Caluerpa help / tips

[supermarvin76]

I would like to buy some Caluerpa to take away my nitrates. I already have 2 balls of cheato that don't seem to be doing the trick, even though one of the balls (the oldest) has doubled in size. I am kind of nervous to keep Caluerpa becuase I have heard that it may contaiminate your tank. I have heard to keep the lights on 24/7....but what happens when the power goes out??...it WILL go out.

Any tips to my nitrates would be great!!!!

I only feed once everyother day or once every 3 days.

Thanks!!!

 

[phases99]

If Chaeto is not doing the trick than I doubt Caluerpa will either. If I were you I would add a decent skimmer if you don't already have one, double or triple your amount of LR, turkey baste your LR every month or so and siphon out the detritus, add a remote DSB to your 20g refugium. With 3" of sand in your main tank you should be getting some denitrification, are you leaving the sandbed undisturbed? Also, what is your current nitrate level?

 

[Thumper]

Sound like he about summed up how to solve your problem. No3 is a offspring of amonia breaking down. A good skimmer will help a lot to remove it from the tank.

 

[supermarvin76]

calapuera help

Here is a pic of my sump. I have a bak pak 2R skimmer hanging on the back of the 20gal. I rigged it so that the power head for the skimmer is below the bioballs. What do you mean turkey baste?

 

[phases99]

Re: calapuera help

Here is a pic of my sump. I have a bak pak 2R skimmer hanging on the back of the 20gal. I rigged it so that the power head for the skimmer is below the bioballs. What do you mean turkey baste?

The bioballs are most likely your problem, remove half now and the rest in a week and I bet your nitrates go down. I use a turkey baster and blow off the LR to get all the debris in suspension and siphon out as much as possible during water changes. You would be suprised to see how much crud is in those hard to get to places. How much skimmate are you getting from your Bakpak. I use the plain old Bakpak II and get around a 1/3 of a cup a day if I overskim.

 

[supermarvin76]

Will it be ok to slowly add 30 pounds of live rock. By that I mean about 10pounds every 3 weeks or so.

SHould I take the bio balls out as I do that? I have heard that I should from other posts here, but when I was at my LFS the other day I was talking with a fellow customer who has a 110 gallon AWESOME reef that he showed me picks of....He looked at me like I was insane when I told him that I wanted to remove my bioballs.

Should I add more sand to my refug? Make it deeper? There is a pic of it above this post

 

[supermarvin76]

phases99....thanks for your help so far. I hope I am able to get it right. I would like to take out those bio balls now, but...I am kind of scared. Here is my current bio load:

1 Flame angel...just added yesterday
1 tomato clown
1 fire fish
1 orange spotted goby
2 scooter bleenies (dragnets)
1 itty bitty (smaller that a gold fish) pink anthias.....just added yesterday

So with that bio load plus what you know from below, will I be ok removing the bio balls?

Is it important to have live rock rubble in the refug? I have some

Also I have a sponge in the sump I dont know if you saw it. It is right next to the refug area. It also has bio floss on top of it. I have this there for reasons of mechanical filtration. Should I remove this as well. I just rinsed the sponge with fresh water a few days ago when I did my water change, and totally replaced the bio floss.


Again...Thanks for your help so far!!!!

 

[ZoozFishMaster]

I used to keep chaeto under 50/50 lighting...10000K and Actinic 03. It did not do well and barely grew. I switched my lighting over to 5500k and it took off like a weed. My nitrates are always between 0 and 3 and I feed quite heavily (multiple times a day). My chaeto doubles in size every week or two. Once a month I bring gobbs of it back to my LFS.

From what I have read, chaeto likes "whiter" (5500K actually looks yellow) and less intense lighting than what we typically use for our reef tanks. NO or PC lighting should be fine. HTH

 

[malkore]

See, and I was told chaeto needs a lot of light...yet I'm growing mine under 50/50 with about 26watts of light (smallest 2x13 coralife fixture)...and my chaeto grows pretty well, and I never have nitrates or phosphates (at least not detectable levels).

How's your skimmer doing? I got tired of the Rio pump and upgraded to a maxi-jet. Turned it into a wicked skimmer (went from good skimmer to wicked, that is), and I highly recommend it.

I agree, add more CURED live rock, and either start rinsing the bio balls, or remove them altogether.

 

[phases99]

It appears you tank is fully stocked, depending on the actual size of those fish. If you could add enough cured LR to get up to 1lb per gallon then it would be totally safe to remove all the bioballs. The LR that's in your sump counts towards the 1lb/g rule. Take it slow, there is no rush unless your nitrates are very high and your inhabitants are at risk.

 

[seaham358]

You have a nitrate issue and you add 2 more fish???? Not a smart thing to do if you really want to solve the issue. I would not remove the Bb now that you added more fish. Get more LR and add over time, cured would be best. After you have your LR up then toss the BB. Keep up on the water changes to keep nitrates in check and Do not add any more fish till you get the NO3 in check.
What are the readings for the nitrate????