Need help desperately : ph crash again.

[Rivermud]

I apologize if I generalize the statements a bit. Ammonia is eventually a cause of acidification. His report of his ammonia levels, ph levels, kh levels, etc.. do not all seem to jive. However his description of how the issue began and has progressed after treatments is what I base my judgement on. The continuous re-crashing of the tank, the excessive overload, the now dead bio filtration, the lack of help given by buffering... all of these point towards an excess of acids that the buffers cannot cover. The only proper treatment for that has always been to do whatever changes and remove any decomposing material you may have in the tank to remove as much of the acids as possible without causing any more stress than you have to. The common name given to this issue is "Old Tank Syndrome" because often times people did not clean their substrate well enough and did not clean out their mechanical filtration. When these levels eventually outran the buffers the tank would then crash. This also happens in heavilly loaded tanks where the ammonia and detrious release from fish outruns the buffering capability. The fish continually release ammonia and detrious even after the crash, the fish keeper continues to feed the fish.. the issue compounds. Like I said, my advice and judgement are just based on his description and symptoms, not so much his inconsistancies.

 

[brianp]

I apologize if I generalize the statements a bit. Ammonia is eventually a cause of acidification. His report of his ammonia levels, ph levels, kh levels, etc.. do not all seem to jive. However his description of how the issue began and has progressed after treatments is what I base my judgement on. The continuous re-crashing of the tank, the excessive overload, the now dead bio filtration, the lack of help given by buffering... all of these point towards an excess of acids that the buffers cannot cover. The only proper treatment for that has always been to do whatever changes and remove any decomposing material you may have in the tank to remove as much of the acids as possible without causing any more stress than you have to. The common name given to this issue is "Old Tank Syndrome" because often times people did not clean their substrate well enough and did not clean out their mechanical filtration. When these levels eventually outran the buffers the tank would then crash. This also happens in heavilly loaded tanks where the ammonia and detrious release from fish outruns the buffering capability. The fish continually release ammonia and detrious even after the crash, the fish keeper continues to feed the fish.. the issue compounds. Like I said, my advice and judgement are just based on his description and symptoms, not so much his inconsistancies.

I think that your analysis is quite astute. This situation is so convoluted and has deteriorated to such an extent that the best thing to do is to tear down and start from scratch on the filtration.

 

[Rivermud]

I agree completely Brianp.. sadly his fish load is going to be his big problem.

 

[Miles]

BRO

You need a filter like this.. fill half of it with crushed coral, other half with ceramic rings.

Change the water lots.

Don't overfeed your fish.

 

[ShadowBass]

"Ammonia" is not an acid...."ammonium" is the acid form and the pKa is 9.4, which is too high to account for the degree of acidification that he is reporting. Also, he reported an ammonium conc. of only 5 ppm. I agree that a "biological" cause is the most likely, but I sense that there is a big chunk of missing info. here. RM's directive is to start from scratch with a robust filtration system and that seems to be the most reasonable thing to do, given the circumstances.

You're right, and I think everyone is trying to be simplistic due to the original posters disregard of in depth advice. Not to mention, I agree with Rivermud that the numbers don't even really make sense, so I don't think we have hard numbers to actually work with.

Of course, considering the original poster has several threads on here and even a thread or 2 on AC, and the info doesn't seem to match up, I doubt it matters either way. They are obviously trying to get advice that tells what they want to hear rather than actually doing what needs to be done.

I still haven't heard tank dimensions. I am really doubtful it's even a 300g tank at this point.

 

[batang_mcdo]

You're right, and I think everyone is trying to be simplistic due to the original posters disregard of in depth advice. Not to mention, I agree with Rivermud that the numbers don't even really make sense, so I don't think we have hard numbers to actually work with.

Of course, considering the original poster has several threads on here and even a thread or 2 on AC, and the info doesn't seem to match up, I doubt it matters either way. They are obviously trying to get advice that tells what they want to hear rather than actually doing what needs to be done.

I still haven't heard tank dimensions. I am really doubtful it's even a 300g tank at this point.

btw just read thru the post , really sorry for the lack of information provided.
the tank has been running for 1-2 years already before this happened.
my tank maintenance is minimum of 50% water change weekly.


my tank is 8 ft x 2 ft x 2.5 Ft

Here's a picture of the whole tank with inhabitants. btw the 55 gallon drum at the side of the tank contains about 150 pcs scrubbies. but i've turned it off since it started leaking.

sump below the tank is 4 ft x 1.5 ft x 1.5 ft 75 gal

closeup of sump tank .

1st chamber is blu ematala mats. 2nd is grey matala mats.
3rd chamber fillter with 6 kilos of coral chips and 5 kilos of ceramic rings
4th chamber has 1 kilo bio home and 1 kilo bio home plus.

this is my 15 gallon sump

and canister that i temporarily removed

I'll try to get some more coral chips. my ph has dropped to 5 again today. last night i got it to 7.5

I've been doing 50 % or more daily water chnage for the past month since my ph crashed and ammonia problem started.
I'm a little tired already..


btw since this problem began. i only feed my fish a little

tank used to have huge driftwoods.

but i've kept my fish for years in this setup before co,mpletely removing the drifwoods.

 

[ziggy2]

You said you turned off the 55 with the scrubbies. You have overloaded the BB. It will take it awhile to rebuild.

 

[Rivermud]

Nods, we've already detailed the PH crashes are now due to no bacteria colony since he washed out his media already. Either way I'm done with these threads.

 

[ShadowBass]

You can't just remove the majority of your biological filter media, and that is why. Those pot scrubbers were the most important part of your filtration system and they were removed.

At this point you would be best off just taking the tank down, selling the fish and starting over. It will take forever for your biological system to recover, if at all, with your pH crashing that low over and over again.

If you don't have the ability to do multiple 50% water changes daily, which is probably what it would take with your fish load and buffering issues trying to do a full cycle - and honestly I would not want to do so on a 300g tank either - your system isn't likely to recover.