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Fat starfish

Carbon dosing and low PH Help

Rating: 3 votes, 5.00 average.
4 Comments
by
Fat starfish
, 10-26-2011 at 02:07 AM (4868 Views)
Hi everyone,

Recently I have been having some problems with my tank. My nitrates were on the rise, they ended up getting to 40 ppm, I did constant large water changes and started using bio pellets but things just got worse. Since then I removed the bio pelltets and went back to basics. I ended up discovering that my sand bed was the cause of my nitrate problems. Slowly I removed my sand bed and after all of it was gone my nitrates have fallen to below 10ppm.

I also have started dosing NOPOX, a carbon source made by red sea. It is basically the same as dosing vodka. I've been dosing for 2 months now and cannot seem to get my nitrates below 5-10 ppm.

I have also had a low PH of between 7.77 and 8.0. I've done a bit of tinkering and have discovered that it's not a build up of C02 in the house. Or my calcium reactor and yes my probes are calibrated properly.

My parameters are as follows

KH 8.4 Hanna
PO4 0 Hanna
Mag 1250
nitrite 0
Nitrate 5-10 Salifert
PH high of 8.0 low of 7.77

Water volume of my tank is 500 litres. I run a Titan trigger skimmer, Geo calcium reactor, GAC in a TLF phosban reactor and two MP40 wes. medium fish load and always use RO/DI water and red sea coral pro salt. I do regular weekly water changes of 30 litres.

Why won't my nitrates drop?

Why is my PH low?

All I can think is that the ph is due to no sand being in the tank, but my KH is very stable? And my nitrates are leaching from the live rock, but shouldn't carbon dosing help?

Thanks in advance for any help.

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Categories
‎ NEED HELP STAT! , ‎ Questions - Need some input

Comments

  1. baker.shawn's Avatar
    i have the same problem with my pH the best i can get it to now is about 8
  2. jlemoine2's Avatar
    For any type of carbon dosing (including bio-pellets), I don't believe 2 months is long enough to see the benefits. That is the minimum amount of time before any nitrates or phosphates will start to drop... and then they'll drop slowly. Also, you'll need both phosphates and nitrates in order for carbon dosing to work. If your tank is truly devoid of phosphates (I doubt it), carbon dosing will not bring down nitrates.

    Is there a problem the 5-10 nitrates are causing? What type of issues are you seeing? How much livestock is in your tank and how much do you feed? If you are stocked on the heavy side, it's possible your nitrates will always be in the 5-10 range.

    Other thoughts?
  3. Fat starfish's Avatar
    I have a low fish load. I have a Naso tang, Sailfin tang, majestic angel, juvenile emperor angel, two yellow tail fusiliers and two cinnamon clowns.

    About 50Kg of live rock. I feed in the morning and night.

    My main issue is that I'm not getting good coral growth and I have a bright green algae growing in parts of my tank. Mainly on the bottom glass.
    My main concern is the low PH, what should I do to raise it?
  4. melev's Avatar
    What is your current calcium level? Mg is about 100ppm too low.

    You can clean the green sheen off the glass regularly to keep that at bay. The pH level is a little low, but according to Randy Holmes-Farley, there are tanks out there that do fine from 7.7 to 7.9 daily. Yours is running 7.8 to 8.0 ... totally fine.

    Your tank is how old? What kinds of corals? Which are growing and which aren't? Any chance the tangs or angels are nipping at those corals?