Completely Puzzled....?

MrHarvard

MrHarvard

"ship it"
I have been tring to help Mike (CrazyEyes) figure out what is causing his nitrate problem! His last reading was 200ppm no this isn't a typo. The strange thing is all corals, fish, and even snails are all doing just fine? Went through the obvious things already with him. RODI water is good, all rock was bought from established tank little to no die off, sand was bought from LFS live new in bag, feeding is normal no flake or pellets and has cut back, All detritus was cleaned out of sump, he hasn't stirred up the sand bed, all his plumbing was new and hasn't had time to really have build up. Went through entire system no sponges, or filter floss or any material that will hold nitrates. He has been running a skimmer and dosing bacteria for a few weeks. He just started dosing nopox and carbon as well. He has been doing larger than normal and more frequent water changes for the past few weeks and still his nitrates haven't dropped. I thought first it must be the test kit but no it was checked with multiple kits including Red Sea. I am at a loss! The only thing he has had happen out of the normal is when setting up the tank he leak tested it and didn't get the last 1/2" or so of tap water out of it before he added the sand. I was thinking that the fresh chlorinated water could have killed the bacteria in the sand and it has been leaching nitrates since? I also told him to fill his jugs up with new saltwater and let them sit for an hour then test the water to see if its something in the jugs. I know that Mike is getting frustrated and I understand why! He has checked everything and I am also out of ideas. Oh and no traces of ammonia when tested! If anyone can think of anything else I missed please chime in I would hate to lose another local reefer!
 
The rock....Has he checked the rock? Put a smaller rock into plain RO water, do a test of the RO before and after adding the rock, Let it sit for a while then test the water. Never heard of leaching Nitrate but Just eliminate another variable.
I had rock in 180 that was base (nothing fancy) and it leached crap and caused minor problems. Ty
 
Well, it turns out having high nitrates isn't that bad for a saltwater aquarium. It really depends on the inhabitants of course but for the most part high nitrates is "ok" according to the link below. Me personally I like to keep it on the low side.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2003/8/chemistry
http://www.melevsreef.com/reducing_nitrates.html

Best way to reduce nitrates is water changes, in a ~50g system with 200ppm+ in nitrates, do a 70% water change (35g), which will remove 140ppm from the system (200*.7=140). So now there's 60ppm nitrates, in the next few days do another 70% water change and it'll remove 42ppm nitrates leaving the tank with 18ppm. You can go smaller % in water changes but you'll have to do more water changes. You can't expect to see a significant drop in nitrates with only doing 10-20% water changes.

The nitrates are coming from uneaten food or dying/dead material in the tank, it's possible snails/crabs/worms were growing to a large size and then died in the tank, best thing to do is to ride the wave until things stabilize by not dosing anything and getting the current water chemistry as close as possible to freshly made salt water by replacing the current water, best of luck.
 
I have hear of people doing 90% water changes...If you really want to remove nitrate you have nothing to lose... My 20 long has about 15 gallons of water and I change 5 a week. A lot of my LPS and my OS BTA are expose for about 2-5 minutes with no ill effects. Just a low tide. I do recall not too many coral so move them to the bottom and do a HUGE water change. Do not feed the rest of that day, test right after(about an hour to let water circulate), then test the next morning. Do not feed before of during. If the nitrate still climbs something is leaching.
 
I rinsed 40#s of dry sand with tap, sand was still very wet and set up my 20 long the same night with no ill effects. Chlorine evaps quickly maybe 24 hrsw or so. I highly doubt that had any effect.
 
I just read live sand.....IDK if a live sand die off would still be causing him problems....There is not that much bacteria in live sand to cause an on going problem, But im not a scientist... Think about a fish dying or coral melting etc.... doesnt spike the water that much...
 
test the water in the mixing station before it goes into the water change <after the salt has mixed for however long he mixes it>
 
I am in the same boat as Chaos for the sand bed - simply rinsed with tap water and put it right in, then added saltwater. I still would have had tap water in mine (reading zero nitrates before the sand bed was removed)

2012 Pinellas Water quality is reading nitrates at 0.05% - well below the 1 MCL. 0.05% should be equivalent to 5 PPM I think so you can rule out the tap water.

You've got a nitrate factory somewhere.
 
Also the lack of nitrites means your not seeing the intermediary of a ammonia problem. If you have ammonia - your going to have nitrites.
 
First off, thanks Anthony. Okay. The socks get changed everynight now. I was feeding quite heavy i.e everynight which included a full cube of frozen mysis, artics pods, cap full of phyto. I am now feeding every 3 days. And also aside from only feeding every 3 days instead of dumping all of the food in I go quite slow and watch them eat it all before adding anymore food, this way it cuts back on wasted food. A good amount of the rock is from my old 20g which experienced no NO3. As he mentioned I have been dosing a cap of MB7 everyday for the past 12 days and dosing nopox for 4 days now. Started with 3ml but after seeing how it was stepped up to 6ml. I've been doing 10g WC's every 2-3 days which includes vacuuming the sand, sump and rocks of detritus. I just as Anthony thinks the only things left that I can even think is maybe it's the jugs which will get tested prior to doing another water change.
 
And also, the sand, I don't believe it was live to begin with. It is CaribSea Aragonite. I might have to call Coral corral and ask if the Caribsea they carry in 40lb bags is live or not. But, it was rinsed quite a bit before even adding it so I would imagine if it was live all the BB was probably killed off when I rinsed it.
 
You might be right, as I said. I have since cut back drastically and only feed the fish every 3 days. I haven't fed the corals in quite some time. Well, i started the Red Sea reef energy A and B but only did that once and after I saw how high no3 was I stopped.
 
Is he getting the same high reading with multiple different test kits? If he is always testing with the same single test kit it may be a bad test kit. If he has not already tried a different test kit that would be first thing on my list.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2
 
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