How high is too high?

[CarrieB]

So my new to me 150gT tank has cycled, but nitrates are around 50ppm. The previous owner was running it as a FOWLR and due to family issues, it wasn't getting much attention. Although the fish were healthy, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the nitrates were high and the LR full of detritus.

So currently all I have in the tank is a large hermit crab and a sea cucumber, both of which seem to be pretty happy. The hermit crab is all over the tank keeping the algae in check.

So my question is, when do I need to care about the nitrates? Plan is to get two Ocellaris clowns, but it will be a while before they get through QT, and I understand that fish are pretty tolerant of nitrates anyway. I need better light for coral, but do I need to get the nitrates down before getting them as well? The inverts I have don't seem to care. Would others?

I know there are a lot of choices for trying to reduce the nitrates. I am breaking in a good size skimmer and I think that will help given time. I need some more flow in the tank and will be taking care of that soon. Also, the tank is new, and might be still recovering from the move. I'd kind of like to see what happens before I start changing more variables. Is it bad to wait and see? Would I be a bad reef mom?

 

[Sk8r]

Many 20% water changes. That will help a lot.

 

[CStrickland]

No you're not a bad reefmom
You're right that nitrates aren't a big deal for fish. But fish don't like drastic changes so in the sense that you might want to do something like big water changes (more than 20-30% is when I get picky about matching temp, salinity, and alk) or messing around with the rocks, I think that's best gotten out of the way before you add anything. That way they have a nice settled home to move into. If you don't have any animals in there now you can really go nuts, vacuum the sand, blow off the rocks, change a lot of water, etc.

I had a little fit a few months ago, and rescaped the whole tank. It took like 6 weeks for everything to settle down again. But I've always had really good nitrate numbers, so it was a one time thing. I dosed vodka and did some big changes, but IDK if that did the job or just blowing all the crap into the water for my filter sock to catch, and vacuuming it out of the sand, and letting the tank stabilize to its new arrangement / repopulate what I killed in the move.

If you're going to quarantine your fish, you can probably get started on that for now.

 

[Braydon00]

+1 cstrickland

 

[CarrieB]

Thanks! That was where I got to, too.

Possibly picking up a couple of Ocellaris clowns tomorrow and starting TTM, so yes, I have time. Trying to figure out the logistics of doing a 30 or more gallon water change.