alishasilva
Aquarium Advice Newbie
Hello again,
I recently posted and some of you helped me out regarding lowering my high PH. The main problem I'm having is that we were not doing proper water changes. So over the last few days (since Saturday) we have changed 20 gallons of our 55 gallon tank (plus about a 10 gallon sump) and we have seen the PH drop from 8.8 to 8.4 and our nitrates have dropped from 160 to about 40. The thing we are noticing now is that our sand bed (which my husband also stirred up during the 1st water change on Saturday as it had a very ugly brown film all over the top of it that had recently developed) is now starting to turn that ugly rusty brown color again. Not only that, but so are some of the rocks and a fake coral we have in the tank. Is this normal due to the water change? Is this some sort of algae? I remember when we did the start-up in January we went thru all sorts of algae stages that eventually went away (I don't want algae back! If I can help it).
We do have a couple of crabs and 5 snails and up until about the last few weeks they seemed to keep the tank and the sand really clean. As fo the water parameters: The PH is now 8.4 (I'm hoping that will still come down some so that our Flower pot coral will be a little happier), Nitrites 0, Ammonia .25, Nitrates 40, Alk 300ppm.
Thanks for any ideas, suggestions or input.
Alisha
I recently posted and some of you helped me out regarding lowering my high PH. The main problem I'm having is that we were not doing proper water changes. So over the last few days (since Saturday) we have changed 20 gallons of our 55 gallon tank (plus about a 10 gallon sump) and we have seen the PH drop from 8.8 to 8.4 and our nitrates have dropped from 160 to about 40. The thing we are noticing now is that our sand bed (which my husband also stirred up during the 1st water change on Saturday as it had a very ugly brown film all over the top of it that had recently developed) is now starting to turn that ugly rusty brown color again. Not only that, but so are some of the rocks and a fake coral we have in the tank. Is this normal due to the water change? Is this some sort of algae? I remember when we did the start-up in January we went thru all sorts of algae stages that eventually went away (I don't want algae back! If I can help it).
We do have a couple of crabs and 5 snails and up until about the last few weeks they seemed to keep the tank and the sand really clean. As fo the water parameters: The PH is now 8.4 (I'm hoping that will still come down some so that our Flower pot coral will be a little happier), Nitrites 0, Ammonia .25, Nitrates 40, Alk 300ppm.
Thanks for any ideas, suggestions or input.
Alisha
