Parameter out of limits

[albert2k]

Hello doctor. I begginning my acuarium for the 26 of February. My aquarium is.

55 Galons
44 pounds of samoan live rock
1" of live sanda
1 wet/dry filter with 950 galons/hours pomp.
2 compaq light. This are with 2 actinic blue and two white
1 seaclone 100 galons/hour skimmer

This is my fishes and invertyebradoes.
1 Puffer dog face 5"
1 yellow tang (Med.)
1 File Fish (Med)
1 lanmower gobbie
1 blue damsel
1 clarki clown
1 Koran Angel (Med.) This one beggining today to have a white area in his body and one eye glaze
1 red star
1 chocolate chip starfish
2 sand star
2 feather duster.

In the beggining all the parameter come to high with the live uncured rock and then everyting goes to 0. When I beggining to enter my fish the parameter goes to..

PH 8.6
Ammonia .25
Nitrito .25
Nitrato 20
SG 1.019
Temp 82 F.

until today that I check and all the parameter are the same ecept the nitrato that goes to 60.

Any recomendation?

PD I change 10 galons in the weekly basis.

[sdmarriott]

I am new to the hobby, so take any advice I give with a grain of salt. I am sure that you will get some excellent responses, but here is my two cents worth.

If your aquarium has only been up since February, you probably need to slow down a little and give the system time to catch up. Have you added any fish lately? That could cause your readings to spike. From what I have read, a large water change is probably the best way to bring those readings down quickly.

Do you have a quarantine (QT) tank? If so you probably should quarantine the angel. It sounds like he may have ich. A QT or hospital tank will allow you to treat the ich without the possibility of killing your inverts. A Koran Angel is a beautiful fish, but he will rapidly outgrow your 55.

Best of luck

[rshimek]

Hi Albert,

[welcome]

Well, you have far too many fish for your system, and they are overloading your filter. Your system's biological filtration capability is very low, and with fish load you have in it, it cannot handle the amount of waste produced by the fish.

The 2 sand stars need food in the live sand. Unfortunately, by eating it, they remove a lot of the animals necessary for the system to maintain itself.

Finally, your salinity is very low. It should be about 1.025 and the present low level is undoubtedly stressing all of the animals in the system.

I am sure you will get some more advice in this forum. But, in the mean time, I would suggest you take the puffer, the angels, the file fish, the sand stars, the chocolate chip star and the tang back to your dealer. Once the bioload is down to a reasonable level, I would suggest you concentrate on building up the biological filter.

Once that has been done, and the system is stable, you should start to do some research on the requirements of the animals you wish to keep and see if your system can support them.

[figuerres]

Yes, it may not seem like it but that's quite a few fish for that size of tank from what I am learning, I have a 55 also , and I have half the number of fish. so far the are doing good.

also guys isn't his PH rather high? 8.6?

albert there is a relationship between PH and ammonia that makes ammonia much more toxic when the PH goes up.

I can't say if this brand is any good but I think the data is right:

Mardel "Salwater AquaLab" test kits have a small booklet that on page 17 has two charts showing relations between PH Water Tem and Ammonia levels

at 8.0 PH it shows 0.25 ammonia as "Safe"
at 8.4 PH " " "STRESS"
at 8.8 PH " " "SLOW DEATH"

so if your readings are correct and this chart is right then
a) get rig of the ammonia
AND
b) lower the PH to 8.2 to 8.4
AND remove some of the fish which may be adding to the amonia load.

your goal is 0.0 ammonia but is kinda hard to get.
I so far can get my ammo to just under .25 & my PH is about 8.2
even then I am going to have to make changes to get that ammo down.

PS: I just started and do not yet have a DSB & live rock, which I understand can help with tank "Balance" so I have less filter than you at this time. if I had the sand and rock then I bet I could have almost zero ammonia. Only rason I don't have a DSB & live rock is I was still learing this stuff... Now I'm on "Pins & Needles" planning how to best make the changes and not kill any fish...
(well maby that big mean blue devil damsel ;) )

[figuerres]

Oh also just in case you don't know:

too fast of a change in PH or Salt ( Gravity ) is also bad so plan on adjusting this over say .... 3 or 4 days. like .2 PH in 24 hours is the most I would do.
ask the others.... you kinda have a "Damed if you do to much Dammed if you do to little" right now.

see if you can take a buch of the fish back to the local shop, or i they won't then start looking for a better store to use.

if you can't do you know any other folks who might have an extra tank or two, if you could get 2 or 3 30-40 galon tanks that might help to spread the load and let you adjust water.

first choice though is get help from the place that sold them to you. if they give a damm about your futue $$$ then they will want to help you.

[albert2k]

I going to see if the dealer can received back some fish and I will try to look for a better filtration method. Thanks for all yours advice. Any recomendation about the filter?

[sdmarriott]

I don't think there is anything wrong with your filter per se. A lot of hobbyists are still using wet/dry filters (myself included). However, you could use more live sand and live rock, especially since the stars may have demolished any of the animals living in your sand bed. From what I have read, your sand bed should be a minimum of 4" to function as a DSB. You could consider adding a refugium as it would give you a place to grow macro algae which will help keep your nitrates down and eliminate some nuisance algae since the macro algae will consume the nutrients that the nuisance algae needs to flourish.

Probably the best thing you can do in the short term is reduce your bioload until the tank has matured some and then add fish slowly (one at a time) so that the filtration system has time to adapt.

[albert2k]

What is the best sand that I can add in my aquarium or in the refugium?

What is the minimun or maximun that I can prepare a refugium? (Galons)

There is any special in the preparation of it?