I just can't win with Nitrates

i dont trust the colors on my laptop screen, what are you reading your nitrates at?

also, i been seeing a lot of folks get stuck on numbers and get in a bad cycle of under feeding and then stalled coral and then feeding even less. I dont think youre there, but with your phos not being crazy high, and your chaeto not growing, i wonder if the sps might be hungry. a lot of people swear by things like oyster feast, and cyclopeze. just a thought, i dont see any down side to trying some sps food a couple times a week for a month and see if the sps perks up, you could always stop if the caulerpa goes bonkers. especially since you have good maintenance, so its not like it would be hanging around in there and rotting into food for the nuisance algae.
 
Its hard to tell i didnt do the high test but i am guessing around 20-30. The Cheato has only been in a few days. I have been feeding a little Reef Chili or Phyto twice a week and target feeding to control how much i use. Most of the coral look good but there are a few pieces that aren't and one of those popped the bag in transit to the house. They have been making a come back. The Cyano that is growing during day is doing more harm than anything and is why i want to bring the nitrates down
 
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ooh, cyano too? :(
i was reading about cyano "fix"ing its own nitrogen. idk, i think it might work like how you plant peas in your garden where you want to grown corn later cause the peas nitrify the dirt to give the corn what it needs. point being i dont think it cares about nitrates as much as phos and flow.

do you have any spots in your system where the water is extra oxygenated, like filter floss or long runs of pipe? the bacteria should be able to populate your rock fine, the nitrate reducers can live right underneath the nitrate producers. but not if the water is blasting through it like with bioballs. i would think the nem would be the canary in your coal mine, if he's ok with the nitrates where they are, i wouldn't worry too much
 
I think you need more rock. Good rule of thumb is you need at least 1lb per gallon. Unless you have a sump with all sorta of fancy $$$ filtration equipment. I have almost 90lbs in my 40g long. I am old school though..lol

also when was the last time you really cleaned out the tank? like blew all the rocks off with a power head, stirred as much crap up as possible off the sand etc and filtered/sucked it all out with a portable canister filter or something. sorta like a weekly vacuum on dirty floors in your house :D

sounds silly but that coupled with a good water change and you will be suprised how fast nitrates come down :D

also if it makes you feel better, 20-30 is not too bad :D
 
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I know you said you tried a DSB in the past, but was that in the tank or in a blacked out bucket?

I ask because if you have it in the display or a refugium, it doesn't work the same as it would in say a 5g bucket with no lights and high flow. I set mine up to run 350gph over about 50#s of fine sand within an old salt bucket. After about 3 months, my nitrates dropped from 40ppm to zero. I ran the test twice I was so surprised. The key is just having bacteria and water flow, not try to do multiple jobs at once. It only fixed the nitrate issue but that's all I wanted it to fix so I was very happy with the end result.
 
RocketEngineer said:
I know you said you tried a DSB in the past, but was that in the tank or in a blacked out bucket?

I ask because if you have it in the display or a refugium, it doesn't work the same as it would in say a 5g bucket with no lights and high flow. I set mine up to run 350gph over about 50#s of fine sand within an old salt bucket. After about 3 months, my nitrates dropped from 40ppm to zero. I ran the test twice I was so surprised. The key is just having bacteria and water flow, not try to do multiple jobs at once. It only fixed the nitrate issue but that's all I wanted it to fix so I was very happy with the end result.
Click to expand...

If i had room for a remote deep sand bed i would try it. I have often thought about trying to rig up a phosban reactor filled with sand and slowly let water run through it
 
+1 on more rock, agreed.

But have you tested AFTER doing a WC? Are your levels still high? Basically are you doing something to measure that you did a big enough water change.
 
Clowny88 said:
+1 on more rock, agreed.

But have you tested AFTER doing a WC? Are your levels still high? Basically are you doing something to measure that you did a big enough water change.
Click to expand...

200g Box of Instant Ocean since Jan 23rd. I ahve done big water changes some have been 50% and within a few days the NO3 are right back to where they were
 
You have an overabundance of bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrate but are lacking the bacteria that convert nitrate into nitrogen gas.

You don't have room for a 5g bucket near the tank?
 
As mentioned earlier and recommended by several others here, the addition of high quality mature rock (with higher density than the Pukani) should seriously be considered as a first step. There is definitely more room for rock in your system, as I believe you are under-stocked as it is (30 lbs in a 55 gal).
 
