My Aquarium Is In A Bad Way. Please Give Advice.

[Reefer4ever]

Firstly, I'd like to apologize for how long this is but would greatly appreciate if you would take the time to read it and offer your advice. So my 6 year old 25 gallon aquarium is in a pretty gross situation. I've kind of been neglecting it for the past 2 years, only changing 15% of the water every month-month and a half. The box filter filter pad had not been changed for probably the 2 years of neglect until I started to realize what I was doing, rather what I wasn't doing. The bag of chemi-pure was 2 years old. The HOB phosphate reactor with phosban and CPR bak pak skimmer have been offline for probably 1-1.5 years. I had 2 powerheads. One of them stopped working but the other (I think a hydor koralia 1 rated 400gph) still works. Because I have only been changing water and not blasting to rock or siphoning the sand, there was a good layer of detritus(?) over most of the rock and near the back corner where there is the least flow. There's 20 pounds of live rock and about 1.5 inches of sand. I had 2 6 year old clowns but the female clown mysteriously disappeared 4 weeks ago. No body of the clown in the tank and no clean up crew (aside from the 20ish self-aquacultered "baby" 5 year old .5-.75cm nassarius snails and I hardly think they could or would clean up a whole 3 inch fish in 5 hours) and if it jumped through the tiny opening in the back of the tank, maybe the cat ate it before I woke up that day. Either way, my theory as to how the clowns lived so long in the less than stellar water quality was the basket ball sized clump of cheato that had been growing. Maybe that along with the bacteria in the rock and sand was enough to keep levels livable until 4 weeks ago. Also the clowns were being fed every 3 days. I feel so bad for my remaining clown, though he seems happier today. Here's what I've done for the past 3 weeks and let me know if I should do anything else.

3 weeks ago: I took a sample of my water to a local fish shop. They tested barely any ammonia, 0 nitrite, 0 phosphate, and 5-10 nitrate. The pH was 7.8; pretty low from what I remember. I went home and tested with my 5 year old ATI test kits. Results: Barely any ammonia. 0 nitrite. 20 nitrate. 0 phosphate. 7.9 pH. 6dkh. (sea marin brand for Ca/Mg I think?)560Ca. 1500Mg. Refractometer read 1.025 salinity. I cleaned the phosphate reactor and skimmer, put some rinsed phosban in the chamber, and set up the skimmer. I rinsed a new filter pad for the box filter and changed that. I also put a new bag of rinsed chemi-pure in the box filter area. I removed 50% of the macro algae and left the other in as to keep a medium that will eat phosphate and nitrates(maybe). I lightly blasted the rocks of some of the built up detritus, careful not to do too much at once. The water was fairly cloudy after the blasting. I changed 5 gallons. A day later and after the cloudiness and fliters had settled down, I tested the water with my old test kits. Results: barely any ammonia. 0 nitrite. 140 nitrate. 0 phosphate. 7.9 pH. 7dkh. 550Ca. 1500Mg. 1.025 salinity. You can clearly see here the agitation of all that gunk was asking for trouble. I didn't think it would be that much, but I knew it would happen. That's why I didn't totally blast everything. I thought it would be too much. I thought I would slowly over time get all the detritus out of the rocks so it wasn't 500 nitrates all at once. This was also when I went back to feeding my clown daily as much as he can eat in a minute or two. I have zooplankton and spirulina-brine frozen foods. He has an appetite still which is wonderful.

2 weeks ago: I blasted a bit more of the rock and changed 5 gallons. A day later I tested. Results: barely any ammonia. 0 nitrite. 60 nitrate. >0 phosphate. 7.9 pH. 7dkh. I didn't test calcium or magnesium this time. 1.0245 salinity. The nitrates seemed to go down pretty good and I convinced myself it was a good idea to get a fire shrimp. I kind of remember they maybe eat detritus, but I could have been wrong. I know they are at least scavengers and cleaners. So I drip acclimate for 75 minutes and it finds a cave as soon as he goes in. The shrimp has been fine.

1 week ago: This week I tried to jet water through as much rock as possible and try to clean out a lot of the gunk. I change 5 gallons. I test the water a day later. Results: barely any ammonia. 0 nitrites. 30 nitrates. 0 phosphate. 8.0 pH. 7dkh. 1.024 salinity. I get 3 nassarius snails and 3 scarlet reef hermit crabs. I wanted to get the nassarius snails to turn over the sand and start that and the crabs because hair algae has started it's life cycle. I am manually removing any large patches. 7 days ago (from this post, not 1 week ago), my "baby" nassarius snails started to lay eggs sacs every night for 4 nights. About 45 babies on their way. I mention this because it's been 6 years since I've bred nassarius snails and they generally won't reproduce in less than adequate situations.

Today: I tested the water before the water change. Results: barely any ammonia. 0 nitrite. 15-20 nitrate. 0 phosphate. 8.2 pH. 7dkh. 1.024 salinity. I can only find 2 each of the nassarius snails and hermit crabs, though they could be hiding. Shrimp is fine too and more out of the cave. I decided I would try and siphon the sand today. I didn't want to stir up a lot of dust because I think agitating the sand, even if it's just 1.5 inches, would not be very smart. The sandbed has had no agitation for so long so I took much care to not let the dust flow out of the siphon. I ended up changing 5 gallons. I haven't checked the water after the water change, but I will tomorrow. The salinity is 1.024.

