I need everyones guidance

[alvarado41]

Thanks for all the info. And the very useful answers. I have one more problem. My 50gal. tank has been running for almost 3 months now. I have a Blue Damsel, Tomato Clown and a Yellow Tang. 3 hermit crabs, 3 turbo snails a chocolate chip star and 1 Brittle sea star. Oh and a cleaner shrimp. Since I decided to make it a fish only tank, I keep the 15lbs. of live rock and with my aragonite sand bed everything seems good. At first my readings were: pH 8.3 Nitrite 0ppm. Ammonia 0ppm. And my Nitrate 10ppm. But now everything is the same except my nitrate. It climb up to 20ppm and I change 5gal. Per week. My protein skimmer is doing its job, I removed the ceramic bio's from the canister filter and it's the same. Today’s readings are, pH8.3 Nitrite0 Ammonia 0.25 Nitrate20. What am I doing wrong? Please everyone I need your guidance again. :help:

[Max]

There is either too much food going into the tank or you have lost a critter some where out of site. That or you never had enough bio load during your cycle for the fish you have and now you're having another cycle. You could solve the problems by adding some more curred l.r. ,lowering food intake etc. I'd say the issue is your amount of l.r. I'd add some more and it will prbly solve the problem. When you took the bio balls out of your canister you also took out a bunch of friendly bacteria. get about 1 to 1.5 lbs of curred l.r. per gallon and your problem will go away fast.
Also your star will eat your snails if it get the chance.

[Oliver]

I think that you should add some more rock, it looks quite plain. Also, get the pumps away from the back wall, put them on the side, it looks bad with them on the back.

[mogurnda]

Like everyone else, I'd say the most obvious issue is that you don't really have enough live rock. I'd go for triple that amount.

[corriewf]

Get more lights or get rid of that atlantic flower anemone you have cause right now its really bleached.

[wayne]

The reason the nitrate is going up is because you have no real mechanism in place to export/remove it except water changes and whatever the live rock deals with (not very efficiently). And a 10% water change will leave 90 of the nitrate still i nthe tank, slowly building up to a level where the amount of nitrate removed = that added since last water change.