Tank Parameters Help

[HouseCookie]

So I'm kinda new to this salt water tank thing. In June I bought a used 55g corner tank that came with the live sand. I set it up and got some rock and let it cycle. I added some snails and since have added 2 clowns, a yellow eyed kole tang, a lemon peel angel and a green BTA. Everything was doing great until a few weeks back when the BTA started to look terrible. It ended up dying as did the tang. I believe the tang probably died because of toxins release from the BTA and I think the BTA died either from the addition of the angel or high nitrate/alkalinity levels.

I would like to add a new anemone and maybe some corals, but I know my parameters aren't perfect. I currently have a couple polyps and some mushroom corals.

My Tank parameters are:

Nitrate - 0
Phosphate - 1-2ppm
Calcium - 360
Carbonate Hardness - 20
pH - 8.2
Salinity - 1.025
Temp - 72
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0

What changes would you suggest to get my parameters to where they need to be add corals and a new anemone for my clowns?

 

[SteveT]

20dkh is waaaay to high, I would retest and make sure its nota false reading. 72 is a little on the cold side for topical animals. I shoot for 9dkh, 450 calcium, 78degrees. I would do a series of water changes to get things back to normal

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[Cake_Boss]

Do you have any stony corals in there? If you do, I'd let the alk go down by itself. Otherwise, I'd do the w/c.

How did you get an alk of that high? Do you dose? What's your mag at? What salt do you use? RO?

I think your ca/alk/mg is out of balance.

 

[HouseCookie]

Thanks for the help all!

I rechecked the Carbonate Hardness and it came out as 9 this time. I checked it twice to make sure. I'm not sure what went wrong in the test the first time. I also turned the heater up to try to raise the temp a little higher.

Normally when I test the nitrate I find levels close to 20ppm. It was a surprise to me to find it at 0 today, so I had to check it again. Is there any issue with my phosphate? Do I need to purchase chemicals to get teh calcium to come up?

 

[daverf]

I don't reef (just fowlr) so I don't know what's best for calcium but can respond on phosphates and nitrates.

Your phosphates are off the charts if the reading is accurate. What test kit are you using? Most don't measure below 1ppm or give false readings above that (such as API). Seachem is more precise. For a reef tank, you want to hit phosphates of .03-.05ppm. Over that and coral growth is limited. Also, any phosphates are a food source for algae, and typically undesirable algae is a symptom of high phosphates.

You may not have to worry about them, depending on your source water and where you got your aquarium rock from (if your using old tank rock, phosphate leaching can be a big problem) If you think you may have to worry, you should get the Seachem test kit.

If you need to manage them, there are lots of posts on here and internet for doing so...GFO, phosphate reactors, lanthanum are a few to look up...

Nitrates don't just drop like that unless you did a big water change or started a huge fuge/algae addition between readings. Probably user error on testing, I would check it again. You need to keep the nitrates way lower for an anenome, I believe. Lots to research on that, but water changes / not overfeeding are the most important things you can do.

 

[HouseCookie]

I believe the test kit I have is API so the color chart goes from 0 to 0.5 to 1 to 2. I have a hard time figuring out which color matches, so I could be wrong. I am guessing I am since I don't have a ton of algae and the corals that I do have seem to be doing fine.

The Nitrates I'm not sure on. Maybe I was getting false readings before. I had done a 20% water change prior to it dropping, but I've tested it multiple times since and it keeps coming up 0. I do have to kits, so maybe the one is faulty.