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I have had this tank for over a year + About 4mo ago i had to qt my rocks to do hypo in my main tank as they all got ick from a new fish, Anyways the rocks i think died off as i didnt think to monitor them, I mean they are getting there color back and seeing things on them just not like before!

I used to change 8gal a mo before and had 4 more fish then now i got 7 less fish and i am doing about 12-16 gal a week and after a wk my ammonia is just under 0.25 and my nitrates are usally off the chart! I also added a skimmer and extra power head, cut back on feeding alot, I dont know what else to do and dont understand why this is happing but its getting old!

The tank is a 75 gal about 130lb of rock, 120lb sand play, 4 power heads fliping the tank 13x hr, junk skimmer half a cup a week, I have a percula clown, baby yellow clown, sixline, flame angle, along with a puffer about 3-4inches

Before i had the same setup but without the skimmer and had 2 firefish,2 sand gobys, another clown, blenny, yellow tang, but they all died from ick but before my tank was easy and in line now its out of control why???

I am looking for a idea of why? Is it the rocks or maybe somthing else that i am overlooking? i mean i got less fish and more water changes but 100x bad water dont get it!

also i have no nitries, ph 8.3, just tons of nitrates and trace ammonia! thanks and sorry so long just wanted to make a point and be clear!

also just a side note i have been getting tons of brownish green like hair alage growing on my rocks and walls that i have to brush off never had that before either

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

What type of lights do you have? How long are they on for each day?

What test kits are you using? Are they old? hmm....This is a good question

-Josh

First off, what type of puffer do you have now?

Second your tank was well overstocked when you started having troubles and that was probably the reason for your fish getting sick and dying. Depending on the type of puffer, you may or may not be overstocked now. Hopefully you have a puffer that stays relatively small.

Personally if nitrates are out of hand I'd do more and larger water changes then you are currently doing and feed even less. Maybe just feed one small feeding every other day for a while until things get back to normal. Make sure you are getting the gravel vac'd.

The skimmer is helping, so keep cleaning it frequently, along with any mechanical filters. Other things you can do is to test your make up water before and after you add salt. Especially if you are only using tap water for water changes. If you find nitrates and ammonia in the tap water or after you add salt then you may need to buy an RO/DI unit or switch salt brands respectively. Definitely don't add more fish until you get things straightened out. The green and brown algaes are in response to elevated nutrient levels, so that will be expected until you clean up the water. Don't try to buy a fish or anything to eat it. Adding more fish would be a bad idea, just pull out what you can.

As for why, elevated nitrates are the end products of decomposing organics, like fish or other animals, fish waste, food, and things like that. A die off in your rock would have caused elevated ammonia first, which would eventually get turned into nitrates. That could have been the case if you didn't keep the temperature right or keep the water moving and clean in the container you kept the live rock in while doing the hyposalinity treatment. Whatever happened, the elevated nitrates aren't because you have less fish, more water changes, and a skimmer.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

lighting is 6 t5 bubls i only run 2-4 for about 8-10hrs a day so its usally less then 1 watt per gallon!

Puffer is a porcpine, i had him for about a year has only grown about 3/4 to a inch, I do understand in the wild they get huge!

Some good points about nitrates! But this has been on going for 4 mo so i cant beleive my rocks are doing it! 2nd i fish my puffer every 3 days a little bit only what he eats and i make sure no food is wasted or scaps, other fish 1 every 2 days again only what they can eat!

Water chages in my 75 gallon there is prolly about 40-55 gal of water due to the rocks and with me changing 16gal a week that means in a mo all water was change and that really seems out of hand!

The ammmonia i see after a wk or 2 is only about 0.15 so thats not much but i know its not good and it has been like this for the last 4mo.

So i take it with it being like this my rocks are working then right? As i was thinking about adding a few rocks?

I wont add any fish but i will soon add a blenny i think to help no other fish as of now wanted!

I was thinking about a few more crabs as i only have about 15 maybe add like 30 more, i have no snails they just get eatten!

The test kit is older but i have had 3 different pet stores test and have same results so i think i am safe on that one?

I just cant see this being a 4 mo. problem and my tank is not over stocked!!! I used to have way more fish (7)and it was fine! The ick came from a coral beauty that we added and the flame fought with it and after 6 hrs we started seeing spots it wasent due to to many fish!

Before the ick i had this tank up and running for about 8mo with no problems with 7 more fish!!! I just dont get it!

I will however do the water check after i mix the salt maybe that is it?

Edit fresh made saltwater with tap and io salt, 1.023 salt, ph8.3, nitries0, ammonia 0.15, nitrates 10

so think this might be a major factor? That 0.15 ammonia is being converted rate away to nitrates and making it go way up?

Now i cant do ro water so what do i do?????????????

