Water changes??????????

deadrock

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#1
Would 5 gallons a day be excessive on a 29g bio cube. Have some bad algae issues, partly due too an old hqi bulb and mainly because lack of maintenance. Upgrading my lights to a black box led on Friday. I haven't even thrown a test on the water, I don't wanna know.

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neil82

Sting ray
M.A.S.C Club Member
#2
I would try to diversify your approach with using gfo and carbon, increase flow, reduce light. Weekly water changes are probably sufficient. 5 or 10 gallons at a time. That's my 2 cents.
 

deadrock

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#3
I am running carbon and gfo. I'm positive my water quality is bad. High nit and phosphate . I'm just wondering if 5 gallons a day is too much.
 

deadrock

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#6
Ok so I did some research and found that there will be no Ill effects from me doing this, I'm matching temp and salinity of course, however everything else is going to be different. In that stand point I am kinda pushing it , so for the first few WC I may wait a day in-between WC . But after that it will be a 5g water change every day until my water quality is back to where it is supposed to be. After I run out of reef crystals I'm not sure what brand of salt I will be switching too. I may just stick with it for awhile. Unless you guys have a suggestion of which salt I should switch to. TIA
 
#7
RODI? Is that a dead clown fish? That tank should be drained, cleaned and possible began again. IMO

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deadrock

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#8
timnem70;n666329 said:
RODI? Is that a dead clown fish? That tank should be drained, cleaned and possible began again. IMO

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It's not dead and I probably deserve what you said but I've been a member of this community for a long time, work and life has gotten in the way of my tank lately. I'm confused why you don't have a member badge with such strong opinions.maybe you haven't contributed to this community the way you should.imo
 

jda123

Dolphin
M.A.S.C Club Member
#9
You can do 5g a day. It isn't like it is expensive. If you have no coral, then kill the lights for a few weeks.

BTW - there is no chance that an old HQI bulb did this... it is the bad water quality. Not sure that a black box is an upgrade to anything, but it will also grow the same algae if your N and P are high.
 

Irishman

Tang
M.A.S.C Club Member
#10
First place I would check would be TDS in your RODI. Next would be too much light and over feeding. If you don't have any corals in there yet there is no use for strong lights.

You can get some CUC to trim back the algae, or convert a HOB filter to a refugium to help with high phosphates and nitrates. The other thing you can do is a black out period which is 3 days with no light in the tank what so ever.

I use fritz salt as well, a little easy on the pocket book and I usually stock up on boxes when sales go on.


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deadrock

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#11
jda123;n666336 said:
You can do 5g a day. It isn't like it is expensive. If you have no coral, then kill the lights for a few weeks.

BTW - there is no chance that an old HQI bulb did this... it is the bad water quality. Not sure that a black box is an upgrade to anything, but it will also grow the same algae if your N and P are high.
I definitely don't believe the old hqi is the cause, my lack of maintenance is the major contributor to this problem. I'm working to correct my neglegence . However an old hqi doesn't help. So I'm working on the corrections to this problem which was mainly caused by myself. Fritz salt seems to be a popular thing so I am going to look into it and possibly convert to them. Unfortunately I'm way out east so it's hard to get to the LFS for me sometimes. iorc is easy to get to and decent mix. Maybe I should buy larger quantities lol
 

Sctip

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
M.A.S.C. B.O.D.
#12
I have used IO Reef Crystals and I have no complaints. I used Fritz for my QT when I can find it on sale.

Biggest advise I could give is to remember to go slow, five gallons shouldn't be to much to do, maybe once a week until your tank comes back. I only say this because when I came back from deployment one time, I tried to rush it back to health and ended up doing more damage than good. Welcome back, and good luck.

Slow, slow, slow is what we all know but, ignore it when it's most important....
 

TheRealChrisBrown

Reef Shark
M.A.S.C Club Member
ex-officio
#13
Maybe do a near full reset, if the Clowns are your only life in there. Take out the live rock and "cook it" (Read post #11 on this thread: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=437342). Then I'd remove all of the sand and start with new. Clean the entire tank really well and start with 29g of freshly mixed SW. You can place some PVC pipes in for the clowns to swim and hide in while your rock is cooking. Once all of the filter media is replaced I'd add some bacteria in a bottle (I like Microbacter7) per the dosing instructions. The "cooking" process is supposed to undue built up phosphate and organic matter and reset your rock. It takes a fair amount of time though, as the directions say you must be patient. I think the clowns are hardy enough to withstand a 100% water change, especially if you acclimate them as if they were new.

