My tank setup and questions...I have some problems

[Peppip]

Okay so this is my tank and equipment.
i have a 29 gallon tank
quad T5 lighting with red, blue, coral and white lights with built in fan
penguin 150 hang on the back filter and the smaller penguin as well
unknown speed pump/jet for flow

i have had troubles with temp, ph and alkalinity as of late. i have moved the tank twice in the past year. i have gone through several other problems such as my heater breaking and sending some electricity into the tank as well as overheating the tank (discovered this when i was electrocuted recently). ive had calcium/mag problems (fixed). ive had aiptasia outbreaks (fixed with peppermint shrimp).

recently my filter has been working really slow, so i cleaned out the tubes. but it still wasnt fast enough, so today i pulled the entire filter out and found aiptasia living in it and cleaned that out and now my flow is a lot stronger. i guess one question is do these filters have to be cleaned out every so often? and is there a better filter i could get for a 30 gallon tank?

my temp gauge always reads at like 81 even with fans blowing on it and the window open with 50 degree temp outside, so i guess thats broken and i will get a digital one soon.

i have a flatworm outbreak on my frogspawn and ricordeas.

i have a lot of coral:
sunset monti, superman monti and another monti
eagle eye zoas (20 polyps), toxic waste zoas (30-40 polyps), fire and ice zoas (40-50 polyps), bam bam zoas (5 polyps)
5 different kinds of mushrooms - probably 25-30 total throughout tank
frogspawn - 1 head, currently splitting
neon green candy cane - 5 polyps
galaxia - 10+ polyps
yellow polyps with 40-50 polyps
brown/green paly with 40-50 polyps and evil eye paly with 30-40 polyps
3 kinds of ricordea for a total of 6 individual polyps
blueridge
duncan with 5 heads
2 acans - maybe 15 polyps total
green and red favia - 15-20 polyps
staghorn
daisy polyps (receded but growing back)
anthilea (spelling, big xenia looking thing) - 15-20 polyps
xenia (recedes to a nub every time i dose ph)
gorgonian - maybe 4 inches long
blasto that grows a tube (7 heads), and blasto without the tube (20-30 heads)
a rhodactis
colt with like 5 branches
hollywood stunner chalice (one inch with 15 green eyes - what the heck?!?!?!)

my staghorn has been steadily bleaching for weeks now. my blasto is not opening as much, my montis are growing slowly and slowly dying off in other areas, my xenia melted, star polyps receded, gorgonian comes out randomly but half the time sits there with unextended polyps. my acans arent extending or opening as much. my duncan has spit out 3 new heads in a month. my ricordea are splitting like crazy and growing new mouths. my palys, mushrooms and zoas wont stop spawning babies. my yellow polyps are growing like weeds. my galaxia from 1 polyp has 7 new polyps in 2-3 months.

i guess i really dont know what problem to fix first or how to fix half the problems. i have a lot of coral, and most do really well. growth has been slow as of late, and some things have been more sensative and dying. my temp says its too high, i put fans and it doesnt change. my ph is low but if i dose ph my alk raises and my sensative stuff dies off. if i let it sit without dosing, some stuff does better but then other stuff doesnt look happy.

i typically have a $20-60 month allowance and i buy small frags and grow them bigger. i cant instantly fix my problems but i would like suggestions. i know i need a sump and skimmer. i know i need a better temp gauge and a new heater. but seriously whats with the low ph? do i have too much coral? i even open a window not 2 feet away from the tank and it doesnt change. nothing stings eachother. i do water changes twice a month. i change the filters every 2-4 weeks. i top off the water daily with fresh water from tanks a lot. im tired of some things doing extremely well and others not doing so well.

soooo....any suggestions, hints, help, feedback, or questions are appreciated...thanks lol kind of a weird post trying to think of everything and look at everything i have and tell you whats going on

[acro-ed]

I see a few potential issues...

Do you have a protein skimmer? That is a lot of biomass for a small tank without a skimmer. Granted, you don't NEED a skimmer, but without one you should be on a very regular water change schedule.

Could one of the corals, such as the Galaxia, have stung something else causing a small nitrate spike, which in turn caused something else to lose tissue, which is turn caused a chain reaction of increasingly poorer water quality?

Last option is the flatworms. They are toxic when killed. Have you used anything to kill them? If so, were you sucking them out and doing small water changes to prevent the toxins from killing your livestock?

Overall though, I think you need to slow it down and not acquire anything else, at all, until things are completely stable and happy. One of the biggest mistakes people make with this hobby is moving too quickly and packing a tank full of fish/coral. You are probably best served by getting a skimmer (I won't tell you that it's 100% necessary, as I've had skimmerless tanks, but you would have to change your approach). You MUST get the temperature thing figured out. Maybe it isn't an issue, or maybe it is actually swinging 4 degrees per day and that is the cause of the problems. Get accurate test kits and make sure that your ALk and Ca are both stable. Don't worry about the pH, it will come in line when the other two are balanced.