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

This was, from what you were telling us, what I thought was most likely. It's easy for tank parameters to get out of hand when your source water or salt mix is bad. But....

...we still don't know what the problem is. You have to test both plain tap without salt AND tap with salt. That's very important. Report back with the findings.

If the problem is tap you have no choice IMO but to either procure some purified water from some source(personal RO/DI, store bought RO, premixed saltwater some companies make), or unfortunately dump the setup and not keep fish as it's mildly cruel to put them under such stresses.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

I thought nitrate dont bother fish?

I know its the tap as i just switched from red sea to instant ocean!

What about a Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Tap Water Filter i used it before on my nano reef a few years ago i know it helped but i was still showing like 10p nitrate on my nano but i figure that was because it was a 7gallon with a clown? Hear is a link to it let me know and thanks alot for your help

http://www.bigalsonline.com/BigAlsUS/ctl3684/cp19175/si1380839/cl0/aquariumpharmaceuticalstapwaterfilter

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

I know its the tap as i just switched from red sea to instant ocean!

Oh, you gotta tell me things like that.

Low nitrates don't bother fish. High nitrates will slowly cause your fish to die. Especially saltwater fish. Most especially sensitive salt water fish. Most ocean environments don't contain nitrates at more than 1ppm. saying that 10-15 ppm of nitrate is ok is stretching it a bit IMO, beyond that is dangerous to the fish. Seeing how your tap water starts out on the high end of the spectrum and will only get worse, it's a bad situation.

IMO you shouldn't mess around with the tap water filter. It works, and is cheap to start up, but as soon as you replace the filter cartridge twice you already exceed the cost of a decent RO unit. You'll be purifying a lot of water just to get your nitrates under control, then think about regular water changes over the next couple years. I think I worked out the price per gallon of each and my RO/DI is about 8-10c per gallon, and the tap water filter was around 30-40c per gallon(filter changes every 100 gallons, which in your case you'd be lucky to get 50g out of it due to poor quality water). I bought my RO unit from this guy]http://cgi.ebay.com/AQUA-SAFE-AQUARIUM-REVERSE-OSMOSIS-WATER-FILTER_W0QQitemZ150063175338QQihZ005QQcategoryZ20684QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem[/link] on ebay over a year ago, still with good results. I couldn't find a better RO unit for the money when I was shopping around. If you buy [link=this package with replacement filters to last a LOOOOONG time then your cost per gallon is about 3.8c per gallon plus actual cost of the amount of tap water used. Pretty cheap. You also get a free TDS meter, which will help you to know when exactly filters need changing. and if you do order one of those make sure you get the faucet or hose adapter if you aren't allowed to plumb directly into the your pipes at home.

As they say...you can only lead a horse to water...in this case it's nice and pure.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Nitrates will most definitely kill fish. I keep the nitrates on my freshwater tanks below 20 and saltwater fish tend to be more sensitive so I would imagine under 10 and down near 5 would be better. On my nano I keep the nitrates at untestable or the feather dusters and other critters refuse to come out and the algae goes nuts.

I have an aqua-safe ro system off ebay. Everyone I asked recommended them. Problem is we aren't allowed to set it up at the apartment according to the managers. I have it running at my mom's house because I'm already there daily to take care of my horses but hauling water from there is a bit of a pain. It does work well I just can't use it effectively. Then I was getting RO refills from the grocery store but it contains a slight bit of phosphate so since I have only a 20g I'm buying gallon jugs of distilled. Hopefully we're moving to a house by spring and I won't have water problems anymore.

What about your water bill? Those things waste so much water from what i was told and that is the only reason i wont buy one! I live at home and my mom would go crazy with that bill lol, I think buying bottle water would be cheaper but somone let me know about these things please!

O yeah my nitrate have been at about 60-100+ for the past 3mo. so need to do sumthing!

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

I suppose the cost depends a bit on where you live but I found here in Iowa it came out cheaper per gallon to do an RO unit even with tapwater costs than to buy any type of bottled water. My mom is on wellwater though and so is the new house we're thinking of getting. That means there will be no water cost so long as we don't use too much water and run out. The next cheapest and possibly overall cheapest depending on how much you pay for tapwater would be RO refills. Many grocery stores(even small ones) are putting in refill stations. You take in your own containers or buy one of there's and pay $.25 per gallon to fill up the containers with RO water. Some fish stores will also sell you RO water for about the same price if they have a system setup and most stores selling saltwater fish and supplies have an RO system. Occasionally these systems are not maintained perfectly or while bigger aren't as good as what you can buy for your own use so will contain a small level of contaminants. It's still a huge improvement over tapwater though and usually all I test is a small amount of phosphate which won't hurt the fish but will make it easier for algae to grow. Chances are your tapwater already contains well over the amount of phosphate you'll have left from any RO system.

