LPSpsCloWn
New member
Hi everyone I needed some advice please on nitrate reduction. My tank is 300L including a sump. I have a clownfish and 2 tangs. Nothing else. My nitrate are in the 50 and I cant cut back feeding any more. So I need nutrient export. A list of things I have tried. 1) vodka dosing by adding this to the tank, after 4-5 months of adding vodka and slowly upping the dosage, nothing, nitrates did not move. As i began to up the dosage, i noticed my two tangs behaving very strange, like they were itching and they would get much worse with time. So i stopped the vodka dosing and they got better after a week. 2) decided to dose vinegar, same thing happened as above, my purple and yellow tang would dart about the tank after a few months of dosing like they were trying to ich themselves. After stopping vinegar dosing they got better. This did nothing for my nitrates. 3) I decided to buy a LR1 algae reactor with cheato, nop nothing and was the most useless thing every i bought. 4) Then i tried a dedicated reactor with seachem denitrate in there with flow less than the recommend 200Lph. nothing no nitrate movement. 5) I have a hang on Deltec MCE600 skimmer and thought let me buy a new pump that might fix things. Nop nothing. 6) removed all the sand and added new sand and made this between 2-3 inches. Again nothing helped with nitrates. 7) Tried 5L of sera seporax in a basket in the sump and nothing after a year. 8) I tried a deep sand bed and again nothing( the flow was not correct over it so hence why it did no work) I am very close to closing the tank down.https://www.reefcentral.com/forums/images/smilies/deadhorse.gif I was thinking of trying a Deltec NFP509 nitrate reactor with vodka. Has anybody tried this. I think the vodka/vinegar was doing something to the fish or the bacteria that it was promoting was doing something. The fish would instantly recover aster stopping dosing for a week. So it was definitely something to do with it if not directly then indirectly. I also think it could be because my skimmer is under powered but deltec told me it is fine for the size of my tank. Who knows. When i was vodka dosing I would hardly collect any muck in the cup, it was just regular like before. Like once every 3-4 days. My idea is that Reactor would allow me to isolate the vodka from the main tank so hoping the fish would be protected from whatever reaction they were having. Am i going crazy or this worth a shot? also, deltec say I need a Peri Pump and it comes with one, but from looking at the diagram it seems i might need 3. One for feeding the vodka and one for feeding the system with tank water and one for removing water from reactor to the tank. Is this correct? it just sounds like a lot of peri peri pumps to buy, this will bankrupt me. Could I use my GHL Doser 2.1 instead of the 3 peri pumps? ( have read Dosers are not slow enough or accurate enough as Peri pumps for using with nitrate reactors) would it be worth me buying a larger Nitrate reactor, just encase i move to a bigger tank in the future? any help would be appreciated as I feel like this https://www.reefcentral.com/forums/images/smilies/headwally.gif Thanks all
