How do I keep my sand bed clean/ help with fish

[DJasak]

Hey guys-
So one of the many things that drew me to start reefing was the many vibrant colors and natural beauty a reef brings to the home that a freshwater tank simply cannot do. Granted my planted tank does bring a lot of peace, I wanted something new and a bigger challenge. Every tank I see has a nice clean substrate. I've had mine up and running for at least 3 months now and all of the sudden I'm getting diatoms like crazy. I've had a diatom bloom before but the snails I had cleaned it right up, over time tho those snails died as the hermits wanted their shells. I have small hermits of all varieties, a red sea star, and a few snails left but they can't keep up. This stuff is all over my glass, rock, sand, literally everything. My corals still seem to be happy but they're still just frags at this point. My LFS said that if I just leave it for a few weeks it will all turn green and is a sign that I'm doing well with my tank but I don't like how unsightly it looks. I have a 30 gallon that I'm using, I used a mixture of live sand, argonite, and phosphate neutralizing media. I cannot afford to do RO/DI water, but I try to make up for that with a nice quality conditioner (Prime by seachem), and the phosphate lowering media (also seachem) I am dosing with liquid Calcium, Iodide, and Strontium/Molybdenum and when I feed I use frozen brine shrimp or flakes or both soaked in Garlic guard, and Vitality (seachem) Please help guys! I want to get it back to a state where I can show it off! I have in the tank 1 Ocellaris Clown, 1 Cleaner Wrasse, 1 Banggai Cardinalfish, and an Orchid dottyback who doesn't seem to be doing well. Which brings me to my next question of what's wrong with this guy? Everybody else is doing great, He was fine when I first got him but a few weeks later he started to develop areas where his color just looked pale, and he has a couple tiny white spots around his head and mouth almost like Ich but the spots aren't perfect circular dots but small patches and almost crescent shaped. He did have ich at one point at which I took him out and put him in quarantine and treated with Super Ich Cure by API. It helped take care of the ich but the 2 or 3 spots around his head remain unchanged and the spots where he's gone pale remain unchanged. I was nervous to add him back to the main tank so I drained the quarantine, refilled and began treating with Copper Aid by Kordon, he's even been given hyposalinity dips. The hospital tank is at 1.018 and 82°F. It's been a grand total of 3, almost 4 weeks that he's been in quarantine (2 weeks API, 1 week Kordon) Still little to no change. Not sure what to do, his fins are a little ragged, I'm assuming from stress from everything he's gone through, I'm ready to give up and try again with a different fish but I really don't want to just flush him cause I find it cruel to just toss a fish down the toilet like the life means nothing. Would really like to get him back to health, any suggestions would be great! I currently just placed him back into main tank in hopes the cleaner wrasse will help pick anything off of him, plus I wanted to clean out the hospital tank and get some clean water in there.

[FraggledRock]

I need coffee before i can attack this! Brb

[phenom5]

Hey DJasak, welcome to RC!

Okay, first off, just a general tip. You may want to break up your posts into smaller chunks for the sake of readability. It'll help you get answers to your questions faster, because that first post was a little difficult to read.

As far as the sand goes. For one thing, 3 months is the blink of an eye. You may see different algaes come and go over time.
With that said, I think you are trying to attack the problem from the wrong angle. There are some cleanup crew that can help keep you sandbed clean, but you really want to look into the cause of the algae.

Do you have your water parameters?

I know you said you can't afford RO water, but you are really fighting an uphill battle without it. I would strongly recommend you look into getting RO, whether you are hauling it from somewhere or you setup a RO/DI unit at home (preferred IMO). The bottom line is that good source water is the very backbone of your reef. Saying you can't do RO water, but you'll make up for it with a conditioner is kind of like saying...Sorry, we can't afford to give you air that's safe to breathe, but here's an air freshener to make up for it.

[gone fishin]

I would post some water parameters, stop adding in the supplements, start using some RO/DI water.

Also go to the fish disease forum and read the stickies on ich. You are not treating ich if that is what your fish has.

[DJasak]

Thanks for the quick reply guys!

Phenom5 thanks for the tips, never really thought of RO lIke that, will definitely look more in to it. What about using the boxed up sea water? Good idea or no? Haven't really looked into the sea water option, just looking for something that's the most affordable. I live in a small apartment so there's not really room to set up an RO unit.

Are the gallons of distilled water u buy at the grocery store the same thing as RO water or no? Sorry about the long difficult post, I'll do better on breaking it up.

[DJasak]

And I only have the chem sticks to use as far as water parameters at the moment, I'll take a water sample to my LFS and post the results.

[phenom5]

The boxed seawater is fine, but more expensive.
Distilled water is better than RO, but again, more expensive.

You can usually get RO water at a LFS that specializes in saltwater, or there are kiosks out in front of grocery stores/ drug stores. Those can be okay, but they are only as good as the company that is maintaining them.

FWIW, adding a RO unit in an apartment can be done pretty easily. You just need to replace 1 drain piece, and figure out how to tap into the cold water supply (which can be a little tricky in an apartment, but it can be done). Just something to think about.

[DJasak]

Just watched the video by BRS on how to install RO/DI unit. Think I'm gonna do it! What liquid test kits should I buy when it comes to water parameters?

[phenom5]

For test kits, Nitrate and Salinity are the two I would watch closely....assuming you have hit 0 on ammonia and nitrite. Alkalinity and calcium if you are dosing for them (you really should not be dosing anything that you are not testing). Phosphate is important, but most hobby grade test kits do not test accurately to a low enough level to be useful. A Hanna checker would be you best bet for phosphate.

Your best bet may be a API reef test kit. API kits work fine, IME the more expensive kits (Elos, Salifert, etc) are typically easier to use and/ or easier to read, but the results of API is very comparable.

[DJasak]

3 questions:
If I drain my tank to refill with RO water, will that cause the tank to need to recycle or will the sand and LR have enough bacteria on it to be ok?

Is the water conditioner method ok for a month or so while I save the funds to buy an RO unit?

And should this help keep down or at least control the diatom issue? I like to keep a nice clean tank so that is my main focus. Especially the glass, including the background, and sand bed.

[DJasak]

My test strip says ammonia and nitrites are 0 and the nitrates are in the 20ppm range. Alkalinity between 120-180ppm and pH around 8.4

[DJasak]

I'll stop all dosing until I have the kits for them.

[username in use]

3 questions:
If I drain my tank to refill with RO water, will that cause the tank to need to recycle or will the sand and LR have enough bacteria on it to be ok?

Is the water conditioner method ok for a month or so while I save the funds to buy an RO unit?

And should this help keep down or at least control the diatom issue? I like to keep a nice clean tank so that is my main focus. Especially the glass, including the background, and sand bed.

I would find a source of distilled or RO water to do your water changes until you can get your own RO unit. Once you own one it is the cheapest method there is.

I would do 3 or 4 50% water changes over the course of 2 weeks with RO or Distilled water to clean up what you have.