High nitrate question

[DanielJay]

My tank setup is a 125g display with a 50 gallon sump and a 100g stock tank for a remote refugium. I have very little coral and my fish list is: 1x blue tang (I know), 1x yellow tang, 1x yellow eyed kole tang, 1x clown fish. I had a few other fish 3 years ago in the tank but they died when two major life changes happened and friends were mainly watching the tank. My nitrates are rather high as I have been poor at testing and keeping up with water changes and I have bubble algae and some turf algae growing on all the rocks. I am dosing vinegar to the tank for a carbon source (which I am probably not dosing enough, can't remember how much I am dosing off the top of my head) but do not run any biopellets at this time. I do have some Chaeto in my fuge but it has not been growing well as of late. On Wed I decided to vacuum the sandbed for the first time in the 6+ years the tank has been setup. I only did about 1/3 of the tank as I didn't want to disrupt everything the first time I did it. Plus about 1/3 of the tank floor has GSP growing across it.

My question is how soon between vacuuming should I move to the next section? Sandbed is about 2-3 inches deep.

Would I be best getting biopellets or should I look into a sulfur denitrator? Or should I add something like Marine Pure/Brightwell ceramic bricks to the bottom of my refugium where I would assume the oxygen is less to help increase denitrification?

 

[nereefpat]

What is the value for nitrates?

Water changes will work much quicker/better than carbon dosing. A good skimmer is needed for carbon dosing, btw.

I probably wouldn't vacuum the sand.

 

[mcgyvr]

In general liquid carbon dosing, biopellets, and sulfur denitrators are a one or the other thing.. Each has the potential to work equally as well.. and they all do the same thing and my experience is that liquid is actually the "best" method for a few reasons..
Just get your vinegar dosing under control (known/proper amounts or whatever) and you don't need to switch to anything else.. Just follow the vinegar dosing chart and let the magic happen....

But yes.. I would suggest just doing a few large water changes to knock them down quicker and to really "reset" the water in general not just because of nitrates only..
You never stated what "high nitrate" is so it would help to put a number to that too..

And really no one knows what a good time between sections of sand bed cleaning is.. The common thought is just to do it in section to avoid causing too much of a disruption but to put a timeframe on it is just a guess by anyone.. Lets go with... oh.. wait 7 days between

 

[Cstone123]

That’s a nice size system. I had a similar problem. First of all gotta keep up on water changes and regular maintinance etc or things get whack fast and as humans we want it fixed now ASAP but tanks don’t work like that. They are slow and methodical but consistent. Nitrates are of course the cause of to much bioload or poopy in the tank. Not sure how much your feeding or what your clean up crew is like but given the info you left I would say your phosphates are high as well ( bubble algie loves it) with a sand bed that deep you should be able to avoid sand bed vacuuming if you had the proper refugium ( sand bed with cobble and copapods ( they love to eat the poopy) also instead of vacuuming I would just stir up the sand. What’s supposed to stay will and what’s detritus will make its way to the skimmer. If anything just take anything long and narrow to push through the sand bed to release stuff into current. I use a hunting arrow. I would not vacume especially after so long. It’s the major changes that cause problems no matter what the are. Easy does it. Water changes may need to be increased during this process too. Good water, good filtration, whether it’s filtration socks or pods , Cheeto, etc. check water peramiters and they will tell you what’s going on. Again the key is finding a rythem that works best for you and being consistent. Good luck.

 

[DanielJay]

Ok so my high nitrates are showing up as the super dark/vibrant pink on a Salifert nitrate test. I'm using the slow 0.066l/h dosing pump from BRS and it was programmed to dose vinegar for 1 minute on the hour every hour. As soon as I can I will post a couple of pictures of my setup.

 

[DanielJay]

Top of one side of my tank. Horrible quantity of bubble algae and some aptasia.

Sump - Custom made by me and my poor acrylic seams show it. Haha I just installed 2 felt filter socks today to see if I can help keep the tank cleaned.

Fuge - Thinking about shutting down my algae scrubber that I tried to run but produces very little algae. Considering hanging lights from the ceiling again to shine down on the chaeto that is below the scrubber.

 

[DanielJay]

Well I have upped my vinegar dosing over the past couple weeks. Last Monday I upped my 1.1ml/hr pump to 3 minutes every hour on the hour all day. Then this week on Monday I upped it to 4 minutes every hour on the hour. My skimmer is finally pulling out some good stuff as it has been looking like this for the past week and a half every day all day long. Each day I slightly adjust the skimmer to try skimming a bit wetter but it hasn't really made a difference in skimmate. I have not noticed any cloudiness in the water or any slime build up anywhere in the tank. (Except a little slime in the sump in an almost no flow spot, added some flow and it disappeared.) Only thing I have noticed is the skimmate actually stinks now and is much darker. I have tested the Nitrate levels every couple of days to see if there was a drop yet and I haven't seen a change yet. I had to put an old food container filled with water on the top to make sure the lid stayed on. I also had to take my new felt filter socks out as they only lasted 24 hours before they were overflowing into the skimmer chamber.

 

[mcgyvr]

Its 1.1ml/min not hour..
Big difference...

Not sure how much you are pulling out now BUT..
I'd raise the water level in the skimmer.
As you are trying to attack this problem I'd be trying to pull out a full cup every other day or so..

 

[DanielJay]

Its 1.1ml/min not hour..
Big difference...

You are correct. I mis-typed that one.

Right now the skimmer is draining into one of the containers below. It raises the level in the container about 1 inch or so per day. When I get home I will raise the level even more and see what I can get.

 

[mcgyvr]

ok.. good.. I'd try to pull out as much as I could now....

 

[DanielJay]

After a month I am starting to see good progress!! Even though it is difficult for me to tell the difference between some of the colors I can certainly see a difference from a month ago until last night.

I have significantly increased my vinegar dosing so my BRS 1.1ml/minute pump runs about 5 min 30 seconds every hour on the hour all day long. I have also added a very large LED light above my refugium to boost my chaeto performance. I am also now clean the algae scrubber screen about every other day to remove the clear bacterial growth off the bottom of the screen. Comes off very easy with water pressure from the sink. Really excited to see if I can get my levels down even further in the next month. Then I can hopefully pick up some peppermint shrimp and emerald crabs to tackle my aiptasia and bubble algae problem.

 

[DanielJay]

Looks like all of the monitoring of my vinegar dosing, really keeping an eye on my protein skimmer and increasing the lights on my refugium have really paid off.

Nitrates are now basically down to zero and have just turned off vinegar dosing for right now. It has been cut back the last couple of weeks.

My algae turf scrubber seems to be creating some interesting algae as well. Very shiny/slimy, slightly patchy, bright green and comes off in sheets.

Very happy with the progress. Now on to adding some peppermint shrimp and emerald crabs to take care of aiptasia and bubble algae now that levels are down.

 

[mcgyvr]

:thumbsup: looking good..

 

[nereefpat]

Well done.