everything was fine up until this week

[Gaz77]

Hi I am new to marine ,everything was fine up until this week. I have had my tank since end of December fish and corals doing fine in the last two weeks I have lost two shrimp 1 cleaner (no sign of it anywhere) and then yesterday I found my peppermint shrimp dead .my corals have all shrunk back on them selves and don't look happy I use a couple of fish shops and have been given different advise .water prams are sal 1.024,ph 8.0 nitrate was 40 the other day checked it today after a water change and was 30/40 nitrite 0 pos 0.25 cal 450 kh 219.09 ..any idea what his wrong.? thanks

 

[mr_X]

Nitrates at 40 would definitely do it IMO. Cut back on feeding and do a few more water changes.

 

[BigRedsReefs10]

If your phosphates are .25 ppm that's way to high too. Aim for below .03 ppm

 

[Macscale]

Help please

It's either your nitrates or phosphates as stated above.

To get rid of my Nitrate problems I did 10% water change everyday and they went down.

For phosphate I used a buffer, bad move as I don't like putting chemicals in my tank. It worked well. It was by Kent Marine, here's a link to it: http://www.kentmarine.com/products/kent-phos-sponge.htm

 

[BigRedsReefs10]

OP what are your wc schedules and what filtration are you running on the tank? That will help us steer you in the right direction

 

[Gaz77]

OP what are your wc schedules and what filtration are you running on the tank? That will help us steer you in the right direction

i have been doing a 10% wc every week not sure what you mean about filter system I have a aqua one 36 nano if that helps I purchased the tank from my lfs it was a display model running in the shop so it was a mature tank.in the filter compartment he had Rowa phos in filter wool and this week I put Polly filter on top of it when my nitrates got really high 40ppm.

 

[buhajer2]

Do you have water movement between your liverock coz I can see there is on gups. Poit of view.

 

[Macscale]

i have been doing a 10% wc every week not sure what you mean about filter system I have a aqua one 36 nano if that helps I purchased the tank from my lfs it was a display model running in the shop so it was a mature tank.in the filter compartment he had Rowa phos in filter wool and this week I put Polly filter on top of it when my nitrates got really high 40ppm.

You need to be doing 20%-25% water changes each week.

 

[BigRedsReefs10]

Ya I'd up the wc's and if you haven't changed out your filter floss that could be trapping nitrates. You may want to run some carbon to

 

[Macscale]

+1. On the carbon! I put some in a ten gallon because they went to 60+, (feeding mishap) and they went down pretty fast!

 

[Gaz77]

Do you have water movement between your liverock coz I can see there is on gups. Poit of view.

Yes I have a adjustable wave-maker that circulates the water

 

[BigRedsReefs10]

Think about it this way if you have 40 ppm nitrate and you do 10% wc your only down to 36ppm nitrate. One of the nice things about running a small tank is the ease of doing large % wc. If you do a 75% change it will drob down to 10 and if you do another 50 the next day or 2 it will drop to 5 and so on. Get what I mean?
Edit: when I use filter floss I change it out 2-3x a week. It's cheap and easy so no reason to let it trap detritus