dieselgrk
09/15/2011, 10:45 AM
6 months ago I took everything out of a bacterial driven 120 gallon aquarium and put it into a new 100 gallon with a significantly smaller sump. I would guess my total water volume dropped by approx 50 gallons. prior to the change over my nitrates and phosphate (Hanna checker) were un detectible and my bio load was LARGE as I had many, many fish. once everything was switched over to the new tank (same live rock, corals, fish, and water, with NEW remote deep sand bed) my n & p continued to stay undetectable but one month into the new tank I developed a brown slime algea of sorts that killed most my corals. I suspect it was an ammonia spike but not certain as I never tested for it. also I was dosing 3ml of vodka and my skimmer was producing a considerable amount of skimmate. the algae persisted for months. fast forward 3 months and I had a cotastrafy where all my fish came down with ich and 9 of them died in a matter of 3 days. up to this point my n & p were still undetectable. within days of most my fish dying the troublesome algae dissapreaed and my few corals I had left started rebounding and doing much better. what confuses me is as soon as my fish died and my tank began doing better my n & p shot up to 15n and .06p!!! also my skimmate production decreased dramatically and the 3ml of vodka had to be reduced to 1ml. so why the shift in n&p? I figured with less fish and less feeding n &p would be the least of my issues now!!!!
any ideas?
any ideas?