fed up with nitrates!!!!

[coltsfan80]

I only have 2 fish...a small false perc clown and a blue damsel...2 of my orignal 5 hermits are alive...I bought a dozen more after my nitrates dropped, and I have lost a couple of them...my snails drop like flies......1 thing about my skimmer..which I thought was weird is that it has 2 sponge type things on the skimmer...one goes over the intake and the other goes where the air line feeds into the pump....other than that..no bioballs..no sponges in the filter..just carbon, denitrate and phosban....And I believe the sponge one the intake of the skimmer is to keep fish or anything else from being sucked up in there...

 

[coltsfan80]

honestly...and this sounds bad..but I really never saw a cycle....i have had this set up since the middle of may this year..and the ammonia, nitrite, have been 0...I do have trouble keeping my ph at 8.2 it falls to around 8.0.....but ever since the beginning the nitrate is the only thing that has been out of sorts and has been....I never saw a nasty algae bloom like people talk about when their tank is cycling...I didnt start to get algae until about a month ago when the nitrates soared off of the chart...when I bough my live rock..I bough it from a beautiful display tank from a lfs that was closing up shop...so I thought maybe since my rock was cured and had been in an established tank for awhile..mine might not "cycle like other tanks....

 

[MCary]

A cycle as it used here is when the ammonia's and nitrite rise because there isn't enough bacteria colonized in the system to reduce it yet. You have 40 pounds of liverock in a 29 gallon tank. There's a good chance you already had enough bacteria to handle any ammonia production, so you didn't see a classic cycle. However, you are seeing the nitrates so you know its happening. If your liverock is able to reduce the nitrates, which is not always the case, they will do it by way of anaerobic bacteria inside of it in areas where the amount of oxygen is low or non-existant. This anerobic bacteria needs more time to establish than the aerobes. Being that your tank is only 3 months old, I suggest a dose of this:

Mike

 

[GMAX]

Bet me someone asks where to get this new additive. LOL

 

[SeanySean]

Mcary - Does it Work?