Nitrates, Phosphates and Bares...Oh MY

[Nicole8ca]

I have a whole bunch of questions, so I'll try and keep them organized.

I have some brown algea growing.
My nitrates are at 15,
and my phosphates are at 0.5.

I assume this is the reason for my algea. I do a 20-25% water change every week. I don't over feed. My tank is 77 gallons with about 90 lbs live rock.

I have a canister filter with ceramic and foam. Is this where my problem is? Should I take out the foam and add carbon? I'm not going to lie to you all I have no idea what the ceramic does-it came with the filter so I put it in.

I also have a remora protein skimmer and laguana uv sterilizer. I rinse the 'cup' of the protein skimmer every couple of days. Do I need to do a more thorough cleaning of it?

Now with that said I was also looking at taking out my crushed coral sand bed. It seems to be alot easier to vaccuum up waste/junk without it. Will I be opening up a whole new can of problems if I do that?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[christyf5]

Foam can sometimes add to nitrate headaches as they fill with particulate matter and create a fabulous place for bacteria to grow. They really need to be cleaned every 3-4 days and at the very most weekly. If you're really needing to keep the water free of particulates you can still keep the foam but need to be more diligent about keeping it clean. On the flip side, removing the foam and replacing with carbon will also help for great water polishing.

The ceramic just provides a substrate for bacteria to cling to much in the way bioballs or your live rock works. Seeing as how you have so much live rock in the tank I would probably remove them as they could perhaps be contributing to nitrates as well, and really you dont' need them.

What is your water source? Do you use RO/DI (reverse osmosis, deionized)? It could be that if you are using tap water you are actually adding phosphates to your tank as you do water changes and that could be a source to look into. If you are really concerned about it and want to continue to use tap water, try phosban or another type of phosphate remover. You can use this in your canister filter using a small filter bag.

All you really need to clean on your skimmer is the cup, sometimes the neck does get a bit of buildup and you can just reach in and swipe at it with a paper towel. Every 3-6 months (depending on how motivated I am) I remove mine and give it a thorough cleaning with vinegar and water just to remove any crud thats building up in there. A biofilm can develop on the walls of your skimmer decreasing its performance so its good to get rid of it from time to time.


You can certainly remove your sandbed if you don't want it, I run a barebottom tank myself and while I do miss the look of sand I think my tank (and myself) have benefited more without it than with. You can either remove it bits at a time (say 25% of it just prior to a water change so you can suck out any nasties that may have been stirred up). Or totally go to town on it depending on how labor intensive you want your day to be


Hope this helps

[mark]

By crushed coral you're meaning 1/4" pieces, I would say remove as a really good trap for detritus. Replace with sand or go BB.

[Nicole8ca]

Thanks! To answer your question, I'm on well water. I've tested the well water itself and no phophates are present. Although I am considering getting an R/O system.

[andresont]

I second all of the above
get rid of foam
get rid of ceramic rings
get rid of crashed coral go Bare Bottom (BB) or get an inch or less of “oolite” sand (smallest particle size) if you can’t stand BB. The idea behind smallest sand particle size is that it will be closely packed and would keep detritus away, at the same time there is still enough space in between particles allowing bacteria to populate the substrate.
Any size larger than that and junk will seep through the sand (imagine what is trapped in crashed coral sand bed?!)

Get RO/DI water filter because your well water is loaded with dissolved solids some times up to 1500 PPM (parts per million) you want ZERO before you make you salt mix.
Filter Po4 (phosphates) out of you water using reactor (best way) or just filter media in a bag passively in the sump.
Good luck.