[Roscovitch]

Originally Posted by Roscovitch

Okay: Here goes. The tank is 6 months old and is a mixed reef. Everything in it has been quarantined. The tank has run with Nitrates at 10ppm and the GFO has kept the Phosphate down at acceptable levels. Then I stupidly added a leopard wrasse without first quarantining it. One week later I'm fighting velvet. One Fairy wrasse has died. The kole tang is holding on. I can't strip this tank as there is a lot of coral in it and it's all doing well. I know there's a lot been said about ich and velvet and I know the usual outcome of both parasites as I've been in this hobby on and off since the 70s. So I started to feed garlic and added a UV steriliser. That and 10% water changes daily. Because of the added feed trying to keep my fish fat and fighting my nitrates have gone up to 40ppm and my phosphates have also risen quite a bit. My thoughts were to carbon does to try get them down whilst still being able to feed as much as the fish can take. On a side note all of the fish seem to be responding quite well. The tang even looks to be recovering from what was certain death just three days ago. My experiences so far with bio pellets (installed from the beginning) is that the nitrates even with light feedings only ever manage to maintain my nitrates around the 10 to 20ppm and although whilst this is acceptable to a degree I'd like them down to between 3 and 5ppm. The GFO however works a treat and has my phosphates consistently around 0.05. To be honest I'm not ever really sure the bio pellets are doing anything at all since the same amount has been in the reactor for the entire six months. I would have expected (if the pellets where indeed working as they should) to be getting quite a lot of production from my Deltec skimmer: which I don't see. I dosed three mil of Nopox last week and the skimmer really started to foam up and do some work. So the tank is 350lts. Mixed reef. Sump as is has Skimmer, Bio reactor and GFO reactor, UV sterilizer, return pump. Thanks in advance for any input. Appreciate your thoughts.