The death of a Reef Tank and Hopeful Resurection

[buckeyereefer]

Gotcha !!!

[CoralBeauties]

I still swear by the lanthanum dosing.  I also tried just about all the different methods.  Vodka, vinegar, sugar, biopellets, water changes out the keister, nothing seemed to work for me until I started to dose the lanthanum and recently using carbon in a reactor I have.  It has been several months of diligence but I only have a few tufts of gha and some small patches of cyno.  I started with a forest before and I was almost at the point of taking down the tank from frustration.
Jeff

[Twizted1]

I still swear by the lanthanum dosing.  I also tried just about all the different methods.  Vodka, vinegar, sugar, biopellets, water changes out the keister, nothing seemed to work for me until I started to dose the lanthanum and recently using carbon in a reactor I have.  It has been several months of diligence but I only have a few tufts of gha and some small patches of cyno.  I started with a forest before and I was almost at the point of taking down the tank from frustration.
Jeff

Lanthanum chloride is still an option. The only problem with that is, I am reading 0 PO4 with the Hana checker. And LaCl3 will only pull the PO4 that is in the water column. So it's just a game of hunting them down. With the vodka dosing I am building a biological weapon the with get to the source. At least that's the plan. Here is the schedule I am following. And info about vodka dosing. http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php

[Heathcoot]

how often are you changing your water, i can go all day but i know you said you went to long without a skimmer but joe i have a beautiful tank with no skimmer on it and my stuff grows crazy, only algea is a little bit of bubble, but my emeralds take care of that just fine, second is your light led?, third do you have any sand sifting fish, wrasses in general, snails, stars, cucumbers? forth do you have a sump and whats your flow rate to your whole system you may not be slow enough through your sump for nutrient fall out if you have a fuge. i had this problem in a 210 fish only tank it took me six months to fix it but i got it by gravel siphoning a tlf phosban reactor and rearanging rock, i manually started by moving 1/3 of rock every month and a half until i fully gravel siphoned and restacked rock so it wasnt like a rock wall in the aquarium, and the reason for it getting so bad was i didnt do proper water changes on my system and i just took risk after risk i know i was messing with fire the tank was set up for 8 years and boom started gravel siphoning and it took time but i got it fixed and now that you have not a whole lot in your system and trying everything it sounds like starting with a blank canves is what you need most perameters are in check. on my 180 i did 30 gal changes every week and changed my filter sock everytime my skimmer never skimmed lol wasnt that good, i was unable to do gravel siphons tank was to packed and it was up within 6 months packed full but had 200 nassarius snails 3 wrasses and a few cucumbers and sand sifting stars.

[Twizted1]

how often are you changing your water,

I was doing them weekly. I have only done 2 small ones since starting this thread.

second is your light led?,

Yes I am running 3 AI SOL Blue's

third do you have any sand sifting fish, wrasses in general, snails, stars, cucumbers?

I have conches. Nothing else that sifts sand.

forth do you have a sump and whats your flow rate to your whole system you may not be slow enough through your sump for nutrient fall out if you have a fuge.

I do have a sump. I've never calculated flow rate. I'm running a Reflow Dart about 85% open.

I am on the down side of the problem at this point. I have come to realize I can't feed so much. It's still hard to do, but it's still hard not to over feed.

[Heathcoot]

ok well i can deff second overfeeding i had 5 large angels in that 210 2 korans a french a blueface and an anularis plus occasional majestic or regal depending if they got sold or not but huge fish eating krill cockle on the half shell and other meaty stuff, on the battle tho i started with pencil urchins, but the single most important fish that i introduced was a blue line rabbit fish! It ate so much over the 6 months it was rediculous, no scrubbing rock no anything so i focused on cleaning up the 8 year old sand bed just gravel siphoning and rearanging rock as i went, and trust me the tank wasnt the greatest. It had a euroreef skimmer +1 but other then that a simple wet/dry pump and power heads nothing more only extra was the TLF hang on phosban reactor for the combat, had a current 12 bulb t5.