The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Well it's been a while since my last post. All was going well until last week when I stopped seeing the Royal Gramma and the Firefish. I ended up finding a tiny bit of a dead fish but it was so far gone I couldn't identify. RIP Gramma and Firefish. I can't figure out a direct cause of death. My nitrates were pretty high, around 40ppm, but I couldn't figure out if that was what killed the fish or if the decomposing bodies caused the high nitrates.

Anyway, I've been doing everything I can to bring the nitrates down. Every other parameter of the tank is strong: a steady temp, steady pH at 8.0, steady salinity at 1.024ish, zero ammonia, zero nitrites. I started testing alkalinity, and that's fine, but nitrates remain stubbornly high. So Dennis at my favorite Local Fish Store (LFS) recommended Red Sea NO3/PO4 reducer, which I think is essentially vinegar mixed with methanol. Dosing that stuff encourages bacterial populations to bloom, which through reproduction suck up a lot of nitrates.

So far the dosing seems to really be helping. Nitrates fell over the week from 40 to 20 without a water change. I'm going to keep it up. Hopefully it'll do the trick.

Anyway, here's a picture of the tank. I did a big water change last night, cleaned the glass and the light fixture. It's looking good!