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melev

Trying to see light at the end of the tunnel

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melev
, 09-12-2014 at 06:25 PM (13194 Views)
My reef definitely got cooked by overdosing bacteria in recent months, and it took me a while to figure out what was wrong (as you know if you read my blogs). I'm doing a soft reset rather than a hard reboot now. I'm not going to dose any additives for the next six weeks. I pulled the biopellets offline to stop any additional bacteria introductions, and I'm doing some big water changes to hopefully help the corals turn around.

I feel like anything I do will spook them, and I don't want to push them past the tipping point, as they are already leaning pretty hard the wrong way. Colors are off, some polyps are gone, and declining issues continue. UGH. Oh well, I'll keep at it and see what I can do to move things in the right direction again.

If you are new to my writings, let me explain my thought process: I used to have a very high nitrate problem in my 280g because I was misreading my Salifert kit for YEARS. Thought it was 7 ppm, when it was actually 80 ppm. So I did what I could to bring it down with water changes, and turned to vodka dosing. It took seven months of daily dosing, but eventually it hit the right threshold and brought them down. [ link ]

When I set up the 400g in 2011, I decided to use biopellets and Prodibio from the first drop of tank water, and get away from vodka dosing. The biopellets and Prodibio worked great for 3.5 years. The Phosphate and Nitrate levels stayed low, I could feed more, and my corals were happy and colorful.

It was only a few months go when I started overdosing the Prodibio vials (they are bigger and had a different rating that I didn't grasp [ link ] ), and things started going south. I hadn't had any problems and wasn't trying to run a ULNS system - just a clean one that let me feed my fishy friends frequently.

But something was amiss, which I've been blogging about on ReefAddicts over the past few months. It wasn't until the night before MACNA when I finally figured out what I'd done, and then went to talk with the guys at the Prodibio booth. After discussion and serious thought, we agreed that my dosing coupled with the biopellets was definitely the likely culprit. [ link ]

Knowing this information, I figured I'll just taper down with my dosings but I think the domino effect was already in sequence. It has become apparent I had to do more. That's why I pulled the biopellets entirely to stop any additional bacteria production, although the reactor only had a couple of inches of media (maybe 2 cups worth) in a 450g liquid volume system. Once I did that, the skimmate finally returned to the normal look I'd seen for so many years. But the corals are still declining.

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So I'm going to focus on some big water changes, even if it does end up splitting all my anemones in the 60g. I'm hoping a reset will enable to the DNA I still have in the system will turn around and enrich itself and get things heading in the right direction once more.

I've never had a full tank crash in all the years I've been in the hobby. I've had my share of tank leaks, which totally suck and just screw up forward momentum with temporary setups and waiting for replacement tanks, but this one was definitely a stealth-mode attack. Since I've employed this method of dosing for years, it was a little surprising that it was the cause.

Now I just have to pick up the proverbial pieces and work with what remains. Not much to celebrate on the 10 month anniversary of the 400g 2.0.

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  1. gettareef's Avatar
    How were you reading the salifert nitrate test wrong? Were you reading the color from holding the container to the side of the colors instead of top down? I'm just wondering bc I use the same kit to test n03. Best of luck with your new method of solving your bacteria issue. I think it will work. Most importantly, I think sticking to one method of curing the issue for 6+ weeks is key
  2. brotherd's Avatar
    Marc I must say that I really appreciate all your blogs postings, both the good and the bad news. I take a great deal of your experience and information and apply or compare that to my lowly tank. I still have a screen shot of your 280 as my cell phone home screen image. Hang in there and a big thank you!
  3. melev's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by gettareef
    How were you reading the salifert nitrate test wrong? Were you reading the color from holding the container to the side of the colors instead of top down? I'm just wondering bc I use the same kit to test n03. Best of luck with your new method of solving your bacteria issue. I think it will work. Most importantly, I think sticking to one method of curing the issue for 6+ weeks is key
    I think I was looking through the side when I was supposed to look from above, or vice versa. I remember Habib telling me "You're still doing it wrong!" So I came home, remeasured the 'correct' way and it was way high. I called a friend as he had the HACH nitrate kit and he was nice enough to do a comparison test and said "Yep, it's 80ppm."

    That actually helped me though, because I'd give frags to people that would die in their tanks nearly instantly and I couldn't understand why. Turns out mine were tolerating the number as best they could, but it was a shock to get in the better water after all that time. And those mystery coral deaths - I finally had a good reason why some would just go up in smoke for no reason at all. They had a great reason - I just didn't know yet.

