losing all my sps

[cindyreef]

(08-15-2010 07:20 PM)Nihoa Wrote:  i did a 20g water change and the nitrates havent budged. im leery that the test is incorrect as the inverts (snails, coco worm, sexy shrimp) are all still fine. they should have bit it if the nitrates were actually over 50 but who knows.

im also being overrun by cyano and turf algae. i think the whole tank has gone to hell. what i dont understand is that the cyano is only in the display and not in the frag tank or sump?? the only difference between the tanks are the lighting and the flow which makes me think i must not have enough flow in the dt. that would explain the cyano but not the turf. i have no idea whats going on.

If the 20 gal w/c was the standard 10-15% of your water volume then its not surprising that your nitrates havent moved yet. How many gallons is your system? I read on a calculator somewhere it takes 6-10 twenty percent water changes to completely change over your water. Keep in mind that nitrates are still being created during that time too so it takes a while to get those nitrates down with w/c....
I remember I did a couple of 50% w/c in a two week period and the nitrates only moved some on the second w/c.
I also credit frequent w/c to eventually getting rid of cyano when I had it .

Note...I am not recommending you do this (50% w/c), just wanted to state as an example.

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Also for the turf algae... Get some red stripe snails from Derek. Man those guys can eat. They beat all the others hands down. I got 30 for my 135. Derek warned me not to get too many as they would starve. In less than 2 weeks ALL the algae was gone. I couldnt believe it! I had bought 100 astrea at a time before and they didnt do anything compared to these guys. But I think I should of listened to Derek and got fewer because I have lost some to probably no food

[Nihoa]

the water change was 20%. i have a ton of those snails but they dont touch turf algae. there arent any blennies, crabs or critters that touch the stuff cus its quite tough. you gotta remove it manually while eliminating whatever resource they are exploiting. before this nitrate spike i had 0 phos and 0 nit so i cant figure out why its doing so well.

[cindyreef]

The algae I call turf is soft and a brownish green. If yours is green and bristaly bunches( for lack of a better word) maybe its maidens hair and hopefully not bryopsis
http://www.melevsreef.com/id/algae.html

Ive had both. Alot of manual cleaning and actually scraping and cutting off the worst parts on the rock. A real PITA. Increasing my flow helped too. But its gone for the most part and when some pops up on one rock something eats it. The tangs will eat it sometimes only when its real short.

[Nihoa]

there has to be something in my water that is messing up the nitrate test. i took water over to christian and phos, nitrite, ammonia, all 0 but nitrate went off the chart in under 30 secs. if my nitrates were indeed > 100 ppm i wouldnt have any inverts left or anything else for that matter. christian thought he read something about carbon dosing messing up that particular test? anyone else hear anything about any of that? i think my skimmer was also maxed out for our increased water volume when we upgraded from the 30g so i added a second skimmer. the thing was hauling out some serious gunk the first night i plugged it in!

[cindyreef]

When it somes to the carbon dosing Im no help there. Yes Ive been doing this going on 15 yrs but its all been old school...none of the new stuff ..yet that is

But even if the carbon dosing is playing havoc with your nitrate tests I would still bet that your nitrates and phosphates are high for sure simply because of the algae, cyano and coral die off. And we all know phosphate wont show up because the algae consumes it as its available. Ive been there , thats for sure!

If I was in your shoes I would do more of w/c until I see a difference.

BTW:
Ive had lots of snails, inverts and even a large carpet anemone live through 80+ ppm before. For quite a while I might add (at least a couple of years I figure). This was back in my beginning years. Im a little embarrassed to admit it, but this was before sites like this to help me get on track.
On the bright side I gained experience.:


Please Dont lose faith....when you get this figured out we will all learn from your experience here and you will have a even more beautiful tank to show us.
Good Luck!