capj64
Aquarium Advice FINatic
Since getting my tank in March, I've been on this forum daily reading for hours at a time, trying to learn. I also google "everything" in hopes that someday I'll have a tank with beautiful fish and corals like some of the tanks I've seen here.
Saying this...I know that I'm doing something/everything wrong. After the first couple of months (new tank syndrome?) my 29g tank was starting to look pretty good and test great.
That is up to three weeks ago. It was time for the weekly PWC so I had my daughter pick up 5g of water while she was in town. She came home with "drinking" water, not the "distilled" water that I always use (except for the short time I used treated tap water, MISTAKE) but I went ahead and used it instead of waiting to do the PWC on another day. That week red algae and green algae started taking over my tank so on the next weeks PWC I used distilled water and did a 20% instead of 10%. Nothing changed. Same thing after the next PWC. Meanwhile I found a good snail deal on reefcleaners.com and thought, "well hey, can't hurt"...got'em and added them yesterday. Today my tank looked even worse.
Oh, and during this whole algae crap out, my fish, xenia, zoas, feather dusters, shrimp, and crabs are doing great. Even my hitchikers...baby urchin (I think rock boring) and the sea whip/fan.
Tomorrow is the weekly PWC...this is what I have tonight:
salt - 1.025
temp - 78F
Ph - 8.6
Alk - 1.7-2.8
ammonia - 0
nitrites - 0.1
nitrates - (not sure how to read the card, but it's not 0) 20 low end???
As I can I'll be getting a RO/DI system. I'm already working on a sump.
Other than that and the PWC weekly...I'm sure what else to do.
Saying this...I know that I'm doing something/everything wrong. After the first couple of months (new tank syndrome?) my 29g tank was starting to look pretty good and test great.
That is up to three weeks ago. It was time for the weekly PWC so I had my daughter pick up 5g of water while she was in town. She came home with "drinking" water, not the "distilled" water that I always use (except for the short time I used treated tap water, MISTAKE) but I went ahead and used it instead of waiting to do the PWC on another day. That week red algae and green algae started taking over my tank so on the next weeks PWC I used distilled water and did a 20% instead of 10%. Nothing changed. Same thing after the next PWC. Meanwhile I found a good snail deal on reefcleaners.com and thought, "well hey, can't hurt"...got'em and added them yesterday. Today my tank looked even worse.
Oh, and during this whole algae crap out, my fish, xenia, zoas, feather dusters, shrimp, and crabs are doing great. Even my hitchikers...baby urchin (I think rock boring) and the sea whip/fan.
Tomorrow is the weekly PWC...this is what I have tonight:
salt - 1.025
temp - 78F
Ph - 8.6
Alk - 1.7-2.8
ammonia - 0
nitrites - 0.1
nitrates - (not sure how to read the card, but it's not 0) 20 low end???
As I can I'll be getting a RO/DI system. I'm already working on a sump.
Other than that and the PWC weekly...I'm sure what else to do.