Wondering whether or not to give up on corals

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AdamHorton

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Joined
Aug 12, 2009
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Location
Cincinnati, OH
I've had a 150G FOWLR tank for about three years now. I've been able to keep fish in the tank pretty successfully, but the dream was always to have corals. I've been trying for quite a while to get my nitrates to the point where maybe I could have corals, but it hasn't been working so well.

I got a biopellet reactor and I've been doing large (>100 gal) water changes, but it doesn't seem to have had any effect on my nitrates, they're still too high for corals and it seems like the only way I can keep them there is to do these huge water changes every week, which is more maintenance than I'm willing to put in, not to mention the cost of the salt for that much SW every week or so.

I understand there's probably a serious problem with nitrates, even if I plan to only keep fish in the tank, but my fish seem to be OK with the way things are. I've been tempted recently to just get some cool non-reef-safe fish like puffers and just resign myself to the idea that my tank will never be a reef.

Maybe I can try a smaller reef tank, but the reason I got such a big SW tank was because I thought bigger tanks were easier for keeping the levels good. Is that just me not understanding things correctly? I'd like to think that I could easily maintain a small reef tank (10-20 gallons or so) but is this a good idea? Would I be better off just giving up on this dream?

Any thoughts?
 
If that info on your page is current then I believe you may be feeding too much and your nitrate problem comes from the tap water. I am a no tap in salt water kin of person, particularly a reef. Make the switch to ro-di and you will start to see some better results :)
 
IMO. I would take some of that live rock out of your sump and throw in some cheato. Also you rock itself in the DT looks very dense. Cheato works wonders.
 
IMO. I would take some of that live rock out of your sump and throw in some cheato. Also you rock itself in the DT looks very dense. Cheato works wonders.

Also I'm not sure what size those power heads are but I have 2 750 and 1 550 hydors plus the return from the sump in a 55 gallon DT. You might need more flow.
 
This post tells exactly how much I feed the tank. I could conceivably go down to 4 days a week...

If there are nitrates in my water that could explain part of the issue. I'll do a test on my tap water to see if there are any nitrates.

I was under the impression that excess LR would not be a "nitrate factory" like bio-balls and other stuff were. Do you think there is too much LR in my system? I can certainly remove it but nobody has ever told me it was a bad thing.

I used to have a ball of chaeto in my sump. It never grew, it just died and caused a huge nitrate spike which, along with some other issues with my house being 90 degrees for a couple of weeks, killed off a bunch of my fish. I haven't been able to get a hold of any chaeto around this area for about a year anyways. I got the biopellet reactor to deal with that but appears to be ineffective.

I have two of these powerheads along with my Mag Drive 12 pump. How would a lack of flow in my system lead to higher nitrates?
 
I think it's more about the flow around the rock, you may have pockets that hold excess waste. You can never have too much rock! I would still recommend ro-di water, I have never seen a successful reef using tap long term. Just a question, do you have algae problems too?
 
This post tells exactly how much I feed the tank. I could conceivably go down to 4 days a week...

If there are nitrates in my water that could explain part of the issue. I'll do a test on my tap water to see if there are any nitrates.

I was under the impression that excess LR would not be a "nitrate factory" like bio-balls and other stuff were. Do you think there is too much LR in my system? I can certainly remove it but nobody has ever told me it was a bad thing.

I used to have a ball of chaeto in my sump. It never grew, it just died and caused a huge nitrate spike which, along with some other issues with my house being 90 degrees for a couple of weeks, killed off a bunch of my fish. I haven't been able to get a hold of any chaeto around this area for about a year anyways. I got the biopellet reactor to deal with that but appears to be ineffective.

I have two of these powerheads along with my Mag Drive 12 pump. How would a lack of flow in my system lead to higher nitrates?

Nitrates are consumed by the anaerobic bacteria in the deep parts of live rock. The more flow that your tank has, the more nitrates are making their way to those deep pockets in the rocks.

What color temp were you using on your refugium to try to grow the chaeto? Usually people have problems trying to grow it when they are using the wrong color of bulb. A 6500k bub is a necessity.
 
what was the nitrate readings? Rodi is your best friend, with treatments like prime are good for chlorine and other toxins but does not purify the water for longterm success.
 
Definitely looks like you're rocking some cayno in that sump

I would remove some of those really dense bolder looking pieces of LR from the DT and try to get some more flow in and around all that rock. The sump looks stagnant like not enough flow is going through it. Low flow in your sump and DT equals ditrius build up which in turn fuels nitrates.
 
I would take out some of those dense boulder looking rocks out of your DT and try and get some more flow around your rock work. Your sump seems stagnant hence the cayno growth. Maybe too much rock in there blocking flow??Low flow usually equals ditrius build up which in turn fuels nitrates.
 
I took a nitrate reading on my tap water and got 20 ppm.

I used to have lots of algae issues, but since I started the large water changes (after those pictures/video were taken) that algae has died down pretty much entirely.

So pointing powerheads towards my LR would be a good thing? I can try that.

I tried using multiple types of light bulbs for my chaeto. The first was a regular CFL from Wal-Mart, then I got one that was made for refugium lighting but I don't remember what type of bulb it was...

I have an RO/DI system. Back when I was able to get it to work at all, it would produce maybe 15 gallons of RO/DI water a day, and about a million gallons of waste water. I tried getting new membranes and a booster pump but this thing just didn't work for me at all. It was an Air Water and Ice RO/DI system, looked a lot like this.

I remember what I paid to get that system in the first place, and then what I have to pay to try an get it to function at all. That's a lot of money. Does it really cost that much to make RO/DI water? There's got to be a better way...
 
I took a nitrate reading on my tap water and got 20 ppm.

I used to have lots of algae issues, but since I started the large water changes (after those pictures/video were taken) that algae has died down pretty much entirely.

So pointing powerheads towards my LR would be a good thing? I can try that.

I tried using multiple types of light bulbs for my chaeto. The first was a regular CFL from Wal-Mart, then I got one that was made for refugium lighting but I don't remember what type of bulb it was...

I have an RO/DI system. Back when I was able to get it to work at all, it would produce maybe 15 gallons of RO/DI water a day, and about a million gallons of waste water. I tried getting new membranes and a booster pump but this thing just didn't work for me at all. It was an Air Water and Ice RO/DI system, looked a lot like this.

I remember what I paid to get that system in the first place, and then what I have to pay to try an get it to function at all. That's a lot of money. Does it really cost that much to make RO/DI water? There's got to be a better way...

I don't know much about ro/di water but you might have just gotten a faulty piece of equipment.

Chaeto needs a fairly good flow for it to pull nitrates from the water. I'm still trying to make it work but i've had better luck with grape caulerpa. It grows like crazy in my refugium while the chaeto isnt hardly doing anything. I did have a problem with the caulerpa dumping TONS of nitrates in the water to start but I added a second light to my refugium and now it's doing a lot better. Currently I have a t8 strip light and a clip on cfl for my refugium.

Honestly, I would probably start by doing a deep clean before anything else. Pull out all of the rocks, stick them in tubs of tank water, and siphon out all the detrius that you possibly can.
 
I took a nitrate reading today. My test kit just looks red if you have greater than 80 ppm. It looks like that 80 ppm-red, but it could be more. I've had it look exactly that same color after doing a 100-gallon water change, even though there are only about 180 gallons of water total in the system.
 
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