Just a thought. Since you were going to do 5g a day, new lights, GFO and carbon, etc, your tank was going to go through a big change anyway. Maybe just get in front of it and do it all at once. I did the rock cooking on my LR about 2 years ago using those directions and I felt like it helped tremendously.
 

deadrock

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#14
These are great suggestions, I have been thinking about removing all of my LR, but I'm scared to to mess with the substrate. This is what has caused all of my crashes in the past. PVC and clay pots are great for my og clown. I am probably going to do so. I'm probably not going to do anything with my substrate due to my own superstition lol. You guys have been super helpful, thank you so much
 

deadrock

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#15
Irishman;n666337 said:
First place I would check would be TDS in your RODI. Next would be too much light and over feeding. If you don't have any corals in there yet there is no use for strong lights.

You can get some CUC to trim back the algae, or convert a HOB filter to a refugium to help with high phosphates and nitrates. The other thing you can do is a black out period which is 3 days with no light in the tank what so ever.

I use fritz salt as well, a little easy on the pocket book and I usually stock up on boxes when sales go on.


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I am not currently using my rodi , I know bad bad bad my tap here is high in cal and TDS but my tank is higher lol without a doubt. I will be setting up my 5 stage very soon. Not sure what the TDS will be after sitting, before it read 0 . I may need to change some elements. I will post when it is running.
 

Fitz19d

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#17
deadrock;n666331 said:
It's not dead and I probably deserve what you said but I've been a member of this community for a long time, work and life has gotten in the way of my tank lately. I'm confused why you don't have a member badge with such strong opinions.maybe you haven't contributed to this community the way you should.imo
Wtf is wrong with you. Nothing He said unless it was edited out is offensive. Hes right if its only the clown and rock. You are best putting clowns in Some tank waer while you drain the entire tank, scrub the rock clean, possibly replace sand, then refill with fresh seawater and then continue weekly changes and possibly gfo inback.

With that small of a tank the 100% water change is the quick and easiest fix. If you had a huge tank that would be more difficult and slowly rehabbing would be your only easy option.


I don't think small refugiums work that great on that side tank. Water changes is you single best up keep paired with maybe a little gfo or possibly a tiny algae scrubber depending on space
 

Fitz19d

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#18
deadrock;n666338 said:
I definitely don't believe the old hqi is the cause, my lack of maintenance is the major contributor to this problem. I'm working to correct my neglegence . However an old hqi doesn't help. So I'm working on the corrections to this problem which was mainly caused by myself. Fritz salt seems to be a popular thing so I am going to look into it and possibly convert to them. Unfortunately I'm way out east so it's hard to get to the LFS for me sometimes. iorc is easy to get to and decent mix. Maybe I should buy larger quantities lol
While buying local is good. Free shipping is common these days. Watch for salt sales on drs foster smith, brs etc or coupon codes then buy 3 or 4 boxes. At 5g a week would last a long time and no drive into town.
 

jda123

Dolphin
M.A.S.C Club Member
#19
If you are going to change a lot of water, then mix up a big batch and take a little from it at a time. Big batches are more consistent than little batches. A 50G bag of IO or RC in a 44G brute trash can mixes up perfectly for a mixed reef. You can add a bit of dowflake and muratic acid to it to make it perfect for a SPS tank. IO is the best salt on the market IMO - most consistent and also not expensive. You might need to doctor it a bit if you have a stony tank, but the same doctoring provides the same results every time.

BTW - 100% water change will not solve all of your problems. The rock and sand will have phosphate bound to the surface that will release to equilibrium as the clean water is added. Eventually, you can get it all out. This is particularly a problem with dry/dead rock tanks but also tanks that have been neglected a bit. Neglected ocean-based rock, which likely came from the ocean phosphate free, will usually still only have a fraction of the phosphates that dry/dead rock has. ...so you will have to keep on changing water to get it all out, not just a few times.
 

Fitz19d

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#20
Yeap, was why I said replacing sand might be in order. Pretty cheap fix. Clean off the rocks is better than leaving it as is. Even if you have to do a few like 75 or 100% water changes, not too expensive, like $8 in salt + water.
 
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