Newbie tank trouble. What am i doing wrong?

[cmsurfr22]

I don't know what happened to my tank raised clarkii clownfish i came home yesterday and found a shrimp picking at him on the sand bed. All my params seem to be in check and i've been doing regular maintenance. Weekly 10% water changes. Cleaning sump.

My system has been up and running April 8th. That's when my cycle started using LR.

Right now i have 1 Pacific Blue Tang, 1 Clarkii clown, 1 blue green chromi and 3 blue purple mushrooms (these are doing great, fully opened every day). I've lost 3 blue green chromis to "Ammonia Burn", a medium rock covered in green star polyps ( don't know why ), and now a clown fish for an unknown reason.

I've been feeding nori daily to the tang, Ocean Nutrition's Prime Reef to everything else. About twice a week i feed 1 cube of frozen mysis shrimp.

I have about 200 snails, 4 emerald crabs, and 3 peppermint shrimp.

As far as equipment goes i have a 210 AGA Reef Ready. This is the Skimmer/Sump that i have: ?Skimmer/Sump (http://www.petpromenade.com/ProductDetail.jsp?LISTID=36AB0000-1087161091) . I have taken all the bio balls out. I have a turbo twist 36 watt that i run 24/7. i have two return pumps, quiet one 4000, and quiet one 4000HH. They create about 1000-1200 GPH flow. I have two Seio M1500 that are turned down a little.

I have 250 LBS of live rock and a 2.5" sand bed of bahama oolite carab sea arag alive.

I'm running 6 72" VHOs. 2 actinic blues that come on at 7:30 am and turn off at 8 pm. 2 50/50 and 2 actinic white that come on at 10 am and turn off at 6 pm.

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: .05
Nitrate: 10-25 (i've been slowly lowering this number by water changes)
Magnesium: 1290
Phosphate: 0
pH: 8.3
Alk: 3.77
kH: 10.6
Calcium: 440
Tank Temp: 76 in the am and 80 in the afternoon


What am i doing wrong that things keep dying

[Fusch13]

The first thing i notice is the nitrates...that could be enough to stress out a fish, specially if recently added....Do you run a skimmer?

[cmsurfr22]

I added the clown fish on may 22nd so it lasted about a month. I do run a skimmer it is built into the pro clear wet/dry. although i am not getting much skimmate out of it. about a half a gallon a month on a 210 gallon tank with 4 fish. i'm not sure if that is normal because my bio load isn't that much or what.

[Fusch13]

Yeah the bioload is definently low for a 210....now ive got to think....your getting high nitrates from something...could be dead snails...if your losing fish, its probably a good chance your losing snails...If they are not removed from tank it could cause a decent nitrate spike....which ultimately can cause stress on tank. There could be more wrong, but like i said the nitrates are definently high, mine are hardly detected by doing a test!

[cmsurfr22]

what's the fastest way to remove nitrates? water changes? but with what i have is how much can i do? i can do about 15% water change every three days with the equipment that i have. is that too much too fast or will that be ok?

[adnup]

A 4 degree temp swing is also not good. Try adding fans that come on with your actinic white's

[ACBlinky]

I agree 10-25ppm is high for nitrates, but I think it's more of a concern with corals than fish -- the GSP may have died as a result, but I know some people run FOWLR/FO tanks with much higher nitrates and have no fish deaths.
It's possible they were sick when you bought them. Fish caught with cyanide sometimes don't look sick, but die days or even weeks after capture. Sometimes new fish will die with no obvious symptoms of disease or poisoning, the LFS where I worked used to call it 'shipping stress'.
Were all your fish from the same source? If so, next time I'd try a different LFS and see if your luck changes.

[BTTRFLYGRL]

Ummmm....NitRITES should be 0....this will cause more stress than nitrates

You say you have a wet/dry, are their Bio-balls in it? If so they need to be removed slowly as they collect waste

You say your tank has been up and running since April 18, that's when your cycle started using LR......What does this mean?
When did you add the LR? Did you make sure your tank was completely cycled BEFORE adding fish?

Did you add your fish all at once or add them over time?

