Hows everyone doing? i’ve been doing pretty well, but my tank is another story. This summer my tank crashed and i lost most of my corals. i tryed to save some of the LPS and softies but
nothing survived. I didnt know if i was going to continue the hobby or not. so i took some time off and played freshmen football.
A few weeks ago i started looking online at all the forms, and desided i needed to give it another shot. The new set up will be a 90 gallon, which is a huge upgrade from the 25.
heres the situation- I have something like 50 pounds of rock that were sitting in nasty water. they are covered in green alage and probably are high in phosphates and other bad stuff.
I personally would toss the old rock and buy new base rock. It is relatively inexpensive and will become “live” within a few months. Did you ever find out why you tank crashed? I also developed a few problems this summer while I was on vacation which I’m still dealing with.
Sorry to hear about the tank crash - it’s really hard to get over it when you lose everything you’ve worked so hard to grow. Hey but at least you scored an upgrade out of it!!!
I’d put the rock in a large bucket / small trash can - head to Costco and pick up a few of their extra large bottles of vinegar. Soak the rock for a couple days in the vinegar. Take it out and scrub it with a stiff bristle brush, let it sit out back and dry for a few weeks.
There’s nothing live about that rock anymore anyway so you might as well just turn it in to pretty base rock yourself. Talk to Jared he’s got a fool proof formula for killing everything on rock.Â
ok thanks craig. I do have about 100+ pounds of base rock but i really love these pieces of rock. i would rather have these 2 large pieces then 4 small ones.
im not 100% sure about the cause of death, but it definitly had something to do with chemistry. I think my mag was low and i might have raised it by too much too fast. my Acros were just peeling their skin off, this might have something to do with the Alk. There was way too much livestock in the tank, i wish i could have switched tanks sooner
Yes, if they were sitting in foul water, then anything good died due to lack of oxygen. so a good acid wash and scrub will clean the outside. But because the bacteria in the core of the rock died, it leaves behind nutrients . so after scrubbing, i would put it in a barrel or trash can of salt water and an air stone and add some liquid starter bacteria, cover to keep the light out, and let it cook. the bacteria will slowly consume the crud soaked into the rock and reactivate it to denitrate the rest too. you can test the water for nitrates and see how it goes. and do a water change if it builds up. then you should end up with good, clean activated base rock.
Ive got more frags to replant it when you are ready. do you have any left or did they all die? I doubt adding mag flake messed it up. i have made big changes in Mg ppm before with no ill effect. it was probably a bad sand bed or something. you had a pretty over stocked tank.
Ken- I think there was some imbalance and something might have precipitated out. It was hard to tell if it was the coral melting or something precipitating out. I was getting lazy with testing, should have tested more. I know that the sand bed was bad, there were pocket of detritus.
Why do you think your Mag was low? Because you used a Salifert test kit? Three other people in the club found bad Salifert Mg test kits.(though for some reason many people still use them…)
Ken how do you break down the element Phosphate biologically? If the rock had phosphates leached into them, what would the bacterias do? Perhaps adding a bad of rust or some sort of white media would work?
Brett, it really sounds like you went through the same exact thing I did. Thought your Mg was low, dosed it with out really analyzing how it would have gotten low or understanding where it went to.(or realizing it didn’t go anywhere your kit was likely bad) When you over dosed the tank lots of death occurred in bacteria and microfuana and your system became a high nutrient system.
Buy stock in Carbon, Phosphate remover, and salt. It will take a lot of the three to get things going well again as well as time.
One other thing don’t feel bad that you didn’t test more. Think of it like someone who found their salinity was way off and they say they should have used their swing arm hydrometer more…wouldn’t have matter how much you tested if your instrument/kit were off.
Skip spending money on any new gadgets, or animals, or anything else cool. Make yourself a calendar and a log book, keep track of how often you do water changes and media changes and do them consistently and frequently and it will work out in the end.
Oh, and welcome back. Almost gave you a phone call after I didn’t see you at the last meeting. Hope all else is well and we see you at the meetings again soon bragging about how well things are doing. It will take time, but stick with it and you’ll build a beautiful tank again.
today i am trying to work out the plumbing for the 90, and it turns out neither the drain nor the return pipes are glue together. i found that strange. should i glue them together or are you sposed to be able to disassemble the pipes?
i also have another problem, my return pump is 3/4 and the bulk head for the return is 1 inch. do they make an adaptor?
i heard that spa flex tubing is the way to go, where do i get it from?
Most of the piping inside the tank is usually not drilled. If it drips water out into the tank… who cares that is where water is going anyways.
They make adapters, go to Home Depot or Lowes or Sears with the parts you need to adapt and they’ll hook you up. Are you using PVC or vinyl tubing?
