Bacterial bloom with carbon dosing

[Newsmyrna80]

Thank you all for advice! After much deliberation (and Bertoni's advice) I've decided not to do the 90% water change along with removing the sand bed that I had originally planned. In the spirit of passing along experience and education I'm going to post my findings while I carry out my plan to lower nitrates.
After looking of pictures of my tank from just last month I couldn't figure out what had drastically changed in such a short time. I have changed the things that I thought were contributing to the high nitrates, over feeding, filter media, horrible skimmer and insufficient water changes, but it did not make a difference in the nitrates. Obviously something is "manufacturing" these nitrates and that is what needs to be changed.
So I'm starting with the refugium DSB. It is approx 6" deep and is about 13 years old..yes I know! So all of that has been removed. I put in new sand (rinsed of course), some live rock and put the chaeto back in.
I'm going to give this a few days to settle in then I will slowly start removing the tank's sand bed in 15% increments and replace with new sand.
I will report back. Hopefully with lower numbers. :fish1:

 

[bertoni]

Okay, sounds good! I might try a few water changes to see whether removing the refugium sand has helped.

 

[Newsmyrna80]

Well..after changing out the DSB in the refugium, approx 20% of the main tank sand bed and about 55 gallons of water in the last 2 days there is hardly any change in the nitrate level. It appears to be reading between 30-40ppm.
Plan is to still change out the sand bed and probably a better nitrate test kit.
Logically if you change out the sand bed, water changes (NSW tests at 0), cut back on feeding and increase skimming how in the world can the nitrates still be this high?
The only thing left to change is the live rock. So could that be the cause of nitrates? Doesn't make sense. I have blown them off with a power head before I did a water change.
Any thoughts?? Thanks!!

 

[bertoni]

I'll have to think a bit here. Maybe some pictures of each part of the system might help with pulling some thoughts out. How much food is going into the system, and how often?

 

[Newsmyrna80]

Sorry it took so long to get back to this post. I have tried several times to upload images to no avail. They are in my profile albums though.
Ok so over the last 10 days I have made 2 separate sand bed changes in 20% increments. I tested nitrates 5 days after the 1st 20% change and it was at 20ppm!!
I am still wet skimming, running chaeto and keeping feeding to a minimum.
I've changed out another 20% of the sand along with a 25 gallon water change last night. I will test nitrates in a couple of days. Then do another 20-30% sand bed change.
Since the numbers are moving in the right direction I'm hopeful that the sand bed and lack of skimming is what caused the spike.
Will keep posted.

 

[SHNICI]

Sorry it took so long to get back to this post. I have tried several times to upload images to no avail. They are in my profile albums though.
Ok so over the last 10 days I have made 2 separate sand bed changes in 20% increments. I tested nitrates 5 days after the 1st 20% change and it was at 20ppm!!
I am still wet skimming, running chaeto and keeping feeding to a minimum.
I've changed out another 20% of the sand along with a 25 gallon water change last night. I will test nitrates in a couple of days. Then do another 20-30% sand bed change.
Since the numbers are moving in the right direction I'm hopeful that the sand bed and lack of skimming is what caused the spike.
Will keep posted.

I read it at all, but something else is worrying me a bit more about all what you are doing there.
I see your report of lower numbers, but I never read here what test you use, do you try different one make/brand instead of the same but new kit ?
All we know every one got at some time bad reading test kits. I have for most of my tests 3 different manufacturers: Red Sea Pro, Salifert and Hagen (for the base tests Alk, CA, MG, NO3, PO4, NO4 ...) the rest chemicals test kits are mixed between this 3 brands. (not sure are they the best possible, but for the based tests almost always I'm getting similar readings.

Good luck with all that, and hope soon to get the right points. From my understandings till yet you don't found the problem which cause that manufacture of nitrates.

 

[Newsmyrna80]

I bought a new kit, expiration date is 2023. I also tested my other tanks and they were at 0.
And to update I have changed out all the sand in the tank and refugium, changed the total water volume at least 3x (I've gone through 2 buckets of salt), blown off all the rocks, reduced feeding, changing filter media every 3 days, bought a new skimmer and can only my nitrates down to 20ppt. So at this point I can not figure out where the nitrates are coming from. Literally I have changed everything except the actual tank, rocks and fish.
I've attempted vodka dosing but got a bacterial bloom 3 days in and was advised to stop. My last effort to combat nitrates is to build an algae scrubber.

