New to Hobby, Inherited tank with new house, boy do I need help.

[Fellow]

Hi I am new to this Hobby, I recently bought a House three months ago that came with a established tank the owners did not want to move. I have been scouring internet boards and my local LFS trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible. It has been a frustrating and expensive learning curve. Below are my tank specs. When I got the tank Nitrates were completely off the charts (180) but there was no huge Algae problem.

As I learned, I made some mistakes along the way, mainly I was over feeding. Now I feed once daily either “High Quality” flakes or ½ a cube of rinsed/thawed mysis. As much as I have been able to bring down Nitrates they are still way too high and my algae problem while isn’t exploding is not going away even with all the critters that eat it.
I have brown flakey algae, green hair algae, red fuzzy aglae….
I would like some advice. Do I need a better skimmer (what HOB model would you recommend)? Do I get rid of the filters, if so will I have enough flow(no sump)? Do I change the substrate to sand (I have no secondary tank to help in this process)? What else can I be doing? I love this hobby and I want to have a healthy happy tank.

Tank Specs:
90 Gallon Tank 48x24x18
Lighting – Brand spanking new 48” Aquatic Life T5 HO (10 hours per day)
(2) 48" T5 HO 54W 420/460 Lamps
(2) 48" T5 HO 54W 10,000K Lamps
(4) 1W Lunar LED's
Skimmer:
Red Sea Prizm HOB
Filters:
One Marine Land Penguin 100 w/Bio Wheel HOB
One Unbranded canister Filter HOB
Power Heads x2
Substrate:
Crushed Coral

Livestock:
- Neon Dotty Back
- Powder Blue Tang
- 2 Clowns
- Lawnmower Blenny
- 3 turbo snails
- 3 Urchins (pincushion, Unidentified A black medium with wide flat spines , Unidentified medium sized one that is brown/yellow small spines
- 6 dwarf blue legged hermits
Coral
- One Colt Coral
- A crap ton of mushrooms
- Frogspawn 4 branches
- Toadstools 5 stalks
- Unidentified White tree coral

Parameters:
- PH – 8.4
- Temp 78.5
- Phosphate 2 ppm
- Nitrate 40 ( was 180 three months ago)
- Specific Gravity 1.026
Maintenance Regime:
- 10g water change once a week with a vacuum to clean substrate. I am using instant ocean salt
- I use tap water that has tested zero for Phosphates and Nitrates. I eventually want to get a RO unit but it is not in the budget just yet.
- Twice weekly I clean the protein skimmer
- Once a month I will replace the filter media/floss on one of the filters. The next month the other one.
- API liquid test kits are being used.

[Ron99]

Try a couple larger water changes to help get the nitrates down. Also, ditch the filter floss or change it out weekly as it will collect detritus and become a nitrate factory. HOB and canister filters are really of little use in a reef tank. You could use the canister filter to hold media bags of carbon etc.

[toxic111]

The phosphates are way too high as well.. consider a phosban reactor. I would also buy or borrow a TDS meter & test your tap water. I would use RO bottled water until you can get your own unit.

I will second getting rid of the HOB filters, or just using them to hold carbon or chemi-pure. Also check the model of skimmer to see if it is rated for your size of tank.

Not know the size of your powerheads, you might want to look at somethin better like a vortech for better flow.

I battled bad hair algae for over a year, and I am finally starting to win. I added a sump, better skimmer, a vortec, better lights. Before this time I was scrubbing rock once a week & doing 2-10gal water changes a week. this on a 30gal tank, it was bad.

Spme pictures of the tank & set-up might help us help you as well.

[mseepman]

The Prizm skimmer is unfortunately a real piece of garbage. I had one and ran it for a long time before realizing this.

You didn't mention how much room you have on the back of your tank...but this will influence what type of HOB skimmer you can use. I've had good luck with my Aquamedic Blue1000 which cost me about $199US. I know you probably don't really want to pour more money into this but a decent skimmer is pretty important. You might also look into the Eshopps skimmers for a low cost alternative.

Ditch the filters unless you can just use them for things like carbon and phosphate re-mover.

Otherwise, just keep the faith and make slow steady changes.

[ponokareefer]

I would look at getting a better skimmer for sure. An aqua c remora pro would be an upgrade over what you have. You could keep the filters, but only have filter floss or carbon running in them, and then make sure you keep the filter floss clean. You could also run Purigen and Chemi-pure in them, both of which I use and work good. As for the substrate, that is a matter of great debate. I use a DSB, while others use crushed coral, and still others use nothing. I would do some more reading on which one you prefer. The crushed coral shouldn't be affecting your system a lot unless it is full of food/poop. The phosphates are an issue, and probably getting into your system from tap water. Look to either use bottled water, which I started with, and then went to a RO unit. Without doing something about the phosphate, you will have some sort of algae issues. There are certain chemicals/media you can use to take it out as well.
Finally, do a couple of large water changes with water that has no phosphates in it. Good luck!

[Fellow]

Thank you all for the replies. Ill take some time to read over these tonight and post a few follow up questions with pictures of my setup to provide some additonal contex.

[Fishward]

Your skimmer seems to be a bit under-rated for the system. http://www.redseafish.com/Prod126.asp the website says its good for up to 40 gallons, which means its actually good for 30. +1 to tossing the canisters and upgrading the skimmer. what size powerheads do you have? some more flow may help with the algae problems..

[don.ald]

i would cut the light period down to 5hrs a day or even less to battle the algae problem.
maybe even a day or two of no light to start with. cloudy day never hurts the coral or fish. just hurts the algae

[wickedfrags]

First, welcome to the board and the hobby.

Based on your post this is the main thing that caught my attention:

Originally Posted by Fellow

I eventually want to get a RO unit but it is not in the budget just yet.

Honestly an RO/DI unit should be your first purchase, no salt water tank should be sold without one (despite what testing your potable water may may reveal), assuming you want to have the tank long term. And no need to buy an expensive one - IME, RO/DI is one of the ONLY purchase I have made where you do not get what you pay for.

If one is not in the budget at this time - seriously evaluate if it makes sense to purchase supporting equipment to improve the system (which costs much more).

Otherwise, keep up the maintenance, looks like the tank should continue to improve based on your plan. Cheers.

[Murminator]

How much live rock do you have? It is ok to have HOB filters for flow but remove the sponges (nitrate factories) they are good to have to hide carbon bags in. The 1st way to get rid of high nitrates is to find out where it is coming from. I would say you bio-load sounds ok feeding, sounds ok, so maybe it's big clogged sponges or the substrate.I see you listed crushed coral as substrate which crushed coral i seen some that is like sand and i seen some that is like big chucks...think it called reef bones. If it is the bigger stuff it can really trap junk in it if it is I would S L O W L Y change it out couple scoop fulls a week. But the 1st thing to find out is where it is coming from water changes help but doesn't totally get rid of it. If you have a stinky basement full of garbage opening the window couple times a month will help it but doesn't get rid of it getting the garbage will get rid of it.

Also check see if some had maybe put a plenum or an undergravel filter I seen some oldschool freshwater guys do that that would put nitrates up