How about using sugar to treat nitrates?

[luamada]

I was reading a thread about nitrates and one person talked about using sugar to lower it, but the thread was about send bed and noone said anything also about sugar.
Questions:
Is the regular sugar or diet or what kind of sugar?
How to use and how much?
Is there anything that I needto add to it?
How about vodka? I use carbon. Please give me some ideas about the suga thing. My nitrate is about 22 and my tank is 5 month old and this is the lower I could get it to get. Thanks:eek2:

 

[Brian Prestwood]

New Tanks

New Tanks

Hey Lucy

I put my reply to your PM here.

At five months many tanks are barely able to support life. I think you are probably expecting too much from a five month old tank.

This is especially true if you put a lot of freshly collected live rock in it. If it was well cured it may be another six months before your tank stabilizes. If it was poorly cured it may be another year. FWIW - I like a 1:4 ratio of live rock to dead base rock in a new tank.

If you have live rock and a remote deep sand bed maturing in the tank then the you should minimize the nutrient inputs and maximize the other nutrient outputs.

Minimize the nutrients you are putting into the tank. Your top off water should be reverse osmosis. The water you make your exchange water should also be reverse osmosis. Dry foods tend to be higher in nitrates and phosphates. Use fresh or frosen food sparingly. Also, rinse your frozen food.

Also, a high end skimmer (H&S, Deltec, Bubble King, etc.) rated at double your capacity is a good idea.

Finally, establish a macro algae bed. Like most reefers, I prefer chaetomorpha (chaeto).

Good Luck

Brian

 

[luamada]

Hi Brian, thank you so much for the reply. Let me give you a little history on my tank. I bought it used and it was very dirty, so I took it all apart and cleaned like new, spotless. It took me about 3 days working really hard. I washed everything with vinegar and water and rinsed like nuts. Than I bought the live rocks from a tank that was stablished for over 5 years ( I will put pictures of it), and it had things (corals) and bristle worms on them. I paid the guy to transfer the rocks for me with water so nothing would dye. I also bought his water, so we had an established tank in 2 hours. The only thing new that I bought was new live sand and used a little from his tank to populate my new sand.
I have never had amonia, nitrite, but the nitrate went sky high (80PPm), so since I started on 03/25/08, I have watched and taking care of it. I change he filter everyday, and do water change every other week. Since July the nitrate has been bellow 20, ussualy 15. I also had about 100 baby snail that were born in the tank and they are looking great and bigger now.
The guy that I bought the rocks and water from gave me 2 damsels and they are still in the tank, but I want to get it out, but I have had no success yet. They move too fast. The LFS tells me that my tank is ready for fishes and that is why I bought the anemony because I want to get clown and other fishes, but someone told me that I need to get the damsels out. What do you think? I really love this aquarium, and I could look at it all day (smile). I really want to get fishes. I had someone that told me they will charge me $40 to get the damsels out. What do you think? Thanks for all your help Brian, I really appreciate.
Lu

 

[luamada]

I have 130 Pounds of live rocks (none new rocks), about 70LB of live sand bed, 4 power head koraly 4 some soft corals, and mushrooms, the anemony, zenias, and other living things in the tank.
Yesterday, I bought more sand from the LFS and they told me to add a little at a time, so I added two cups yesterday, but this morning my mushrooms woke up closed. Do you think it could have been the sand??? thanks

 

[reef_only]

damsels are easier to catch with fish trap you can easily make a DIY fish trap for them; especially these are the only fish in tank. Basically you won't feed them anything for many days and put some food in the trap and wait for them to come in.. good luck.

 

[luamada]

Hi Reef, I tried the bottle fish trap idea. I did not feed them until they were almost talking to me, and them I put food in a clear bottle and put it in there, but they did not go in thee for 2 days and I was worried about messing up my water so I just gave up. I have contacted the store and they will charge me $40 to get them out. I guess I will have no other choice.
My major issue right now is that I got a new anemony last week and it came with a suisidal attitude. It went to my power head and almost got stuck on it, so I took it out, today it went to the other power head, and I was working. I am so worried. Right now it is all openned and it is looking a little better, but do you know if that will kill it? I took the power head out and put theother ones all in one side of the tank, so now I have 3 power head on one side and another smaller on blowing towards my anemony, but it is so up high in the tank, that I have a feeling it wants to jump out of the tank. Also it is splitting into two. I really do not want it to dye. What should I do???? thanks

 

[Marteau]

I am pretty new to saltwater but i have a couple of years of experiences in freshwater so i'll talk about what i do know. Some people say in freshwater that sugar help to stimulate the growth of the bacteria that take care of the nitrite making the cycling period shorter. Never did i heard of sugar lowering nitrate in freshwater.

I did tried it once with regular sugar, my tank want milky white and a white slime covered my sand, that was the bacteria overcrowded because i putted to much. Luckily nothing was in my tank at that time so i just waited and make water changes.

If i were you, i would try really small dose of sugar and see what happen. If u can set a quarantine tank with the water of your main tank in it, this would be perfect to run some tests and way more secure for your live stock...

This is just my experiences nothing else... i hope it helped.

Vincent

 

[luamada]

Thank you Matheus, and Brian for all the infor and concerns. I have not tried the sugar yet. What I did and it seems really good and I will let you guys know in a few weeks was: I have bioballs, so I removed half of them a little at a time, that made my nitrate to lower from 70s to20s, so I wanted to vemove them all, but my system was making too much noise, so I started to everyweek take a couple hand full of balls and rinse them really well with freshwater, and just putting them back. My nitrates is now at 10 and it has been at 10 for a week. This weekend I will do that again and let you know what my nitrate does. I have been measugin the nitrate everyday since I did it because I was affraid to make it go higher but until now it is lower than ever.
If it does not work and it comes back up, I will go for the sugar ormaybe change the whole filter system. I will keep you guys posted.
PS. My anemony is still surviving. Please give me any info you have on them. Thank you.
Lu

 

[luamada]

not Matheus, but Vincent

 

[lancer99]

Luamada,

It sounds like you did a lot right, and maybe a couple of things wrong. First of all, I'd suggest that you don't use sugar/vodka or any of those methods to lower your nitrates, for now.

Even though it sounds like you did most things right, even setting up a new tank with established live rock and water can cause nutrient spikes, and that may have caused your nitrate problem.

Having to feed two damsels when your tank hasn't settled down is probably making things worse...it's probably worth the $40 to get them out of the tank. In the long run, you won't want them anyway

Getting rid of all of the bioballs is a good idea. They will convert ammonia and nitrites to nitrates, but then the nitrates just build up in your tank.

How deep is your sand bed, and what kind of sand? Others will disagree, but I am a firm believer in deep sand beds, with sugar-size (e.g. Caribsea Aragamax) sand. I use them in all my tanks, and my nitrates never get above 1-2 ppm.

-R

 

[luamada]

Thank you for your reply. I do have 3 inches of sand in the tank which is about 4 big bags. I am not sure how much is in each bag. The kind is the best according with the store, but it does looks beautiful and white, now it has some diatons on it. I have not used sugar yet and today my nitrate was between 5 and 10. I do have a problem with a new anemone that I bought though.
Thank you.

 

[lancer99]

You need more like 4" of sugar-sized sand to get good nitrate reduction.

I wouldn't necessarily believe what "the store" tells you....they can maximize profits by selling you things that don't work, then selling you things to fix the problems that they caused....possibly just because they aren't well-informed.

Good luck!

-R

 

[luamada]

Can I add more now that my tank is stablished? What about adding a little at a time? How should I do it?" thanks

 

[gogregerson]

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php