Do you use RO or RO/DI water?

Red slime is actually a bacteria and not an algae. I would syphon as much as you can when doing the water changes.

[liz3]

The slime is on the sand only and sticks to the sand, it's really difficult to remove. Currently it is more green than red. It started completely red, so I guess the water changes have helped.

Yes I test my self, but I have tested with two different types of kits. The regular master kit for salt and also the quick dip test.

I only use ro/di. I also have a refugium with macro algae which seems to finally have started growing so maybe that is helping also.

I guess if the levels stays I will have do do larger changes. That's a lot of buckets for me to haul and I wasn't looking forward to it.

Thanks,

Liz