The precipitation seems to have come to a halt.
SPS are still bleaching out, some parts are getting covered with an algae film which i find disturbing.
The RBT anemone is also looking pretty pale.
All symptoms seem to point towards having to clean water.
And that while i havent used GFO since a month :O
Hanna checker reads 0 or close to 0 for phosphorus but i stopped using GFO for at least a month by now.
I also pulled the biopellets from the reactor and put em in a mesh bag that i shake 2x a day. Maybe the Biopellets work more efficient in he mesh bag???
Skimmer barely pulls anything out of the water. (after a week theres like 5mm almost clear water in the cup. Cleaned the skimmer but nothing changed.
Anyway. Salinity at about 1027 now, will keep lowering it for the next week till at 1025.
Hope things stabilise soon.
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September 22, 2015 14:17
Still having major precipitation problems. Have to clean all pumps and filters every week before they jam. (Somehow after 2 years suddenly my tank starts to fall apart?)
alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, phosphates and nitrates seem fine. Bought new testkits and testing solutions. parameters are ok....
Some acro's are starting to bleach. (on random spots)
My bonsai acro is a goner. Never really thrived, but this was the final blow.
Even the pocillopora is starting to show signs of bleaching
Just a minute ago i checked salinity.......39ppt!
only thing i can think of is that i double dosed salt in mixing container or something.
Anyway. I really hope this is what causes all my trouble so i can finally do something about it. I'm sick of doing 4 hour maintenance every week. (Looks like i need to pull out the sump again because there is like 1cm layer of dust/sand on the bottom)
Luckily fish and invertebrates are still doing fine!
Will be lowering salinity over the next 2 weeks by doing some water changes
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September 18, 2015 16:09
Sump area nice and clean again.
Somehow i had a calcium deposit issue, clogging up all pumps, reactors and coating the hoses.
No solid layer, just like loose sand all over the sump.
I dosed some big amounts of excessive Magnesium supplement a while ago. (bad testkit) that may have caused the precipitation?
Took me about 4 hours to clean that crap out.
Anyway, hope it stays nice and clean from now on..
Things have stabilised since returning to normal Biopellets. (thank god)
Still had some problems with brown and not growing spa corals.
Also the anemone shrinking every evening. (i know its normal they do that sometimes)
Looks really sad. Daytime its not as fluffy as i would like either.
I put 2 Ati T5 (Coral plus) bulbs over to see if it would help. Although the tank is more evenly lit, it didn't help much in terms of SPS color.
So one day i even saw my green slimer getting pale. WTF?
So i thought hmm.. maybe i'm starving the corals after all?
Since 2 weeks i am back to dosing Korallen Zucht AA, Phol's Xtra and CV.
To my supprise it didn't cause massive algae outbreaks and don't really have to clean the glass more often.
SPS colors are slowly getting better an the Anemone isn't deflating anymore!
Hurray! seems like i found the problem!
All In One Biopellets still doing NOTHING against phosphates, it seems to even add Phosphates to a stable 0.08.......
Changed GFO again, 1 day low, then within a week its back to 0.08.
I've had undetectable phosphates for a year. and now all of a sudden i have huge phosphate problems and algae growing everywhere -.-
Wasting big money on GFO.
Skimmer doing fine again, ventury was clogged with some kind of plastic? no id where it came from.
I really start to believe AIO pellets are a BIG mistake....Tank is slowly crashing.....
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November 3, 2014 12:16
So.... After 3 months still having phosphate issues.
When i change out GFO, first 1 to 2 days phosphates drop to an acceptable lvl of 0 to 0.02 ppm Po4
at day 4 its back to 0.08+!
i even changed GFO for 350ml on my 250L tank! didn't last a week!
brown algae on sandbed, hair algae on live rock is starting to form...
i had my tank at 0ppb phosphorus (hanna checker) for over a year, changing out GFO about once every 2 months. now i have to change GFO at least 1x per week. (costing me about 40 euro's of GFO every month!)
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October 29, 2014 12:59
Found the decomposed sand sifting seastar in the sandbed Finally.... so thats out... Wont try that again -.-
Finally had phosphates down, now rising again.... I blame the skimmer.
After a good cleaning the skimmer skims great for about 1 to 2 weeks, after that it just completely stops creating skimmate. Only completely cleaning the skimmer pump gets it back in action...
Ventury is clean as can be, needle wheel doesn't seem to be clogged or anything. WTF!
This skimmer is pissing me off big time!
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September 23, 2014 12:38
Phosphates still on the high end... (0.08)
have tripled the amount of gfo but still after 2 weeks no change....
some algae slowly starting to show.
everything else seems normal, maybe the live rock has been absorbing phosphates for a while -.-
Could also be my sand sifting starfish decomposing under a rock -.- (never spotted it after day 1......
Corals still doing fine, blue/purple acro's show more brown, only the tips are bright colored
put up a frag rack on the back wall, fragged 5 pieces of birdsnest coral.
Had a slight bleaching thing going on after replacing 40ml rowaphos..... i pulled out half of this stuff and with less then 20ml of it i still read 0 ppb phosphorus, looks like the biopellets seem to do a good job keeping phosphates down. (i feed 1 cube of frozen food every day, including wastewater)
Things have stabilized again, basic paramaters are rock solid now and it begins to show on the acro's! good growth and great color! the purple bonsai acro is even getting its intense purple color back! (very slowly)
Since i added a Dwarf angelfish to the tank the Goniopora hasn't opened, i brought it back to the store as i knew it wouldn't survive very long in this condition.
Other corals are left alone by the Dwarf angel, even my clam.
The clamtle's man did get eaten for 30% by a crab though!, but its regenerating fast and looking very healthy!
i have like 100 crabs in the live rock, most are emerald crabs, but some are vicious killers. one time i couldn't find my elegance coral anymore, i found it pulled under a rock by a crab eating it! (tissue was floating around in the tank) i pulled it from under the rock and it looked lost, put it on an open spot in the sandbed and its recovering, only at night it shrinks and u can see the tissue damage.
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April 17, 2014 14:19
A light brown film has formed on the substrate (barely visible), my skimmer hasn't been skimming much lately, i had created a stand in the sump for the skimmer, i think the stand is to high, this has probably caused or at least contributed to the bacterial film on the substrate. Removed the skimmer stand and set water outlet all open, it seems to be skimming again, also topped up the Bio-pellet reactor with a different brand bio-pellets, maybe this helps with biodiversity. Got approximately 200ml bio-pellets online now.
The Pterapogon Kauderni is doing great, is taking both dry and frozen food eagerly.
The Ampherion Ocellaris is still pretty shy, hasn't eaten for the first 2 days, now he's taking frozen food, but still not much, he looks healthy though, will wait another week to observe for any disease till i let the other ocelarris join him.
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October 8, 2013 15:53