Vicky_99's thread

[Vicky_99]

Would love to see a bit on the forum for this. We have a mud & algae system and have struggled to find much info about it.

Ours has been running for about 10 months now. We have softies and LPS but want to have SPS too - were waiting until it'd been running for a year before we started.

Our algae grows like mad - the mud & algae section of our sump is stuffed with the stuff and we have to keep trimming.

The only problem peram we have is Nitrate which is alway 25 or 50 (or somewhere in between). So we are currently trying to work out how to reduce that. Tried big/more frequent water changes - always reduces the nitrate but it climbs back up pretty quickly.

We were advised to also have bio balls but reading loads of stuff suggests they may not be helping our nitrate situation and in fact, I'm struggling to find any good reason to have them at all. We're currently gradually removing them. Any view on this?

Re flow. When we started the tank, we knew NOTHING! The IFS advising us told us our New Jet 1700 return pump was enough on it's own (in a 260 litre tank with 100 litre sump). We've since added a Koralia 4 and still think more flow would help so are considering adding a Koralia 2. We'll be in the realms of having a fair old bit of flow then. Anyone got any views on this?

Vic

[gtb]

hi Vicky.
RE nitrates, Whats your stocking level like?
And your feeding regime?
Have the nitrates been at that level since day 1 or have the slowly risen?

[Frogfone]

Can you tell us more about the tank, stocking level, turnover, lighting, flow in main tank, other perams. as much as possible really.

Bioballs are in an ecosystem for two reasons.

1. breakdown of ammonia to Nitrate so that the calupera can utilise it in photosythesis. lots of people will tell you bioballs cause high nitrate which is partially true bioballs are very efficient at breaking down ammonia to nitrate but fish waste and uneaten food are what causes nitrate, taking out the bioballs won't get rid of it.

2. mechanical filtration to stop calupera getting into the pumps.

if your algae is growing fast then how much are you taking out. we cut back about 25% eachtime once the sump is full.

amount of flow is less important than where the flow is going. we always had a tunze 6080 underneath the liverock pointing at the bottom in a "reefclean" style. this worked incredibly well as after 5 years there was still 0 mulm under the rock.


Would love to see a bit on the forum for this. We have a mud & algae system and have struggled to find much info about it.

Ours has been running for about 10 months now. We have softies and LPS but want to have SPS too - were waiting until it'd been running for a year before we started.

Our algae grows like mad - the mud & algae section of our sump is stuffed with the stuff and we have to keep trimming.

The only problem peram we have is Nitrate which is alway 25 or 50 (or somewhere in between). So we are currently trying to work out how to reduce that. Tried big/more frequent water changes - always reduces the nitrate but it climbs back up pretty quickly.

We were advised to also have bio balls but reading loads of stuff suggests they may not be helping our nitrate situation and in fact, I'm struggling to find any good reason to have them at all. We're currently gradually removing them. Any view on this?

Re flow. When we started the tank, we knew NOTHING! The IFS advising us told us our New Jet 1700 return pump was enough on it's own (in a 260 litre tank with 100 litre sump). We've since added a Koralia 4 and still think more flow would help so are considering adding a Koralia 2. We'll be in the realms of having a fair old bit of flow then. Anyone got any views on this?

Vic