SW Tank Instability

[JakesRaptor]

Hello All,

I was wondering if anyone could help me out with yet another question about my 12 gal SW nano cube. I did some water testing and I was running nitrate level of about 40 ppm, however everything was doing really well. Temperature was about 79 degrees. Ammonia levels were basically 0.

However, because the nitrates were so high, I cleaned my purigen media as directed on the package. I also cleaned out my sponges, and carbon filter, and did a 20% water change. All of this media was in the tank when it was doing so well.

Since I did the cleaning in hopes to reduce nitrates, the corals have all closed up and I am losing snails..... and nitrate levels are still high. The only other changes I have made were adding Kent Marine Calcium, and I switched from Instant Ocean salt to Coralife salt. It's been 3 days or so. I also have a great deal of hair algae and red slime algae.

Any suggestions?

[kennyman]

What do your amonia and nitrIte test at now?

[JakesRaptor]

A = 0.25ppm
N = 30-40 ppm

[kennyman]

I'm thinking your filter had taken over the role of primairy biological filtration from your liverock and you knocked out the bacteria colonies when you cleaned it. It should recover quickly with being seeded from the tank but you are in a mini cycle.

I think doing another 20% water change asap and again on Sunday should help. And you also need to make sure your getting all the dead snails out.

Hopefully someone more exp than me will stop by to offer more help while your doing that water change 

[JakesRaptor]

Thanks. I will do that now.

[yellowtang]

raptor..........
one quick question?.did you gradually switch salts
or you did it all at once
I did have the same experience with my 33g. a while back
decided to swich product from IO to RS.
and in matter of days my tank went from good , bad to worse
to never recover again.......everything closed ,corals started to perish
and hermits also dissapeared......
It had nothing to do with quality of salts in my case,but a sudden
abrupt change of product which caused my tank to crash.
did water changes,but did not help.....
hope your case is different.
hope your tank gets well.

[JakesRaptor]

Thanks. I only used the new salt product with the 20% water change.

[PowderBlueTang]

Hi JakesRaptor
kennyman and yellowtang  are both on the right track you are going through a mini cycle according to your readings. the filtration got too clean. (I cleaned my purigen media as directed on the package. I also cleaned out my sponges, and carbon filter) clean one or the other.
Also changing salt brand can throw off the reading abit, not all salt use the same ingredient so change over to a different brand slowly!
Remember you only have 12 gals to play with, with nano's things can get out of hand very quickly! Not like some one with a larger tank 30 gal and up it is more forgiving and take longer to get out a hand!

For Nano's do more frequent water changes if you find your readings are high. But let the mini cycle pass before another water change or you will be prolonging the mini cycle. But try sticking to the same brand of salt all the time.
My 15 nano get 20% water change a week and had no problems!

[JakesRaptor]

Thanks all. I am heading out to get a maxi jet 600 to replace my 400. I am also going to get some piping to move water over more rock. I will be doing my water change as soon as I get the flow fixed up.  Should I remove the carbon or the purigen filters? I have a little instant ocean left so I'll use it to do the water change. It really sucks watching everyting in the tank fade....

Jason

[Rudy00]

i've been doing lots of reading about salts and what not and from what i gather the only difference is their trace elements really so i dont see that would cause any huge crash if you were only doing small water changes with the new salt

just a thought

[Julie]

Not sure about salt media, but did you rinse in tank water? 
If you rinse fresh media in tap water it will kill your good bacteria.

[PowderBlueTang]

Small changes won't affect the coral , but large sudden changes will make the corals very unhappy and close up, sometimes for days! Corals are very sensitive and will show you they are not happy if your water quality is not up to par.

[JakesRaptor]

Rinsed in tap water  I am hoping that they forgive me.

[Rudy00]

i'd personally never follow the diretions on media, they tend to have it geared toward sales and high frequency of replacing them, rinse with tank water and keep them around, as for media in a salt tank though the majority of your beneficial bacteria should be in the live rock you own and a sand bed if you have any or a deep enough one (maybe consider a buck with a deep sand bed i've heard LOTs of good things about this set up style i can elaborate if you're interested and give direction to more articles)

[JakesRaptor]

I am very interested in more data on the topic. I would like to remove the media all together and just run with my sand bed and live rock, I am just afraid it's going to crash on me. I lost my candy cane coral, but the rest seem to be coming around a bit.....

[Julie]

How much live rock is in your tank and how deep is sand bed?
Everyone here that I am aware of relies on live rock filtration and it is very effective.

[JakesRaptor]

I have roughtly 11 lbs of live rock (12 gallon nano cube), and a sand bed of about 1 - 2 inches. The media in the filtration system includes 2 sponges and 1 bag of Purigen. I have removed the bag of carbon. Ideally, I would like to be able to remove everything in the filrtation system, and just have it circulate the water, but I have nowhere else for a protein skimmer or things like that that hang ont he back.

Things are looking a little better this morning.

Jason

[JakesRaptor]

sand bed is actually about 3 inches.

[Julie]

Sand is quite deep for a small tank, live rock is minimal.
If you don't want to upgrade to something a little larger, I would gradually remove some sand to bring it down to one inch and add a piece of live rock to compensate.  You could have 1.5 pounds/gallon in your tank, but given being 12 gallons there's not alot of room.   Add the rock first then gradually remove some of the sand.
Not sure if you need a skimmer, I was recommended not to skim a 20 gallon tank as it should not be necessary, this is all a matter of opinion.
Do you have fish?

[kennyman]

LR and a skimmer that is  

Many SW fans use skimmers and/or carbon to filter out DOC's. In a 15gal nano you have so little water left once you displace it with 15-20 lbs of lr and some substrate that fish stocking is way way down there. The literature I have recomnds no less than 1 inch/4gal of fish to water when using 1lb/g LR. (Which yes I understand the inch/gal rule does not factor aggression or other special needs of the fish, but it is handy for getting a rough idea of bioload. Save that one for a seperate thread.) How much water do you actualy have in there Jake? Can you get 10 gal of water it in from empty will all the rock in there? Relying on the LR for all the biological filtration is going to keep your stokcing level for fish at around One Single 2"-3" fish.

It is my opinion that if you want more than a sngle small fish with your cleanup crew then you need to supliment your biological capacity with a filter and or sump/refugium. But thats only my opinion. There are many other opinions out there and where Julie is going is good one too