So my main question is if I am doing this right. I took this approach: There is so much bad stuff going on in the tank that if I were to stir everything up at once, it would shock everything beyond repair. If I stir less up over time it will be longer exposure to stress but it won't be super insane stress. Should I be making larger water changes? How much if so. Should I continue to siphon the sand. Maybe every week instead of every week/water change? Should I keep blasting the rocks to clear out the gunk? How often should I change the filter pad, chemi-pure, and phosban? I was planning to change the pad every 2 months, chemi-pure every 3 months, and phosban every 3 months. It's been a while since I've done this stuff so I don't remember the life of these things. Should I keep the macro algae in, at least for the time being? I feel it helps. Let me know. Should I have larger water changes until the quality is better, or let it slowly remedy itself over time with my current 5 gallon changes. This is the idea that I acclimate the fish, shrimp, snails, and crabs to pristine water instead of throwing them in newly mixed salt water. How much more should I change if so. What I'm really hoping is that I don't wake up to my clown dying at the age of 6 years and then test the water to find that siphoning the sand loosed a bunch of nitrate and it shows a spike to 200 or something crazy. Again, I'm sorry this was such a long read. If you have any advice or ideas to how I should go about cleaning this tank up, please help.

-Dylan

[alton]

Sounds like you have a plan, since your tank did not get upside down overnight it is best to take you time to get your maintenance back on track. Looking at your test after you lost the clown it must of died outside the tank? Although bristle worms can make a fairly quick clean up, your test would of showed a spike. Just keep doing what you are doing and in six months or less you should be back on track

[Zack]

Barely any ammonia is still not a good sign and can be harmful to the remaining clown. Are you running anything like prime to help reduce the effects of ammonia on your critters? Also what brand test kit was used? The readings sound a bit low for the amount of water changes you'd be doing although cheato and live rock could also be helping your parameters. I can't speak to the other products but chemi-pure I was changing roughly every month and a half as I fed quite a bit and would notice brown algae. Usually a swap would get things cleaned up.

Have you considered overhauling your tank? I had almost the exact same situation on my 10 gallon and starting over with everything sterilized and seeding with new live rock really was a winning solution. I believe your tank may be suffering from old tank syndrome but that'd be just based on what's above.

Here's my tank build from when I overhauled everything: http://www.maast.org/showthread.php?68471-Nanoreefer11-s-20-Gallon-Long-(new-problems-amp-scape)

[Reefer4ever]

When I say barely any ammonia, I mean that it's probably 0. The color of the solution is maybe slightly off colored to the 0 ammonia rating but nowhere close to the first measure of noticeable ammonia, which is .25. I would guess based on the shade, it's around .05. The brand is API. I said ATI in the original post, but was confusing it with a light bulb brand. I've never used prime, but have vaguely heard about it being something to reduce ammonia. I'll look to change the chemi-pure every 4-5 weeks then. There has been a very slight growth of brown algae on the sand bed, but it hasn't grown since a week ago. Like I said there is some hair algae that I'm removing once the clumps are big enough to pinch with my fingers. I do think that maybe the chaeto is out competing the brown algae and on equal footing with the hair algae, so that's probably what's happening there.

As for an overhaul, I don't want to have to do that. I don't have the time right now to look at your link, but I will later. I don't think that the ecosystem is so far gone that it can't be remedied. I'm slowly getting things back in order and will eventually re-buy test kits that aren't 5 years old to get more accurate results. Maybe I'll start doing some 7-8 gallon changes but I do think the old test kits are part to blame on low readings that might otherwise be read much higher on a non-expired test kit. It's just that three weeks ago, the fish stores reading and my readings were comparable so I didn't think they would be too off beat. Thanks for the advice I'm going to check the water parameters in a bit.

[Zack]

Prime will reduce ammonia to nitrite and nitrates which while harmful are less harmful to your critters. Also any chance you'd be willing to see if a show will test your water using a Red Sea test kit? I've found them to be far more accurate than API and it'll give you a better grasp of where you are and what you'll need to do.

The thing to also consider is of course if you have say 10PPM nitrates in a 100 gallon tank (as an example) doing a 10 gallon water change while helpful will only reduce your nitrates by 10% so some larger and regular water changes may be in order. I will say though you definitely really seem to want this better and with a bit of elbow grease I'm sure this bad boy will be Featured Tank worthy soon enough!

[klwheat]

Sounds like a good plan. If you're getting no nitrites and some nitrates, it's very unlikely that you have any ammonia. API test kits notoriously show "some" ammonia even in brand new salt water.


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[OrionN]

How many fish do you have in the tank?
If all you have is a male clown, I would take him out. Clean all the rock out as much as you can, then vacuum the sand. Change 75-100% of the water. Once everything settle downyou can put the clown back in. With just 1.5 inches of sand, ther will not be any toxic build up of gas or anything like that. If you are uneasy about changing 100% of the water than do a 75%. This will get your tank to optimal condition in no time.
For small tank like your, with no sensitive corals, it is easy to get it into good condition quickly.