    API gets a lot of flack, but their NO3 kit is pretty foolproof - or should I say melev-proof.
  4. melev's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by brotherd
    Marc I must say that I really appreciate all your blogs postings, both the good and the bad news. I take a great deal of your experience and information and apply or compare that to my lowly tank. I still have a screen shot of your 280 as my cell phone home screen image. Hang in there and a big thank you!
    I hate sharing bad news, but it needs to be said since it's the real story about a living breathing reef. Hopefully my errors can help others avoid such issues. Still miss my 280g.
  5. evoXmr's Avatar
    Sorry to hear things haven't started turning around yet! I also appreciate you sharing the bad along with the good. I would like to say that I can't wait to finally get water in my 400 but now I feel like I just want to read more so I can learn how to avoid these situations. I can picture myself reading a test kit wrong or overdosing something.

    On a more positive note, I hope to get a build thread started soon. I gathered up all the build pics, just need to find the time to upload and write about it. I hope to be ready for water next week! Keep us posted on the progress. I hope you are still taking pictures. I think once this is all behind you, it might be nice to show a before, during, and after.

    You will get past this and will be able to say "my 280g was great, but my 400g is AMAZING!" Hang in there and thanks for sharing!
  6. melev's Avatar
    I did take some ugly pictures, but didn't have it in me to share them. It's bad enough seeing real life.
  7. michika's Avatar
    I'm sorry to hear this, but happy you've potentially, and probably, pinpointed the issue.

    Can you jog my memory why you transitioned away from vodka to biopellets and dosing again please?
  8. melev's Avatar
    I was tired of dosing vodka - which I did for 3.5 years. I wanted to try biopellets and I also wanted to try Prodibio again, so when the new tank went up in Feb 2011, that's why. It worked fine - until I way overdosed as described in recent blogs. And how that came to pass, with reasons vs excuses.
  9. michika's Avatar
    Despite the recent happenings, and whatever outcome occurs, its good to know. I'm just curious; vodka is ultra cheap for me to dose vs biopellets and I'm always curious why people change their successful behaviors; the triggers and causes, etc.

    Outcome and cause here aside, would you return to biopellets and Prodibio in the future if you had another need?
  10. melev's Avatar
    Vodka dosing is very precise, and I never felt comfortable hooking up a 1g container of that to my tank in case the doser went crazy. I never want it to add more than a day's allotment, so even setting up a smaller amount for three or four days could in theory be pumped it and cause problems.

    Biopellets are 24 hours a day, and take no work on my part. It just keeps moving, and I have to replenish it from time to time. Probibio was dosed every 15 days, and it's also very easy to control if you don't make the mistake I did with the different vial size.
  11. maroun.c's Avatar
    Sorry to hear about your troubles Marc.
    Unfortunately looks like I'm somehow in the same boat, well may be on the other side of the boat.
    in my previous 150G tank I also had nitrates climb up to 50 while my Salifert kit was reading 0. it was only a when I switched to a new test kit that I find out what was causing some of my corals to RTN constantly.
    Forward 2 years in my 400 g tank and I've been struggling to keep any SPS in my tank, Frag tanks or cube alive. Few LPs and some softies made it but over the last 2 years I have slowly and painfully lost all my SPS. Any SPS that I add either RTNs STNs within 10 days or the tissue just dries up completely in 10 days.
    I was testing 10-15 Nitrates and 0-0.03 Phosphates on Salifert till yesterday when I crosschecked using Hanna for Phosphates and DD for Nitrates and the results came out at 48 for nitrates and 0.9 for phosphates which will be a crazy amount of work to bring down to normal in case those levels are true as my total water volume now is close to 750G after having connected all my tanks.
    I'm sending water to a professional lab for testing to verify this.
    Its unfortunate that a testkit or such a simple mistake reading it can have such consequences but again I'm sure your tank will bounce back in no time as it has done over the last 3-4 years of misfortune you've had.
  12. melev's Avatar
    Hi Maroun, sorry to hear you've had some issues as well. I'm kind of ready for things to just go smoothly finally. How much can a hobbyist take?! There's a lot of good stuff in my tank, but there's a decent amount of unhappiness that I'm staring at daily. I'd like to think I'm heading in the better direction now, but I have to basically wait and watch now.