Oceanic 40gallon Sps tank.
- Thread starter MichaelB
- Start date
I don't have any of the lyngbya in this tank. Only the 210gallon and nem tank.The only thing that sticks out to me is high nitrates (84 mg/Liter = ppm). Maybe that's why your zoas and mushrooms look so fluffy. I wish mine looked like yoursI guess high nitrates could also be a contributing factor to your (lyngbya)?
I run a gfo reactor on this tank that I have the flow constricted to where it's just about where you could see drops so. Imagine a very slim stream.
I do 10 gallon water changes once a week, rsk 300 skimmer, and a redsea nano roller. Beyond that I've never attempted to directly lower Nitrate.
I'll have to research options to lower them if this is something advisable? I wouldn't want to do nothing and they climb to a breaking point. Nor do I wanna negativity effect things if lowering them has potential to cause un foreseen issues.
The thing I'm dosing has iorn, but no tin. I will have to check the mp10s again. And frag racks
Alexander1312
Supporting Member
TM ICPs are performed by the Fauna Marin ICP lab. If you drop it off at the post office on Friday morning, you will get the results in 10 days (exactly), in some rare cases in 7 days.
The TM ICPs are structured very similarly as the Fauna Marin ICPs so, the most important values are in the beginning, getting decreasingly important down below.
You cannot and do not need to address or fix everything.
I would focus on the following five key items for now:
1. Get your salinity to 35 PSU.
2. Your strontium is surprisingly higher, I am curious why that is? What are you dosing and which salt are you using. I have not seen these higher amounts.
3. Raise potassium to around 400, but always keep it lower than CA.
4. Bring your fluoride up to 1.3 mg/L at least.
5. Bring your Molybdenum up to 15 ug/L.
Three additional observations:
1. Was this ICP taken shortly after a water change? It looks like it.
2. It looks like your RODI filter are need replacement.
3. You might need to eventually replace your dosing tubes, which are a common source for elevated Tin levels. Not a huge problem at this point.
Ignore the rest and get another ICP when you feel like it but wait about a week after the last water change.
It was done like next day after a water change.
I didn't know dosing tube can release tin?
They were cheap colored ones from Amazon that came in a multipack with 4/5 colors.
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Alexander1312
Supporting Member
I guessed that you had you had done a water change from your elevated iron and manganese values. This could also potentially explain your Strontium.
Yes, then is is most likely the cause. I initially thought 20 ug/L was not too bad but for SPS, above 10 ug/L is not recommended at all so this should be addressed ASAP (and should be an easy fix). Depending how long these are in use, water change alone might not be sufficient and you might need to use GFO to get it out of your system.
I have a gfo reactor running. Maybe I'll swap out the media in it.
Alexander1312
Supporting Member
Better to stop the source first. And your phosphate is rather low anyway so I would try to not use a GFO reactor until PO4 climbs up a bit. And rather focus on LOWERING (all caps intentional haha) nitrates.
Lowering nitrates is easy and hard.
Feed less (still enough!), larger water changes.
Both did not result in fully addressing my nitrate issues, but it might work for you.
Reduce it slowly though, i.e., 15-20 gallon weekly change vs 10 gallon, and see where it goes.
Added a bag of high-quality activated carbon underneath the gfo reactor return line to the tank. I honestly don't have anywhere else to place one that would get water flowing through it.
This will likely be slower but hopefully over time it will help some.
I was unable to place it under the drain into the sump as there is no room where the nano fleece roller is. Yet it's getting 100% contact with every bit of water from gfo reactor return. Who knows maybe at some point I will get another mini reactor to run carbon in.
I have extra cuprisorb intended to be used when I bring the fish out of cp qt.
Yet this stuff i think doesn't discriminate and removes most metals. More for emergencies than a slow removal. Being I'm having to dose traces now that would definitely help with tin but likely hurt the acros by removing other needed traces as well. So I'm thinking to myself it shouldn't be the first option.
Alexander1312
Supporting Member
GAC will not help you with your tin levels. GFO will. Or, as I said, trying it with water changes first to not lower your phosphate levels more. Also, if you need to use GAC for other things, you can mix it with GFO.
Google says gfo will not remove tin. It does say carbon will.
Alexander1312
Supporting Member
I will leave the next steps to you Michael. I could probably give you a better source if I spend more time on researching but see below the Gemini Thinking response.
Good luck, just trying to help out, and nothing wrong with fact checking if it gets you better outcome.
RandyC
Supporting Member
GFO is not a really a great medium to remove tin either, though it will absorb a small amount of tin. GFO is better at removing highly charged ions like phosphates or silicates. If you have a high amount of tin and want to remove it, PolyFilter or CurpriSorb is a much better choice.
Not sure why your version of Gemini gave you that response though.
Here's a table that Gemini spit out for me:
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Don't take it as me fact checking you. That wasn't the case. With my main sps tank I pretty much research anything before I make a change. I'm very hesitant to do new things to the sps tank.
I was more or less asking Google for more detailed prospective to learn how effective it would be. Considering I'm already running gfo and have been for 6+months now.
Didn't make sense to show up if I already run gfo if it removes or. Or maybe I figured i needed to change it more often like carbon to get it to remove tin.
I use very old cheapo pumps to mix the saltwater in buckets now. Almost wondering if that couldn't be a factor in the tin. Before I was using long handle big spoon.
I also plan to order a new dosing line cheap enough for a new one to at least eliminate that possibility.
Alexander1312
Supporting Member
Like I said, I would suggest to not address this through GFO but water changes and new tubing. A lot of folks had that tubing issue, first identified by OCEAMO at the time.
Also, gfo becomes ineffective pretty quickly, a week or so.
Do you think there is a safer tube to use so I don't have to worry about that in future? Or is this something unavoidable like with any dosing tube and we should be changing them out at x intervals?
Alexander1312
Supporting Member
Just FYI, while there are other more effective methods to remove tin than GFO, your levels do not (yet) need the brute force method by some of the other suggested ways which will strip out quite a lot of other stuff (potentially more than gfo would do). But again, I do not think you should use GFO for tin removal (at this point) either (I am using a type of GFO myself but my phosphates are high(er)).
Regarding your question - assuming it comes from the tubing [brine shrimps can be another source]:
It is avoidable. I am using RO tubing for all of my dosing pumps, and I do not feed brine shrimps. This seems to be one I bought previously: Malida 1/4 inch O.D. Length 32.8ft(10 meters) RO Water Tubing, Hose Pipe for RO Water purifiers System,+ 1/4 O.D quick connector 10pcs https://a.co/d/0eqsMU9X
These are my ICP results re Tin:
Wow I actually already have a good bit of new rodi line in garage hoard. I didn't know it would work for dosing lines as well..
Alexander1312
Supporting Member
Not sure if some dosing pumps cannot take an RODI line but mine can.