Spa flex is at all the hardware stores I personally rarely use it, but then again I am used to working with PVC and many people are not. There are a lot of different pipe, tubes, and other materials that will work just fine.
well, the first sump i put in there will just be a temparary, since i dont have the skimmer yet.
i think im using pvc for the drain and maybe vinyl for the return. i havent desided 100% yet but once ive seen the spa flex ill make my final decision.
the reason i might use pvc is that i figured there would be more room for a snail to fit in the event that one gets sucked down their. the adaptor for the tubing is pretty small, and i dont know how much flow would pass if something like this did happen. i think that vinyl would be alot easier to use, ill go that way if i can find the adaptor for my pump.
The adapter for your pump likely will be in an obscure location at the hardware store inside a carbon box inside a little while/clear bag. They are typically a PITA to find and aren’t with the rest of the PVC. They are grey in color and called “adapters female”. Odds are you want to go from some size threaded MPT to a barb(sometimes they call these INS) and you want to use plastic hose clamps on it.
Here is the sort of thing your looking for.
Otherwise the adapter for PVC is easy it is a female adapter from MPT to SOC or slip. It is often just referred to as a female adapter and they are in with the regular old white schedule 40 PVC fittings in the plumbing isle at your local hardware store.
yes Jon, the bacteria will consume the nitrates and phosphates. thats the principle of probiotics, carbon dosing for low nutrient systems. they break down the compounds of phosphates and nitrates and use them as an energy source and to make their own chemical structures. its why you build a plenum or deep sand bed, or use live rock. to make habitat for the bacteria to consume these waste compounds. It works. it just takes time.
In a deep sand bed denitrifying bacteria break down Nitrates into Nitrogen gas which makes its way to the surface of the aquarium and leaves. If your deep sand bed collects phosphates for the entire life of the aquarium then it is a nutrient sink and one sand sifting snail or fish could release a pocket at any point. :~S As far as I understand phosphate can become a part of animals, bacteria, algae and plants, but you can’t break it down to the point where it turns to gas and bubbles off can you? ??? I’ve never read that part of the phosphate cycle. >LOCO< Chemistry is not my strong suit. verdict_in It seems to me it is just like macro algae growing in a fuge if you never prune it then the nutrients have been absorbed, but the fuge reaches its limit very quickly and no more nutrients can be removed.
Phosphates move quickly through plants and animals; however, the processes that move them through the soil or ocean are very slow, making the phosphorus cycle overall one of the slowest bio-geochemical cycles.
Unlike other cycles of matter compounds, phosphorus cannot be found in air as a gas. This is because at normal temperature and circumstances, it is a solid in the form of red and white phosphorus. It usually cycles through water, soil and sediments. Phosphorus is typically the limiting nutrient found in streams, lakes and fresh water environments. As rocks and sediments gradually wear down, phosphate is released. In the atmosphere phosphorus is mainly small dust particles.
Initially, phosphate weathers from rocks. The small losses in a terrestrial system caused by leaching through the action of rain are balanced in the gains from weathering rocks. In soil, phosphate is absorbed on clay surfaces and organic matter particles and becomes incorporated (immobilized). Plants dissolve ionized forms of phosphate. Herbivores obtain phosphorus by eating plants, and carnivores by eating herbivores. Herbivores and carnivores excrete phosphorus as a waste product in urine and feces. Phosphorus is released back to the soil when plants or animal matter decomposes and the cycle repeats.
To my knowledge Phosphates will be continually cycled by bacteria until exported botanically or chemically. Vinegar treatments or allowing rock to sit outside will have a negligible effect on phosphate removal.
[quote=“andrewk529, post:18, topic:3519”]
phosphorus cannot be found in air as a gas.[/quote]
This is the key point I was getting to and the major difference between the Nitrogen cycle and the phosphate cycle.
[quote=“andrewk529, post:18, topic:3519”]
To my knowledge Phosphates will be continually cycled by bacteria until exported botanically or chemically. Vinegar treatments or allowing rock to sit outside will have a negligible effect on phosphate removal.[/quote]
I agree with a foot note. I think it would be worth scrubbing the rocks clean or soaking them to get the algae off of the outside which will otherwise slowly degrade in the tank. Use it as like a small macro algae harvest.
Don’t soak the rock in vinegar if it has been alive the whole time as it will have a certain biological component to it which is beneficial now and if you kill it will be even more detrimental. If it has been dried out then use vinegar and either a power washer or a scrub brush. Power washing will make it a lot easier.
Either way phosphates leached into the rock over time will still be there as Andrew pointed out and they will take time, water changes, and phosphate removal media to come out. Do you plan on using a fuge in the new set up. This will help to an extent as well. I would plan on at least 20% water changes twice a week if you want to get things cleaned up fairly quickly and use a lot of media.
oh yeah, im doing a sump. what im thinking is ill hook up my reactor, put GFO in it, and once i find a skimmer ill add that in there too.
The rock im using for the tank isnt that bad, it was live rock about 2 years ago, most of the decay is probably off the rock; i was cycling it befor the 25 crashed.
I’ll Probably put the rock from the 25 in a tube and let it cook for a few months. who knows by then i might be setting up another tank (i have a 75 too, lol).
I figured out how i want to do the plumbing last night, just need someone to take me to Lowes or HD. next year this will not be a problem.
