How can I lower these nitrates?!

M

myownreef2015

New member
How's it going, I'm new to the reef community and excited to get started! I've had my tank up for 3 months now and everything has been going well, other than my Nitrates. My nitrates are between 10-20 ppm. I've been through many different threads on the issue and many sites. Still no luck on lowering nitrates. Now I'll go over parameters and history so far.

Ammonia is 0
Nitrite is 0
Phosphate is 0
PH is 7.9 to 8.1
Calcium is 380
Salinity is 1.023
Temp is 77 degrees.

I have a 30 gallon red sea max. I got the tank used, did a full cleaning when purchased. It came with stock T5 lighting, protein skimmer, upgraded circulation pump by red sea. Came with 2 wavemakers I'm just not sure it's enough and am upgrade it to the MP10QD.

I have upgraded to a media rack running filter floss on top, purigen in the middle, and chemipure elite on the bottom.

Upgraded protein skimmer to the Tunze 9001.

Filter sock is under circulation pump and changed weekly.

I do 10% water changes weekly, I use RO and pre mixed salt water from LFS. I've tested both RO and pre mix saltwater and everything is good.
Aqua scape is open with caves and such. Have used a turkey baster to blast junk off the rock and is all clean.

Live stock contains 2 clows, 1 goby, 15 crabs, 10 snails, 1 yellow tiger stripe coral, and 1 tounge coral. Everything seems healthy.

At this point I'm not sure what to do. I've done vac on the sand, cleaned all possible filters, skimmer cup. Still no luck!
 
10-20 is not horrible per say. It doesn't look like you are keeping much corals...

I would suggest, changing filter socks two times a week vice one. How much are you feeding, it may be beneficial to feed less.
 
I don't even have half of the gadgets you do, with the same size aquarium and stocking level and my nitrates are also usually 10-20 (ok for fowlr). I think in order to push below these numbers you really need some sort of active removal such as a sump with macro algae or an algae scrubber.

Think about it. Your fish are constantly fueling the production of nitrate. Unless you are constantly removing it, its going to build up to some degree

If you want a lot of coral you will need to lower them considerably. If your happy with what you have, and the tank looks happy, I wouldnt worry about 20 ppm.

Alex
 
Low nitrates and manual labor seem to go hand in hand IME. You don't want to overfeed, overstock etc, but a little work can go a long way sometimes. GL.
 
Thanks for the replies! I appriciate any feed back I can get! As far as feeding, I feed once a day and it's the 1mm pellets, and it's about 4-5 of them once a day.

For the future, I do plan on doing more coral. A guy at one of the LFS said he never has seen a tank of this size with 0 nitrates. Just due to the size of tank, getting them down to 0 is very difficult. And as I'm finding out, yes it is difficult.

I've seen mixed opinions about bio pellets and nitrate reactors. I'd just hate to stock corals and after time and care the nitrates kill them off.
 
You should check out the nano reef forum here.

Many of us have very active nano reefs, and have all been there for that size tank and in your situation, so have a look around and feel free to ask questions.

I would recommend putting some decorative macro algae in your display if you're concerned. Also, the Tunze 9001 sucks, unfortunately. The AquaticLife 115 is what I usually recommend. I think your tank really just needs time to mature.

Also, 10-20ppm of nitrates means nothing if you don't have nuisance algae. It's 100% fine if you are happy with your tank. It can fuel algae growth, but at the same time, when you do get the algae, it'll go down to zero, then your question is "why does algae continue growing when my nitrates are at 0" and the answer is that the algae is using it up as fast as it goes up.

That's why I recommend a nice algae to compete with the bad algae, so that the nice looking algae uses it up, then you can remove it at your leisure, and sell it to others if it is a nice algae.

Good luck!
 
I want to do a war coral, hammer or torch coral, duncan, maybe some mushroom corals. Start them as frags and let them grow from there.
 
Ever since I made a cheesy algae scrubber in my hob filter and got some astrea snails algae has completely disappeared for me in my tank
 
You might try one larger water change (say 30%) and see if that doesn't bring them down.
Sometimes one big change is more effective than a series of smaller ones.
(Also +1 to changing those filter socks on a more routine basis.)
 
nmotz said:
Try dosing vinegar, pretty easy and will lower your nitrates over the course of a few weeks
Click to expand...

I have a nano 30G myself and I dose NOPOX from red sea. It has had a positive impact in my nitrates bringing them down from ~20 when I started to less than 5 (not detectable by my cheap API test kit). Just need to make sure your skimmer is up to par or that you have some other way of oxygenating the water.
 
Been battling nitrates of 25 to 30 ppm for a year now and tried carbon dosing, almost 100 % water changes and buying new test kits and still the same. I only have 3 fish, snails, crabs along with mostly montipora coral. The only thing I haven't tried is updating from a tunze 9004 skimmer.
Funny thing is with my nitrates and with some phosphates fluctuating I have absolutely no algae issues.
 
gmlee said:
Been battling nitrates of 25 to 30 ppm for a year now and tried carbon dosing, almost 100 % water changes and buying new test kits and still the same. I only have 3 fish, snails, crabs along with mostly montipora coral. The only thing I haven't tried is updating from a tunze 9004 skimmer.
Funny thing is with my nitrates and with some phosphates fluctuating I have absolutely no algae issues.
Click to expand...

This is a very interesting talk by Richard Ross on the subject

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRIKW-9d2xI
 
I was really interested in that talk because it really brings to light how much but, at the same time, how little we know about reefs and reef keeping. How much it's just "it's a method that just works" rather than a panacea. Don't get me wrong, I myself try to achieve a low nutrient environment and that's because it simply has been proven to work but that doesn't mean it's for sure the only way...
 
Yeah could bang your head all day and night trying to reduce the numbers but when u try all you can do and everything in between and the tanks not over run in nuisance algae, if any at all then why bother. Obviously if u know the cause and can eliminate it then fine. All I know is my tank looks great and I sit for hours enjoying it.
 
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