Help me figure out what's wrong w/ my parents tank!

[Frick-n-Frags]

know anyone with a diatom filter or a magmum HOT etc?
to polish the water temporarily

also, as typical with "low-light" "no light" systems, they are completely bacteria driven.


if that was my folks, I would tell them
"ZERO food for a week"
"make up about 30 gallons of waterchange water"
"siphon until you have siphoned 30 gallons of water and lots of crap out of your tank"
"run the magnum with fine micron filter for a week"
"I'll be back later in the week"
"btw, you are going to do this once a month"
"well maybe I'll help if you make that killer beef roast for dinner afterwards"


also, a FOWLR+DSB is going to cause problems when it gets wayy too full of food and crap and cements.(I'm making a huge assumption that they are not"sandbed maintenance freaks") so I would watch that for them too over the coming months/years when they call saying "HELP,everything is going to hell FAST!!!".

[Frick-n-Frags]

nitrates in a dark FO tank do almost nothing, good or bad.
that was the whole original goal of cycling: convert highly toxic NH3/NO2 into relatively benign NO3

of course eventually they can concentrate to stressful levels, but that is high for fish. bacteria poop NO3, so you aren't going to feed/fuel squat with it

(don't anyone grab the retard helmet here and say "what about anaerobic?" that is <<<<<<<< than the aerobic scene in your average FO tank and can do nothing to help you with maintenance)

[MrSpiffy]

Well, the reason I mentioned nitrates is because, given the track record of the OP's parents, there's a good chance that the nitrates are much higher than they should be. Yes, it's It's definitely something I'd test. In fact, I'd test for NH4, NO2, and NO3, just to be sure there isn't something happening with that. If there isn't enough LR to handle the bioload, then you may get bacterial bloom in the water column to make up for lack of surface area. (That may be a load of crap... but it was an interesting theory, I thought.) The usual recommendation is 1-2 pounds per gallon of tank volume. So, even going with the minimum, that'd be about 120lbs of rock. That might not be enough. In any case, I'd test the water. It can't hurt.

[mbierzyc]

I'd buy them a RODI unit for Christmas, and have them get a Phosban reactor and run carbon in it. Change that out once a week, it should help polish the water.

Since particles are likely settling in the rocks and on the sandbed, I would use a turkey baster or powerhead and blast the rocks to get the junk out. Maybe put a filter sock on the return while doing this so you can quickly and easily get some of the gunk out of your system.

Something I like to do between water changes is put a siphon tube on the tank, and have it return to my sump. At the output of the siphon I put a filter sock. It's not terribly different from that last idea, but this way you can target the spots with the siphon for debris removal.


Hope that helps.