Buying bottled water or going to the store for RO water is not cheaper in the long run. It's probably 2 or 3 times as expensive. I already told you how much it costs to run your own RO unit. It's dirt cheap. Tell your mom you'll pay for the 2c per gallon of tap water you use. You'll still be saving money over the 25c the store charges plus gas cost and hassle. of lugging water around. To bring those levels of nitrates down you'll need to be doing a couple 25-33% water changes a week(not to mention top off). Imagine carrying home 40-50G of RO water from the store once a week for the next 3-4 weeks. That's pretty silly. It shouldn't even be a consideration.

If waste water is such an issue save the majority of it for watering house plants or the numerous other things you can do with it.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Okay towards mattyboombatty i did my math and with a ro unit costing under 150 , tap unit 30 bucks, and bottle water costing 25cents plus 100 for gas witch is good enough also figuring the cost of filters and ect this is what i got

bottle 47cents a gallon
tap filter 30cents a gallon
ro system 44 cents a gallon

This was figured on using 540 gallons a yr!

I dont see how a ro would be good sounds like a pain along with getting bottled but i know the tap thing sucks so i donno

My water tap water cost 0.062 a gallon so that is almost 5 cents for 8 gallons i donno what to do!

I talked with my mom and we worked that out but ro dont sound cheap! Let me know what you think, Thanks, Al

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

This is how you determine cost of a water purifier:

Without changing filters once, an RO unit will purify about 1100 gallons of water. With shipping, the unit with no extra filters costs 130. 130/1100 = $0.12 plus tap makes it 13 cents per gallon. The RO unit then gets cheaper because you only have to replace pre filters and DI resin. The next round may cost you $50(3 prefilters at 9 apeice DI resin at 8-10, 13-15 shipping) to replace DI resin and prefilters(RO membranes last a very long time) so that's 50/1100 = 0.045 plus tap is 5-6 cents per gallon.

The tap water filter costs 30 + shipping and gives you about 60 gallons of pure water. That's $0.50 per gallon. Remember, like I said with water as nasty as yours there's no way you'll get 100 pure gallons of water out of it. 50-60 tops.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Okay so i figured it out red sea test kits are junk peroid along with tetra kits!

My tap water is 0 ammonia but i do have 10ppm of nitrates so somthing else is going on in my tank! Please help!!!

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

Did you test your tank water with the new test kits? And BTW what test kits are you using now?

If your tank water is still bad then you will still need a clean source of makeup water to correct the problem. That's just the case.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

what do you all think about amquel? Would this help me sense i have tap water or what?

I cant do ro or any of that we have talked and it aint happing! I have been doing saltwater for around 4yrs and always used tap! no reason to switch now just have to learn how to deal with it! now on my nano i used bottle for a while then sold the tank!

I dont think this problem is from the tap water, i think its from the rock die off and my girl friend over feeding and it just fanily cought up!

I donno what do you all think about that product thanks

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

I'd use prime before amquel. If your tapwater contains nitrates you are going to have to do tons of water changes frequently to keep the nitrates low. It's better than nothing but it's still going to cause algae blooms and you'll likely never see 0ppm nitrate unless you use a large refugium full of macro. You need to do something though or your going to have a dead tank soon.

i dont understand why i would have a dead tank???

My water is good besides nitrates are down to 10 now but usally 20

Also i was reading about maybe a sump or sumthing but i never really got into it or understood it that much! Would you tell me in your own words short what it will do and how in your own words?

I donno i will bring up ro in a cuple of days to my women as i am thinking alot about getting this unit http://www.bigalsonline.com/BigAlsUS/ctl3684/cp18565/si1378683/cl0/coralifepurefloiiro50gpd3canister from what i have been reading it dont sound bad and wont cost much so i donno

Hears a link to my tank if you all want to see how much i cleaned it up this week last week it was bad but i cleaned the rocks and have been changing water like crazy! Check it out http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2474061/2

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

Sumps are basically an area that holds more water and gives more flow and filtration. You can add a deep sand bed, live rock, macroaglae and light and call it a refugium. That will help reduce the nitrates naturally. You need a HOB overflow or a hole drilled in your tank, and a return pump that is equal to or lesser than how many gallons per hour the overflow can handle. For size, I recommend at least 1/3 the volume of your display for a sump, smaller will be more likely to overflow, and will be too small to be considered useful. Bigger is always better in this case.

If I had the choice over again, I'd still go with the aquasafe guy on ebay for the RO/DI system that I linked to a few posts back. It's cheaper than that unit you linked and better too(it's got DI). Just my opinion, trying to save you a couple bucks since that seems what the holdup is with getting an RO unit.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Thanks for that info,

I think the ro i am looking at has a di unit on it! its 4 stages and 3 canister is a di filter i thought and thats what the web site says!

The one on ebay are you sure its not a knock off how long you had it and how well does it work and what about filters???

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2