 

[ausndani]

I would be careful pulling out alot of water with changes could reset the system and start a re-cycle

 

[ausndani]

I have had this several times after dosing too much vodka. I would keep tank as stable as possible try 1 thing at time or else could make things worse

 

[Daddi0]

I really dont think the carbon dose could cause an issue. I dose about 1ml of vinegar per gallon of tank water a day and have 0 issues. You were dosing .25ml of vodka a day. This is the same as approx. 2ml of vinegar? and your reef is approx 68 gallons so according to my simple math, you should be ok. And it you did get some bacterial bloom, skim wet and it should clear up and take nitrate with it.
Cheers! Mark

 

[Newsmyrna80]

I really dont think the carbon dose could cause an issue. I dose about 1ml of vinegar per gallon of tank water a day and have 0 issues. You were dosing .25ml of vodka a day. This is the same as approx. 2ml of vinegar? and your reef is approx 68 gallons so according to my simple math, you should be ok. And it you did get some bacterial bloom, skim wet and it should clear up and take nitrate with it.
Cheers! Mark

Thanks Mark! I dosed .25ml per day which I broke up in to 2 different doses of .125 ml per day. It did clear up pretty quickly but I stopped dosing. I'm wondering if I start dosing again just back off a little until it clears then start redosing if the bacterial bloom will max out.
Is this bloom normal? I can't find a whole lot of info on it.

 

[Daddi0]

Thanks Mark! I dosed .25ml per day which I broke up in to 2 different doses of .125 ml per day. It did clear up pretty quickly but I stopped dosing. I'm wondering if I start dosing again just back off a little until it clears then start redosing if the bacterial bloom will max out.
Is this bloom normal? I can't find a whole lot of info on it.

I really like dosing vinegar as opposed to vodka. I just find it gives me a little more wiggle room if I make a mistake. I would try to spread my dosing out through the day/night. You can use a doser (I have even made a drip doser out of an old water bottle) or I mix mine with my kalk/RO and run it through the ATO. I started slow and ramped all the way up to a bacterial bloom/colony. I would def. give it more than 2 or 3 days. I have noticed that instead of a kabillion bacterias free floating in the water and causing a cloud, the bacteria start to form a "snot" as they colonize. These colonies are in the high flow areas. I could see them on my pumps and skimmer output. Every night I stop my return pump for a moment and turn it back on. When I do this all the bacteria in the return line becomes dislodged and makes its way into the reef to feed the coral and be skimmed out. Currently I am dosing 300ml in 5 gallons of RO and my 200 gallon system uses about half of this every day.
Cheers! Mark

 

[Newsmyrna80]

The water got hazy on day 3 of dosing, which is when I stopped on advice from other reefers. The fear was that it was depleting the oxygen. Fish never had a problem though.
I'm go to dose vinegar. Hopefully I won't have the same bloom as with vinegar.

 

[Daddi0]

The water got hazy on day 3 of dosing, which is when I stopped on advice from other reefers. The fear was that it was depleting the oxygen. Fish never had a problem though.
I'm go to dose vinegar. Hopefully I won't have the same bloom as with vinegar.

I think as long as you are running a skimmer and your powerheads are creating some surface agitation in your display, you will be fine.
Cheers! Mark

 

[Newsmyrna80]

I think as long as you are running a skimmer and your powerheads are creating some surface agitation in your display, you will be fine.
Cheers! Mark

I have 3 power heads pointing towards the surface and I bought a new skimmer last month because the skimmer I had was terrible. So hopefully the water is pretty saturated with oxygen.
I'm going to give the dosing another try! :fun4:
Thank you for you help!!!!

 

[Daddi0]

I have 3 power heads pointing towards the surface and I bought a new skimmer last month because the skimmer I had was terrible. So hopefully the water is pretty saturated with oxygen.
I'm going to give the dosing another try! :fun4:
Thank you for you help!!!!

Sounds good! Do you have a doser?

 

[Newsmyrna80]

No I don’t but I’ll break up the dose during the day. I do have an ATO but I don’t completely trust it so I’d rather manually dose.

 

[Daddi0]

We used these for a long time. Simple to make and cheap. And easy to use.
-Fill bottle with dose and R/O
-Open valve (drip irrigation part from hardware store)
-Place finger over vent hole on cap
-Gently squeeze bottle to start stream out of hose (aim into tank)
-Remove finger from vent hole
-Adjust valve to a slow drip
We would run 2 bottles a day - 1 in the am and 1 in the pm.
Cheers! Mark

 

[jeremy007]

Love that idea with the drip. I am battling the same nitrate issue. Just bought a sulfur denitrator on eBay tonight. I added bio pellets, 25 percent water changes weekly, 30g refugium.

Starting to think it's my food and rocks. Feeding nori daily to my tangs May be the new pollution after years of stability. Let me know how things work out and I will let you know if this denitrator works.

 

[Newsmyrna80]

We used these for a long time. Simple to make and cheap. And easy to use.
-Fill bottle with dose and R/O
-Open valve (drip irrigation part from hardware store)
-Place finger over vent hole on cap
-Gently squeeze bottle to start stream out of hose (aim into tank)
-Remove finger from vent hole
-Adjust valve to a slow drip
We would run 2 bottles a day - 1 in the am and 1 in the pm.
Cheers! Mark

That's a great idea!! Thank you!!!