[CeeGee]

I can't believe only one person has called out the nitrite problem. ANY nitrite is bad it should always 0.

[Sk8r]

Check the tds of your topoff water. Check nitrate there.

[Fusch13]

So, .05 nitrites would kill fish? its so close to 0, thats crazy! Thats probably why no one mentioned it!

[cmsurfr22]

i do not have any bio balls in the wet/dry. the TDS reading of my RO top off is 1.

My cycle started on april 18th and about 4 weeks later my nitrites went from 4 to about .05. I did a 20% water change and a couple days later i added 2 TR clarkii clownfish and 4 blue/green cromis. all were about an inch long. several weeks later i added the tang, GSP, and shrooms.

on the salifert test kit it says that .1 nitrite is too high and i'm at .05. how do i lower my nitrites?

i've noticed some bubbles in my sand bad which i'm assuming is anerobic denitrification. the only thing else i could think of that would lead to high nitrates is the prefilter pad in my wet/dry and the air diffusing sponge also in the wet/dry.

[cmsurfr22]

i am losing some snails to my seio 1500s they keep getting stuck on the intakes. when i turn the power head off the shells drop and they are empty....i don't know what to do about this? in about a month i've lost about 10 snails.

[Sk8r]

And their biomass could account for your nitrates, right there. Get a physical shield on those intakes, be it gutter guard or plastic embroidery canvas.

[ERICN]

Another thing it might be is the sump you said in first statement that you regularly clean your sump, I would not do this you also said you didn't run the bio balls that is good I hope you have some live rock in there or something I think you might be creating small cycles if you are cleaning your sump. I would drop some cheato in there and a light and pretty much NEVER clean it all the algae on the rocks and glass in there is your filter pretty much if I sound wrong or crazy someone plz chime in.

[cmsurfr22]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7594323#post7594323 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sk8r
And their biomass could account for your nitrates, right there. Get a physical shield on those intakes, be it gutter guard or plastic embroidery canvas.

how do i make a make a guard for a seio powerhead?

[cmsurfr22]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7594350#post7594350 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ERICN
Another thing it might be is the sump you said in first statement that you regularly clean your sump, I would not do this you also said you didn't run the bio balls that is good I hope you have some live rock in there or something I think you might be creating small cycles if you are cleaning your sump. I would drop some cheato in there and a light and pretty much NEVER clean it all the algae on the rocks and glass in there is your filter pretty much if I sound wrong or crazy someone plz chime in.

i regularly clean the prefilter pad that sits in the trickle tray of the wet dry and the air difusing sponge. if i don't clean these they get clogged and start to restrict flow through the wet/dry.

[bmrigs]

There is no reason to have 200 snails in a tank. Thats alot of bio-load and its hard to keep track of when they die and where at in the tank. I have 10 cerith snails and 1 mexican turbo in my 180. Keeps everything in control.

[cmsurfr22]

200 is too many? i thought the norm was 1 snail per gallon? i still have a ton of diatoms in my tank....

[ERICN]

As long as all your cleaning is the pads your cool man, the snails im not sure on if you look at most reef packages they also will recommend a couple hundred for a tank that size. I have a 150 and have about 20 large snails and I don't think they doing good enough job.

[Biggie]

Nitrates look high to me. You might check for a grounding problem in your equipment as well. Could be stressing out your tank and not even know it. Nitrates first though. Clowns are hearty, makes no sense otherwise.

[johnjjk]

From what I have read your cycle is not complete as you are detecing Nitrites. These should be 0. Once a tank is "cycled" NO2 should be 0. The only other thing is your bio-load is too large for the animals you have in the tank. It will adjust given time.

[Amy83820]

I would definitely worry about the nitrItes more so than your nitrAtes. That could have killed the coral or the fish. I don't think the nirtrates killed the fish. I've seen people have a crazy amount of them (like 50-70ppm) in their FOWLR tanks (i'm NOT endorsing this.....i'm just saying it's doubtful 15-20 killed a clown). I have a reef tank and my nitrates run around 10-15. They have gotten less over time.
What did the clown's skin look like when you found it? Did it have any sort of film on it? Did it's skin look cloudy at all? Was it's slime coat coming off?