Without seeing the tank in person I don't know that I could offer anymore input. Good luck with everything! Feel free to PM me if you want to talk some more.

-Ed

[Peppip]

Thank you Ed for posting a response! I'm very glad for your imput. I took action recently and bought a digital thermometer. As for the flatworms, I have not treated them with chemicals. I just bought a fish today to eat them so hoping for the best with that. No skimmer, working on buying one from Bill soon and I do water changes every week to two weeks. No nitrate spike, nothing has been stinging or anything. I also upgraded my filtration with some carbon that Bill recommended.

I guess I have crammed this little tank with as much coral as it can take and need to shift all my focus to just soft and do my water changes, upgrade equipment....then get a new tank and start all over again :P I love my little sea world and I just hate when things aren't happy. I'm in the process of trapping two problem fish and I also raised my light higher in hopes to stabilize the temp more. It has been between 78-81 degrees lately. If anyone else has any other suggestions, comments, concerns please let me know I wanna learn as much as I can. I haven't even fragged anything in ages because I've been so concerned about my stuff ;(

[romanr]

Wow! Huge bio-load. I'm with Ed, you need to add a small protein skimmer or step up your water changes in order to keep things stable with your combination of a relatively small water volume coupled with a high bio-load. if you decide to upgrade down the road a good skimmer and a bio-pellet reactor should command most of your filtration budget. These two pieces of equipment working in conjunction make a very efficient filtration system.

[Peppip]

lol guess i love my corals - funny thing is they all started with 1-7 polyps and took off...im getting a skimmer soon and bill advised me to add some carbon for added filtration. everything seems to be coming along slowly...and yeah i am doing more frequent water changes. got a special fish for the worms, seems to be working pretty good...my hot/cold tank is my concern now. i think my light is defective or something. it shoots up to 83-84 degrees during the day with two fans running...

[bsagecko]

Yeah t5 lighting should not be getting that hot (who makes it?). Something to make a note of: During the winter if it is shooting up that much you can simply turn the heat down in your house, but come summer you are going to need a lighting system that is putting out less heat on your water as you will find it expensive to try to cool it effectively past like ~3 degrees...(~3-5 degrees you can use evaporative cooling after that you are probably going to be looking at a chiller if you want something that is reliable) this is just a thought....

Also I agree with the bioload problems stated above...
Some more thoughts-
You might want to consider moving up to a 75g -yes it takes up more space but you also have more water to play with thus decreasing the bioload- used 75g can be had for $50-75...for small tank like 90g and under i would recommend the octopus NW series as they are budget skimmers that should work well for you.

I would shy away from SPS unless you have alot of time/money to learn how to do it right....

I was 16 years old when I started this hobby so I know how difficult it can be on a strict budget but it is worth every minute.

So things to look at:
Skimmer (reef octopus or equivalent)
Sump (20g long tanks can be had for $30 brand new and make good small sumps)
Mag drive pump (9.5)
Refractometer

Also google search for Randy's 2 part recipe shows you how to make cheap 2 part from calcium chloride pellets and baking soda...its super cheap and reliable...to help you get that back into balance...and remember used is usually always better as long as you are buying from reliable ppl.

[bsagecko]

Yeah t5 lighting should not be getting that hot (who makes it?). Something to make a note of: During the winter if it is shooting up that much you can simply turn the heat down in your house, but come summer you are going to need a lighting system that is putting out less heat on your water as you will find it expensive to try to cool it effectively past like ~3 degrees...(~3-5 degrees you can use evaporative cooling after that you are probably going to be looking at a chiller if you want something that is reliable) this is just a thought....

Also I agree with the bioload problems stated above...
Some more thoughts-
You might want to consider moving up to a 75g -yes it takes up more space but you also have more water to play with thus decreasing the bioload- used 75g can be had for $50-75...for small tank like 90g and under i would recommend the octopus NW series as they are budget skimmers that should work well for you.

I would shy away from SPS unless you have alot of time/money to learn how to do it right....

I was 16 years old when I started this hobby so I know how difficult it can be on a strict budget but it is worth every minute.

So things to look at:
Skimmer (reef octopus or equivalent)
Sump (20g long tanks can be had for $30 brand new and make good small sumps)
Mag drive pump (9.5)
Refractometer

Also google search for Randy's 2 part recipe shows you how to make cheap 2 part from calcium chloride pellets and baking soda...its super cheap and reliable...to help you get that back into balance...and remember used is usually always better as long as you are buying from reliable ppl.