Filter media to lower nitrates?

evo.howard2010

New member
Looking for a filter media that can be put in a reactor that will lower nitrates other that GFO. Anybody know?

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I dose vinegar on a daily basis. My nitrates were around 2 and my phosphates were .01. I was having an issue with hair algae, so eventhough my PO4 was low I felt my rocks which were dry rock from BRS must have been leaching PO4 and was being used by the hair alge. My tank is 45 gallons and my sump is 20, but total water in the system was only 35 gallons. I started slowly with the vinegar as per the table I found on the internet that everyone was using. I reached a maximum level of 11mls/day. My goal was to eliminate the hair algae, as I started dosing the vinegar, my nitrate levels dropped to 0, but my hair algae was holding on. In order to feed the good bacteria you need a carbon source (vinegar), nitrates and phosphates. Since my nitrates were 0, I started dosing potassium nitrate (KNO3) at a rate to raise my nitrate levels to 5 on a daily basis. Each day I would take a nitrate reading which showed 0. So I would add the KNO3 to raise it back up. I stopped at 11mls/day only because my Duncan and frogspawn corals would not fully open. Over time the hair algae mostly disappeared except for a few spots. I am now dosing 6mls/ day. Duncan and frogspawn look happy. Nitrates are holding between 2-5 and I've stopped dosing the KNO3.
 
If you do a search on the main forum you will find endless amounts of info on reactors, sugar, vodka. I have tried mostly all of them. In my 15 years of keeping fish I find that while these things work they are never a replacement for water changes and controlling the cause of the issue.
 
If you do a search on the main forum you will find endless amounts of info on reactors, sugar, vodka. I have tried mostly all of them. In my 15 years of keeping fish I find that while these things work they are never a replacement for water changes and controlling the cause of the issue.

Very true words!
 
Yep. When my big tank crashed I had nitrate in the 100s. Took 6 months of 100-200g water changes a few times a week to finally get the nitrate back down to zero. It gets bound up in the sand and rock and takes a long time to remove once that happens. What is your current water change routine?
 
agreed water changes are best but there are other means to lowering/keeping nitrates low. I like more natural routes so I jammed a reactor with matrix which the amount I used was equivalent to adding 100lbs of live rock(once matured) I will also dose remediation from aquavitro once or twice a year, it is a bacteria liquid specifically meant to break down wastes in the sand/rock etc and then your skimmer and other equip can pull it out of the water.

I recently stopped dosing vinegar and havent seen many differences yet but its only been two weeks, I may start it again if I see things decline.
 
While a 10% change weekly sounds sufficient clearly you have a nitrate problem so more is necessary. I would assume once you got the nitrates back down you could go back to 10% weekly as long as your not over feeding and you have sufficient nitrate export.
 
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