fishyrobbie
Reefing newb
I had a thriving nano reef aquarium, 24 gallons for a year but after a couple years of problems in life and several algae blooms my tank began to be neglected and the past couple months it has been a mess.
I know enough about aquariums to get by; I used to rely a lot on my dad who helped a lot at the time that it was doing well.
I know that sounds bad but I'm dedicated to rebuilding the aquarium and I need advice on exactly how to go about it.
So far;
- I've cleaned out as much algae as possible, there's still quite a bit in hard to read areas around rocks and corners.
- I mixed up the sand a little so that it can breath again and removed the algae from the top as well as i could.
- Every day I am changing a gallon or two of the water every 24 hours and cleaning the filter once a day. When i started the salt levels were embarrassingly high and the water had a slight green tinge. I'll continue until the water is normal in color, ph, calcium and salt.
- I added in a phosphorus removing filter
- The aquarium is heated to ~ 70 degrees fahrenheit
So what steps should I take next for the aquarium? Which supplements should be added? which (and about how many) critters do you recommend? And anything else that needs to be done. Time frames would be helpful as well, I'm trying not to send the remaining animals into shock..
I think it should say below but it is fully stocked with live rocks (albeit lots of algae), one clown fish (its mate jumped into the filter a little while back), one sickly large toadstool and a small sickly toadstool, about eight mushrooms and one hermit crab are what remain.
*I'm especially concerned about some fairly large groups and one very large single bubble algae, I'm going to try removing them by hand without popping them. The very large bubble is behind the rocks so I'm not even sure if I could bend anything back there to knock it loose..
*Please don't let me know what a failure I am, just give advice for how to fix the problem..
I know enough about aquariums to get by; I used to rely a lot on my dad who helped a lot at the time that it was doing well.
I know that sounds bad but I'm dedicated to rebuilding the aquarium and I need advice on exactly how to go about it.
So far;
- I've cleaned out as much algae as possible, there's still quite a bit in hard to read areas around rocks and corners.
- I mixed up the sand a little so that it can breath again and removed the algae from the top as well as i could.
- Every day I am changing a gallon or two of the water every 24 hours and cleaning the filter once a day. When i started the salt levels were embarrassingly high and the water had a slight green tinge. I'll continue until the water is normal in color, ph, calcium and salt.
- I added in a phosphorus removing filter
- The aquarium is heated to ~ 70 degrees fahrenheit
So what steps should I take next for the aquarium? Which supplements should be added? which (and about how many) critters do you recommend? And anything else that needs to be done. Time frames would be helpful as well, I'm trying not to send the remaining animals into shock..
I think it should say below but it is fully stocked with live rocks (albeit lots of algae), one clown fish (its mate jumped into the filter a little while back), one sickly large toadstool and a small sickly toadstool, about eight mushrooms and one hermit crab are what remain.
*I'm especially concerned about some fairly large groups and one very large single bubble algae, I'm going to try removing them by hand without popping them. The very large bubble is behind the rocks so I'm not even sure if I could bend anything back there to knock it loose..
*Please don't let me know what a failure I am, just give advice for how to fix the problem..