Ulns
 

Okay so haven't been arround in a while my tank has been doing good but mostly fish and a few algae issues, I have a Hanna ultra low range checker and in ppb my phosphate is 76 and I believe that's pretty high. I would like to try an ulns. Zeo seams like A lot of work and to me people have said prodibio doesn't work. So what do you guys suggest?


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Take out your substrate over a few water changes. Do a few huge water changes in quick procession afterwards (40-80% ever three days). Wait for your tank to stabilize. Add substrate again after it does. This should take you 2-4 months of hard work, but you'll get there. I did this all the time when I was refurbishing displays.

do what Albert says, then try prodibio. its dosing for lazy asses

My yellow watchmen goby won't like that, do
I remove as much as I can? I have quite a bit of rock work that would make it difficult to get at a lot of the sand, I'm not scared of zeo cuz I'm lazy guess it's more overwhelming. Are there any other systems besides the two, (and bio pellets). Can I use the same substrate to put back in after its rinced?


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Zeo can be very simple. There are only a few core additives and you ideally shake the reactor once a day. I used it and only did the reactor thing once a month (maybe) and still had success.

As for substrate, if you have PO4 bound to it, rinsing won't fix it unless you rinse in an acid solution to remove the top layer.

So I should ditch the substrate and go from there?


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Up to you. Acid washing is a fair bit of work and messy, so I'd just go with new sand. Not worth the trouble of washing it IMO.

Check out my ULNS thread. Some good info in there. On both Prodibio & Zeo.

What is nitrate at? Which kit?

Thanks Doug, some good read, like the idea of mixing the two systems. Myka just did an no3 test with my Hagen test kit (all I have) and it came up as unreadable so under 5


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Well, first thing, what type of corals do you want to keep? Not all corals do well with an ULNS. Maybe LNS is more what you should aim for.

Your PO4 works out to 0.23 ppm. Which is quite high no matter which corals you want to keep. Why don't get a second nitrate reading with a good kit. If you want to do ULNS, then you're going to need quality PO4 and NO3 kits. You already have a good PO4 kit (make sure you rinse the tubes very, very well and measure with the tube facing the same direction every time). A tank doesn't usually have really low nitrate and high phosphate, but it does happen. The Salifert nitrate kit is good.

Do you vacuum your sand bed? How old is the sand bed? Was it new sand or used sand when you put it in?

The Hagen kits I have aren't good? What is recommended? My sand is probably 4 years old,'and it was half and half new/ used when I put it in. I do try to vaccumme it but don't get to do it as much as I'd like


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I'd like to keep sps with a few lps


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No, Hagen kits aren't great. Salifert, Elos, Red Sea Pro apparently.

As for sand, at 4 yrs for used sand, I'd toss it personally. 4 yrs on all new sand, I'd still toss it. New sand is cheap compared to trying to manage old sand all year long.

So just remove as much sand as I can? Scoop and Sifion? In a 55g with a 1-2 inch sand bed how slowly shoul I remove it?


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Anytime I remove a sand bed, I siphon out as much as I can with the volume of my normal water change. I do 50g changes, so I can remove a lot of sand. To feel better if you're concerned, remove half first, then next water change remove other half.
I wouldn't scoop and disturb it, just siphon directly out of the tank.

In my 180g, I replaced a third every 2 weeks. No nutrient issues at the time, so not concerned with leaving it bare, so I took out a third, replaced it. 2 weeks later, repeat, and so on

Okay so last question can I Sifion it into a filter sock or something? Then I don't have to do the water change, not afraid to do it in one go


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Don't do that..you will crash your tank, by doing this all the bad stuff that you have in the sand will go back in the tank and you will have a huge nitrate spike that will wipe out everything in your tank , especially your sand is 4 years old

Ya, lol, you can't do that. Likely kill everything. Remove sand with the water, throw it all away.

That's kinda what I assumed, no such thing as a stupid question right? Haha okay have a batch of water brewing as we speak will do it tomorrow. Can i leave it bare, and remove it all the. Add sand after? Rather remove it all then replace rather then trying to do it in pieces. It's pretty thick in some spots hope my rocks have enough filtration, only 5 small fish in thete


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Ya, you can remove all of it at once. Just to be safe, I'd have spare water made up for a few days later and check NH3, but I've done this without needing to do anything else. As long as you have a good amount of rock, you have enough filtration.

Ulns
 

Okay so I removed most of the sand, going to have to move some rock work to get the rest of the sand out (excuse to re scape it?), should I worry about it? Or just the thick parts? There is still some sand very very thin tho. It's been 2-3 hours and everyone seams to be okay except my torch but it's never open after a water change. Also on a side note my skimmer is doing some wet skimming, so that's good. What parameters should I keep my eye on? Nh3?


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Ya, no harm in checking ammonia in a day or two. I expect it will be fine. If the rest of the sand is just a thin layer around rocks, I'd point a power head it it and let it blow into a corner. Unless the thin layer is 3 inches thick :)

In the back it's like maybe 1 1/2 2 inches but not more then that I couldn't get anything behind my rocks until I move them, still a little work to do it that means re scape! Fish might not be happy with a bare tank for a while but I'll leave a few hiding places. I have a rock wall on the back of my tank and my ricks piled Infront of it so it's hard to get at the stuff in the caves/ back.


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So far everything is good, going to remove the Rock and the scape then add sand this afternoon if everything works out! No ammonia spikes at all and everyone and everything is very happy


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Get one of those SeaChem Ammonia Alerts and hang it in your sump. I keep one in there and one in my QT. They last a year. I use a Jiffy to write the month on it and replace them once a year. For $8 each, it's pretty good insurance. :D

So update, everyone is doing great in the tank, torch isn't still fully open. But that's not worrying me to much. But my ppb is 56 guess that's some improvement?


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