hiya everyone I upgraded my tank to a fluval 180lt on friday ( 12\8\11).I got the tank second hand and used everything that came with the water,live rock,sand and crushed coral,regal tang,a blue damsel,urchin,protein skimmer & external filter.I then added our livestock,two clowns,anenomes and corals,starfish and clean-up crew to the tank. Since then, my water tests have been bad.Our local shop advised a 50% water change based upon the tests they carried out. We have done this, and also added Red Sea NO3,PO4_X Nitrate and phosphate reducer, and PH Buffer.Also we think the Tang may have white spot, could this be stress? Our latest test results are below: What do you think? Help!!!!
phosphate = 1.5 ppm, ph = 7.4, nitrate 20ppm,nitrite 1ppm,
ammonia = 0.5 ppm

Hi Lilly - welcome to FK

Right, bearing in mind I know next to nothing about marines and what I do know is only due to reading other peoples' posts ... I'll try and help

Quote:

How did you transport the live rock and sand? I'm wondering if the bacteria that make it live and thus provide some filtration has taken a knock and thus is not able to deal with the levels of ammonia in the tank?

External filter - is this acting as a biological filter or purely mechanical? If it is biological then again, how long was it off for/how did you transport it?

Where did you get this tank? I'm guessing somewhere like ebay seeing as it comes with residents?

Quote:

When you say 'bad' can you redo the tests so we can see how bad it is now? Can you do a full set of tests? AFAIK for marines you need ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, PH and salinity. And anything else you can think of!

If you've added all that lot to a tank which may have taken a knock to the bacteria it's more than likely that you've overloaded the bacterial capacity which means the system is unable to cope with all the ammonia being produced by the tank's inhabitants.

Quote:

I'm assuming you've done the water change with remineralised RO water? I'm really not familiar with any of the additives you've mentioned - I'm guessing they are to remove nitrate and phosphate and sort the PH?

Quote:

From what I know of tangs they are prone to white spot and it is a #OOPS# to get rid of. Will see if I can find the post about treating it.

Quote:

I don't know enough about marines to know if phosphate affects things adversely but I think it needs to be lower than it is. Ammonia and nitrite need to be 0 and nitrate should be pretty much 0. I've a feeling the PH is too low but don't quote me on that! What is the salinity?

If it was a freshwater tank I'd be recommending water changes to sort out the ammonia and nitrite.

I think we need a bit more detail on this set up - where it came from and how you did the move etc.

Here you go, read the link in post 2 of this thread for how to deal with marine whitespot

http://www.fishkeeping.co.uk/modules/ ... SC&topic_id=15378&forum=5

Moving forward ... the tank you've upgraded to isn't big enough for the fish you have ... sorry Regal tangs need huge tanks ...

Regal tang caresheet

hiya and thanks for the reply

We bought the tank via E-Bay, the time lapse from dismantling the tank and getting started again was approximateley 3 hours, this included a car journey of about 2 hours. The filter is a Fluval 205 external.Latest test results are as follows: Nitrite 1.0 ppm,ammonia 0.5, nitrate 40, phosphate 1.0, salt 1.01. Based on these results, we have done a 10% water change and added a little salt.

Thanks again for all your help, it really is appreciated !