fish vs. fishless reef....

[dudeinvb]

First off I am not new to fishkeeping, I had a 55 and 75 gallon freshwater for several years with a variety of fish. About 8 months ago I switched over to saltwater and currently have a 10 Gallon reef tank. its been running for around 6 months. i have a few random soft corals and polyps and such, roughly 13 pounds of liverock. And up until yesterday a small damsel. i have had many problems with hair algae lately and recently started using distilled water. Ive always had nitrate spikes and then evertying goes to normal and randomly i have another spike and had constant nitrates at 20 ppm (everything else was normal). My corals havent been looking too good lately they have been shrinkingin size girth and even being open. I was wondering what else could be causing it... possibly i need to get a new bulb?

 

[melosu58]

Welcome to AA. A few questions first. What type lighting? Were you using tap water? What exactly is in your tank as far as corals? How often are you doing PWC`s?

 

[lando]

Welcome to AquariumAdvice.com!!!
Mike offers some great questions. Your NO3 source is coming from somewhere. Given the fact that you have a small bio-lad (in terms of fish) I would turn attention toward food, feeding schedule, source water (for top-offs and water changes) and maintanance routeen.

GHA is ussually a sign of excess nutrients in the water. Check for PO4 in both your tank and source water. Again, evaluate what and when you feed the tank. I suggest using a high quality source water and doing several partial water changes to help with NO3/PO4 issues. As far as the GHA goes...try removing as much as you can manually during the water changes. It is likely your corals are reacting to the PO4 rather then the NO3.

 

[dudeinvb]

thanks for your help guys, i took a sample to the lfs to do a more sufficient water check. PH was really low and they gave me a buffer, thanks again for the help