How does high Nitrates affect SPS corals?

[wfgworks]

The tips on several frags are bleaching and are showing no signs of polyp extension. I tested all my levels the other night and two levels that were off were Calcium and Nitrates.

Will high nitrates cause bleaching tips and polyps not to extend?

Calcium-520
Nitrates-50

Nitrites-0
Salinity-1.025
DKH-8
PH-8.15
Phosphates-0
Ammonia-0

I did a water change on Sunday night and will be doing another tonight to bring levels back into check.

Any thoughts will be helpful

Thanks,

Bill

 

[ryanrid]

high N03 will kill SPS

 

[dvanacker]

little/no polyp extension and slow growth.

 

[Psionicdragon]

high nitrate overfeeds your sps which turns them brown.

 

[Reefer577]

Poor coloration and slow growth.

 

[shandy_say]

Colorful SPS will turn brown with high nitrates!

 

[elijaher]

That's really high nitrates. Did you test your parameter before or after you've added sps?

 

[wfgworks]

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. Seems thats why my SPS are not looking so great right now.

I did test before but have been feeding on the heavy side so I feel that could be an issue.

 

[Reefer577]

My nitrates were at like 100 once upon a time when we were feeding like crazy. We used Prodibio to bring them down to 0. But its expensive.

 

[Tumbleweed13]

I recently had a Nitrate problem in the 50ppm range and it was killing off all of my SPS. I had to do large daily water changes to bring them down.

 

[wfgworks]

Ok, I think one of my test kits is bad. I have done a total of 3 water changes since Sunday night and my one test kit still reads 50, which cant be right. I have done 20% water changes each time which totals about just over 100 gallons of water for 170 gallon tank.

I bought a Seachem test kit to compare to my Sera Test kit. The Seachem is showing me in the range of around 20-25 but the Sera is still showing 50. The thing I dont like about the Sera test kit is that you have no in between colors. So you have a color for 0, 10, 25 and 50. I just cant imagine that doing all those water changes, I havent impacted my nitrates at all according to the Sera Test kit.

Any thoughts?

 

[wfgworks]

Also, I was at my LFS talking to them about my Nitrate issue and the guy suggested to me removing my Sandbed. Its about 2-3" and he said thats the source of my problem.

I have read many threads where people have success with shallow beds so I'm not sure if I should remove it at this point.

I also read an article about dosing vodka which many seem to like and reduces nitrates I thought this could help my situation so I started that last night.

I have been away from the hobby for a few years and got the itch to get back in, so any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks

 

[Mattik]

If you clean your sand good w/ water changes, that probably isn't your issue. It could be detritus settling on LR (in crevices, etc) or in a sump or filter soemwhere. Search everywhere to try and find the sludge, remove it and see what that does for you.

You could also try chemi-pure or something similar, or NP Biopellets, which I have heard do a great job of lowering N and P. Although, if they are too high, and are being fed by a lot of sludge, you may still have trouble getting to 0 until you clean it out.

Not long ago, I broke down my sump/refugium and sucked out all the gunk for the same reason...I was shocked at the amount of stuff I got out of there.

I few changes I have made since then: filter sock, chemi-pure (elite), stronger skimmer

I still plan to add bio pellets or ecobak in the next couple of months.

 

[Mattik]

I should also mention that I have a shallow sand bed similar to yours and it really isn't a problem as long as I clean it well.

Every so often, I have to clean behind the reef in the back corners, as gunk tend to settle in back there, but I don't think that is the fault of the sand so much as it is a flow issue.

 

[Paulca916]

IME unless your sand bed is 3 to 5 years old I doubt thats your problem it takes about that long to become a problem and as said above once a month do a cleaning on your sand bed with a gravel cleaner.
I let my SPS taml go awhile back because I was busy I had the same problem.
The way I fixxed it was doing a 25% water change every other day for 2 weeks to get my NO3 down to zero.
Now if you have a 170 gallon tank depending on how much water is in your sump your total water volume could be around 200 gallons so I would do 25% of that which is 40 gallons every other day.
If you do decide to remove your sand bed do it a little at a time if you do it all at once you could shock the tank.
And the recomendation of cleaning your sump is spot on I try to keep my sump spotless but then I dont use filter socks

 

[gatorrx98]

My SPS just went through the same think. A slow demise beginning with white tips and no polyp extension. I lost 3 sps due to NO3 at around 50. All of my parameters were good, but I wasn't testing NO3 with a Salifert test kit. Lesson learned here. Huge water change yesterday got me down to 5. Hopefully my others will survive.

I hope you fair better than me. Good Luck!

 

[josh11551]

is 20 nitrates just as bad for SPS?

 

[evokevin]

i'm at 20ppm nitrates and my sps are growing like crazy. i've been doing repeated water changes, 1 a week with 4 gallons to try to bring it down but it doesn't seem to budge. i'll prolly try another test kit just to be sure. regardless, the corals are happy.

 

[gatorrx98]

I've been told that 5-10 would be ideal, but that 20 wasn't terrible and shouldn't cause too many issues. I can tell you from experience that 50 is bad.

 

[twiggyb]

20 is an issue over a long period of time in my experience. I had bought a beautiful big green slimer colony once, and I had nitrates around 20-25, but after a while polyps stopped extending fully, then it started browning out and finally the coral started to die. Since then I do 15g a week to keep them low as I do not have a skimmer, but I still have phosphates which I'm trying to control right now.