Please Help: 10 gallon nano problems and solutions

[coolreefduder]

Hi everyone, the highs and lows of this hobby is reminiscent of a roller coaster ride man....and let me tell you; I've been on this ride for years! I've never been this frustrated. Here's my problem, I decided to set up a 10 gallon BB SPS tank about 2 months ago. Running a 15 w aqua UV sterilizer, bubble magus nano skimmer, 1 SE 20 K 250 W Ushio metal halide, 2 koralia pumps with 30 lbs of live rock and some chaeto in my 20 gallon sump. Now for the past month or so I've been battling ammonia problems just about every other day. ex: Monday 0ppm Ammonia API test, Wednesday .050ppm etc. I currently have 1 Tyree Green Jacket frag and a red capricornis frag. Is this nano tank just too small causing water parameters to shift so quickly within a span of 48 hrs? I also have 1 100 gallon reef tank and water paremters have always been stable as long as I keep up with my husbandry. I have no experience what so ever regarding tanks this small..perhaps I should have research this before I went ahead with the system. By the way, I do not feed the tank anything, obviously because of the water fluctuations. Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[streak]

well first off i have been running a 10g nano sumpless for 7 months now... 2 20wt compact floro's and its my opinion that 250w of lights is omg too much... 12" to bottom of the tank.. i dono about you but that par has to be bleaching your tank stand... I have heard people using 150hqi vipers or single ended.. or 70wt vipers.. with much success..

I also cycled my tank a full 8 weeks with a raw shrimp as well.. How long has this been setup? did you just go BB and put rock and go full on with corals? Did you run the UV since the beginning? and not let the cycle fully take place? Not having livestock in the tank aka fish i mean and only corals is UV really nessary at the beginning?

[dots]

Use a fan or switch to a Viper as mentioned (used one on a 29g, but 10g....), I think you could use t5s on this thing for heat stability.

The sterilizer may be overkill, and be heating the water too. Just do massive WC's 80% or so, and forget about the UV.

You may want some substrate to help balance it. Heck I remember in my 75g it was sometimes hard to keep the nutrients steady....a 10g....like balancing a pizza on a needle.

[coolreefduder]

Thanks guys for the replies, I really do appreciate it, however; I think we are steering off topic here. My concerns were with the water parameters, especially ammonia and nitrite. To answer your questions and hopefully clarify my case further, the lighting is really not an issue, I have the halide suspended about 20 inches from my SPS. The place where I bought the corals were running 400 w 14 K DE halides. I also cycled my tank using the raw shrimp method for a about a month, when finally, everything stabilized, you know the readings of 0 for Ammonia, Nitrite and about 10 ppm for nitrates. I then went ahead and performed an 80% water change before I added any live stock(three weeks ago). Back then, my readings were: 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and 0 nitrates. From that day forward, just about every other day when i do my routine water tests', Ammonia around .50 and nitrite around 0.15, no nitrates. I might add that I dose nitrobacter 7 and the following day my readings would be back to 0's. I can't emphasize this enough, how can I stabilize my water parameters? The cycle seems ENDLESS....so frustrating!! Again, any advice would not be taken for granted. Thanks fellow reefers.

[jeff@zina.com]

Your tank is less than 2 months old. It completed the basic cycle, but it may not stabilize for several more months. As you add live stock, it changes the balance. In a 100 gallon tank, the balance changes very little, in ten gallons, it's ten times as dramatic.

Add livestock slowly and wait for the cycle to catch up. Keep up on water changes, watch the parameters and you may need to change out a gallon every few days. Make sure your new water and any make-up water are pure, RODI is preferred, and not introducing anything into the tank.

Good luck.

Jeff

[coolreefduder]

Thanks Jeff, unfortunately, I've already lost two of my SPS frags (RTN) during this whole ordeal. I am currently down to 2 frags; the green jacket (browned out) and red cap (still good). I was using RO for my water for my initial setup but have since solved that problem by installing a DI unit. I plan on performing about 5-10% water changes every other day until the systems old water using only RO will be completely washed out. Just checked my water and Ammonia is at .050, no nitrites, with 20 nitrates. I guess, because its only a 10 gallon tank, so much can go wrong.....how naive I was thinking that such a small tank would be simple to maintain....boy was I wrong!!

[streak]

The ammonia has to be comming from some where... Food, dead or dieing off rock? Was it fully cured when you got it?

[jeff@zina.com]

Originally Posted by coolreefduder

Just checked my water and Ammonia is at .050, no nitrites, with 20 nitrates.

Nitrates will be controlled by water changes, or the use of macro algae in a sump, or even various reactors. But the ammonia should be taken care of by the bacteria in your system and live rock. Either you haven't completed a cycle well enough to establish this bacteria or there is a new source of ammonia that needs to be controlled. Water changes will help, but until the source of ammonia is removed or the bacteria catches up, don't add anything new.

Jeff

[streak]

I think that the use of UV might be hindering at the moment.. and Dosing and redosing if its floating in the water and not settled and goes threw the uv its toast. the Bacteria is dying and causing a spike in ammonia.. itself..

This is a educated guess.. your adding bacteria and running UV at the same time. Try stopping both and do just about 10%-20% water change if the Nitrates go up..