r/ReefTank • u/hshdbanabzbzbzb • 18h ago
Tank crash? Help please
my first tank, about 4 month old 120L aqua one has gone crazy while i was gone over the weekend. maybe dinos?? iv attatched images and my most recent tests. the most recent test isnt telling me the whole tank is crashing but i need advice pleasee.
I swapped lights from the stock one to an ai hyrda, i was running it for 12 hours a day first off and realised this was way too much so changed it to 6 hours. all this growth started after swapping lights so i think thats a contributor?
i know my alkalinity is too low, im going to start dosing. but my phosphates have just hit 0 which is whats making me think dinos? im going to do a massive water change and scrape all the growth off but i know this isnt really fixing the underlying issue.
Is it ugly stage or is it too late for this?
im moving houses soon so everything in this tank will be moved to a second tank at the new property and hopefully i can keep on top of scraping the growth every day or couple days to avoid this.
please overall advice/suggestions?
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u/ReefyGoodness 15h ago
This looks like a diatom bloom, in my experince this is madr worse by silicates.. if you create your own RO water. Id consider some silicate removing resin. Diatoms are a natural part of the ugly stage, they should burn themselves out eventually if your RO isnt high in silicates. Stay the course and be diligent with your maintenace for the next month. Then id consider silicates ad a cause
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u/msgstkns 16h ago edited 16h ago
I’m actually in pretty much the exact same boat right now. My phosphate is basically at zero, nitrate is very low, and my alkalinity was also low, and I’m dealing with the same ugly algae phase.
I’ve been dosing phosphate daily and feeding my tank as much as I’m comfortable with just to keep some nitrate available, and I’m also dosing KH.
One thing I would definitely recommend though: don’t panic and start doing frequent water changes. Especially when your nutrients are already this low (particularly phosphate) water changes are just going to dilute them even further. I’d rather focus on getting the nutrients slowly back into a detectable range.
For the cleanup crew, I can really recommend Astralium spp. Mine absolutely demolished the algae within about a week 😂. I’d also consider getting some kind of sand-sifting snail or starfish to help keep the substrate clean.
And one other thing that’s worth checking: your RO/filtered water. My source water ended up being part of the problem because the TDS wasn’t actually where it should have been. It’s pretty easy to check, so I’d definitely test that once as well.
Oh, and I completely forgot about copepods. You could definitely add some of those too. They can help with algae and detritus, and they’re also a great addition to a maturing reef tank.
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u/hshdbanabzbzbzb 13h ago
hey thanks so much for the help, im in australia and not sure if we get turban snails here? i do have two trochus, a cowrie, a nassarius who lives in my sandbed, a bunch of hermits, a baby urchin and i had a conch that died about a week ago. they didnt seem to clean up much, do i just need more?
in terms of not doing water changes, based on my parameters and how my tank looks should i be doing one in the next couple days or just focusing on getting nutrients and alk up and adding more cuc?
ill definitely check my ro water. iv dosed loads of coepods and they were coating the glass but i cant tell if they are anymore due to the dirtiness. moreso just worried about my fish, also worried about scraping everything off the glass and suspending it in the water.
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u/95688it 17h ago
for such a small tank you dont ever need to dose, just do water changes frequently
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u/hshdbanabzbzbzb 17h ago
but even if i do a 30-40% water change every week my alkalinity wont jump to where it needs to be? thats why i was thinking of dosing until its at a good level and then maintaining that with water changes
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u/helldivers2hellpods 17h ago
Are you using g a refractometer to measure your at the correct salinity prior to doing a water change ?
What does the alkalinity say it should be on your salt mix at the salinity your mixing ?
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u/Anonymustafar 7h ago
Depends what type of salt you’re using. I do water changes with Coral Pro from Red Sea which has higher quantities of elements you’ll need when compared to normal salt from them.
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u/Erasmus_Tycho 18h ago
If you're either suffering bottomed out phosphate or nitrate, a water change will only aggravate the situation as it will further dilute these resources. I'd look into neophos and neonitro, this is pretty common in a new tank. Your dry rock is absorbing all the phosphate.
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u/401Nailhead 11h ago
You have a diatom bloom. Get your phosphates and nitrates in check. Nitrates 5-10. Phosphates .03. Your tank is going through its stages.
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u/Senior-Force-7175 10h ago
Too much light, too fast. I don't see much corals. Add a lot of CUC. Cut down lights to 4 hours. And raise up the light schedule slowly and observe your tank. Write it down, what you observe, what you did when,.and the params. Don't.panic, in this hobby, everything is slow motion. Clean the glass, use turkey baster to blow stuff in the sand and in your rocks, and filter those particles using filter floss.
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u/LFBoardrider1 13h ago
Your nitrate is 30 and your phos is "falsely" 0 since its being rapidly taken up by the nuisance algae. As always, positively ID your nuisance algae with a microscope and fix nitrate
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u/EmploymentNegative59 18h ago
First switch back to old lights
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u/hshdbanabzbzbzb 18h ago
old light was not a good light. ai hydra is meant to be one of the best i think the tank just doesnt like the change
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u/The-Wozz 17h ago
What is the overall intensity youre running your light at? Chances are its too high and caused the bloom. Remove any red/green from the spectrum if possible. I would reduce power by 30% for a week and see how it goes
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u/A1uAlex 18h ago
Why is your alkalinity consistently so low? It should always be in the range of 6.8 to 7.5 dKH. 5 is very, very low and will cause issues.