Old tank syndrome; how to recover

[rebel]

Hi everyone,

Supposedly I have this low reckon shrimp tank with CRS (Snow White) which have been in it for a while..... now I have realised that through neglect and next to no water changes etc the kh has crashed close to zero and nitrates are above the API test kit resolution. It's deep red so above 160. TDS is about 300ish. It's got plenty of low light plants. Filter is 2213 and a hang on back filter for a 27L tank.

My thoughts on recovering this tank was to slowly add cursed coral over one month to bring kh to 4 and do 5% water changes daily with a drip system.

Any thoughts on this technique? How would you recover a old tank with old tank syndrome back to reasonable parameters?

Thanks for reading.

 

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

Whatever you do needs to be done slowly, and you need to monitor the tank's water parameters to ensure that they're not changing too fast.

Daily 5% changes sound like a good plan. Do you really need to add crushed coral as well? What is the KH of your tap water? Do you intend to use a mixture of tap water and rain/RO water?

 

[Andy D]

Personally I would do small, daily water changes as suggested.

I would ensure that the water I was adding was at the level I wanted overall and gradually it would get there.

 

[rebel]

Sorry yes, my tap is about kH 4 and gH similar. TDS 120 or so. Quite soft(ish).

I don't have RO etc.

The reason for the crushed coral was that there wouldn't be any pH swings due to no KH in the water. I guess the tap water will add that slowly.