Kraze I do not over feed, I recently upgraded my flow as I think it was on the low side. The main reason for my nitrates was from bad husbandry which is part my fault but I moved away to college and my mom was taking care of the tank and didnt do water changes and typical cleaning. My nitrates rose high and now I have been fighting to get them back down. I did a 50% water change with no drop in nitrates. Been doing 20% once a week as weekends are only time I can do them. Another reason I believe is I run a CC bed and when I do water changes I try and stir it up and get as much detritus as possible but it still is a loosing battle. I do not run any sponges, socks, or pads. I only run a skimmer. I am done with college in about 4 weeks which I will be doing a make-over where I will be adding a sump, fuge, and hopefully bigger skimmer. I will also be changing the CC to a sand bed of roughly 1-1.5" ( not looking forward to this). I was told (on here) that by doing a dosing of vodka would help my get nitrate under control while I am able to do correct water changes and further mantaince once they reached good levels again. The nitrates were fine until my mom was keeping tank for me while at school so I know things should be ok but just cant make a good enough dent on them to lower them. I dont want to do complete or ne thing higher than a 60% change due to big change for fish. I am going to try the vodka to help me get control and then be easier to keep them at good level once they have dropped.
