I upgraded my pump to a 1800 gph pump and still no luck

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earlysteven

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ImageUploadedByAquarium Advice1432089001.750037.jpgmy temp is at 79 F at all times and lights are on a timer for 7 hours . My reef tank seems to be ticked some of my coral are angry at me like my leather toadstools and elegance . Every thing parameter wise is fine I even tested for chlorine lol . I do use ro water and my fish are perfectly fine . I have a 150 gallon. I know my ammonia is at .25 is that what would really be all the fuss ?


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Ammonia readings can for absolute sure affect the corals. Why do you have ammonia showing? Is this a new tank? Did you cycle it and how did you cycle and for how long? Typically ammonia is only present in the beginning when you first cycle a tank. If it shows up later then it most likely wasnt cycled correctly, long enough or the cycle was too weak for your bioload,

How large is the tank and what is the current livestock?
 
A150g tank with .25 on amm, Ur tank is either not cycled or something is going wrong.

Not sure 20 drops calcium mean, but if u are using API test kit, if my memory is correct it could be around 380, which is kind of low.

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My calcium is fine and I've had the tank set up for a year and a half almost . I let it cycle for for over a month so it should be fine . I have a strawberry dotty, lawn mower Benny , yellow tang, two clowns , hawk fish, green chromis,cucumber,sand sifter starfish , Nass snails, hermit crabs,turbo snails , decorater crab,


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No corals?

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Yes I have to many to say lol ,leathers,elegance,trumpets,pulsing xena,torch,hammer,frogspawn,zoas,brain,birds nest,lepestra,acon, and prolly more


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What type of filter do you use?
Do you do water changes?
Is the ammonia reading common?
If not how long has it been registering?
Any thing missing(dead)?
 
I do a 30 percent water change every week and that testing was the day after my water change . I had a link starfish that died but that was well over a month ago .


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The ammonia reading is not common and just this past week started reading .25 I have a 20 gallon sump with a 500 gph mag drive pump . And I also have a emperor 400 on the back . I use blue bonded padding and carbon bags in my first chamber , caulerpa in my sec and then my return pump and my coralife skimmer in the third.


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My test kit is brand new so it's not that it could be just a bad test tho lol I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what the deal is lol.


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Did you get the starfish out? They can be slow to die, and taking some time to decompose is not out of the question.
Lights? What do you have?


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one linkia starfish decaying in a 150 gallon tank that has been set up that long shouldn't even make a blip in water parameters, something else is going on.


You only have 4 options;
1) A big die off of something small and plentiful.
2) ammonia is present in whatever water you use for changes
3) a portion of the BB has been compromised/killed
4) water flow isn't going through the bio portion the same as it was before, maybe rearrange stuff, clean the filter pads?
 
The ammonia reading is not common and just this past week started reading .25 I have a 20 gallon sump with a 500 gph mag drive pump . And I also have a emperor 400 on the back . I use blue bonded padding and carbon bags in my first chamber , caulerpa in my sec and then my return pump and my coralife skimmer in the third.


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on second thought, IMO your system is under filtered. You should throw a bunch of live rock/rubble into the refugium.
It simply could be that your bio-load has reached a point that it is out pacing the BB ability to keep up with it.
Understand that as your fish/inverts/corals grow their "bio footprint" also grows and they produce more waste than they did last year.
Your sump and pump are pretty much the same as I have on my 50 gallon, but I have about 30 lbs of rock rubble/Matrix in there, bonded pads, live rock, carbon, Purigen, Chemi-Pure Blue, phosphate stuff, a separate refugium with a deep sand bed, about 40 lbs of rock in the display, and I still feel I could do more...LOL



If you find no other obvious causes, I would think it is what I said above, but either way you should boost the biological capability of your system and maybe double the size of the sump. 20 gallons is kinda meager for a 150 gallon display..
 
Ok so I upgraded my pump to a 1800 gph pump and still no luck and my lights are 1400 w total metal halide . I think it has to be my water source my ppm are 66 now ughhh


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I would have to dismantle my whole tank to get a bigger sump in unfortunately lol . It's a in wall buildImageUploadedByAquarium Advice1434167163.776248.jpg


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first off what you posted are not proper readings we don't know what your true parameters are by drops so it's hard to tell what the issue is , ph and ammonia are the only 2 I see with true readings , if your phosphate reading is true you have phosphates
how do I know this.. the correct reading will almost always read .03 ppm not 0 if its reading 0 both your nitrates and phos are high , your corals are telling you just that , you should not have any ammonia at all , how often do you do water changes how often and how much , do you do any type of dosing and do you test for these , do you use ro/di water , what test kit you use , how much do you feed and how often , whats your lighting , do you have any algae in your tank as this can hide both nitrates and phosphates and your test kit will not detect them ,
if you learn how to read your coral they will always give a early warning of arising issues ,
 
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first off what you posted are not proper readings we don't know what your true parameters are by drops so it's hard to tell what the issue is , ph and ammonia are the only 2 I see with true readings , if your phosphate reading is true you have phosphates
how do I know this.. the correct reading will almost always read .03 ppm not 0 if its reading 0 both your nitrates and phos are high , your corals are telling you just that , you should not have any ammonia at all , how often do you do water changes how often and how much , do you do any type of dosing and do you test for these , do you use ro/di water , what test kit you use , how much do you feed and how often , whats your lighting , do you have any algae in your tank as this can hide both nitrates and phosphates and your test kit will not detect them ,
if you learn how to read your coral they will always give a early warning of arising issues ,

he is most likely using the API reef kit and his numbers are
cal-400
KH-9-10

also the thing about algae masking the nitrate and phosphate readings, isn't that exactly what you want if there is algae in the tank?
the only issue regarding nutrients and algae is if the algae is a nuisance and taking over the display. The logic that you can't trust reading if you have algae growing is just wrong.
What is the purpose of having a refugium with macro algae or a ATS?
It is so they use up nitrate and phosphate so they are undetectable.
If these elements are undetectable than they should not be negatively impacting the system in any way whatsoever.

If what you propose about algae interfering with accurate results is true than you may as well throw away all your test kits because you can't trust your calcium test because corals use calcium, etc., etc.

and why couldn't they have a phosphate reading of 0, I see other folks post a reading of 0 all the time, and the API test only allows either 0 or .25 as the low end readings.
honestly, you aren't making much sense.

I still hold to my original thought concerning the OP's issues, the tank has marginal biological filtration capability and that is the reason for the ammonia level.
 
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