RocketEngineer said:
You have an overabundance of bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrate but are lacking the bacteria that convert nitrate into nitrogen gas.

You don't have room for a 5g bucket near the tank?
Click to expand...

That'd be one (good) solution. Another would be not cleaning the heck out of your DT's sandbed. After having run many tanks over the last 25 years, some that were BB with scrupulous detritus control, and others with a laissez-faire approach that relied on denitrification bacteria, encouraged by carbon dosing, my take on this is that it's really difficult to run a very low NO3/PO4 tank without the assistance of bacteria and chemical filtration (for PO4 removal).

One could, in theory, run a tank with a very light bioload and massive water changes assisted by skimming to keep the NO3 concentration below 10 ppm. But much below that? IMO it's nearly impossible if you're feeding your animals reasonably.

My experience with carbon dosing is that it can be employed at quite low levels and be enormously effective once one "gets over the hump" of establishing the necessary bacteria. One example I have is a 50g cube that's heavily stocked and fish fed heavily at least twice and sometimes as much as 4 times per day. This tank requires a daily addition of approximately 3mL of vinegar, which maintains NO3 levels of about 0.2ppm. It has a 2-3" deep sand bed in the display that is rarely disturbed. It's skimmed aggressively, and I run GFO and GAC.

Can't say this experience would be universal, but the strategy's worked well in several different tanks, some of which have been set up for a number of years.
 
addictedreefer said:
As mentioned earlier and recommended by several others here, the addition of high quality mature rock (with higher density than the Pukani) should seriously be considered as a first step. There is definitely more room for rock in your system, as I believe you are under-stocked as it is (30 lbs in a 55 gal).
Click to expand...

What rock do you recommend? Do you have a link?
 
+1 on NOPOx.
My tank was stuck at 20ppm NO3 for months. I started dosing 2ml/25gal and within 5 days it was down 2ppm. I cut back to 1ml/25gal daily for about a month and it stayed at 1-2ppm.

I know you mentioned you didn't really want to go the 'additives' route...but if all else fails ...it does work.
 
IMHO, you have plenty of rock... When we were following the 1lb per gallon rule, we were then having flow problems!

We have had some severe nitrate issues over the years, and these have been the things that have helped in assorted tanks
- Despite doing 50% water changes in our 150 every few days, the nitrates were just creeping up and up. In this tank, we changed from a Tunze compact protein skimmer (this thing just does not work) to a Vertex Omega protein skimmer, added more power heads for flow, added filter socks, and started using Red Sea NO3:PO4‑X. We actually removed the chaeto from the sump to make room for the skimmer. This tank almost always has 0 nitrates except for when we had to disassemble it last week to get the sick fish out. Then the nitrates only spiked to 5ppm! I am pretty sure those are back to 0 now though.
- In our 65g, we were having severe algae issues after the sand bed of many years was stirred. In this tank we had to replace the sandbed, also bought it a vertex omega in sump skimmer, added filter socks, and used the Red Sea NO3:PO4‑X. The corals in here look great and there are no nitrates! We are still having some algae issues, but these are much, much better than they used to be.
- The 3g pico is having nitrate issues. We are pretty sure it is due to inadequate protein skimming (SO made a DIY since there really aren't any that small to buy). SO has been doing 50% water changes and adding Red Sea NO3:PO4‑X and this has seemed to help. I also am doing a better job of watching how much food I put in there!


I hope you get this figured out! This hobby makes you want to pull your hair out sometimes.
 
I did just skim this thread but overall, it almost sounds like you mess with too much, blowing rocks off, changing things around, sounds like your hands are always in this tank. The KISS method works perfect.

Shallow Sand Bed or Deep, Lots of rock or not, dosing or not, enough flow or not, if you will step back and go through things one at a time, you will find the culprit. Over feeding, too much moving stuff, not enough flow in areas, RODI water, start a check list and start marking them off one a week not all in a day.

Nothing happens fast in this hobby.
 
I really appreciate everybody's advice a lot of it makes since i just need to figure out what to try. I might have more rock in the shed that i could cycle and add to my sump i will have to look. I do have a gallon of vinegar and 1.1ml dosing pump so i could start dosing vinegar or vodka. I will read up on each. I thought at one time when i was reading there were suggestions that vinegar, vodka and sugar each promoted growth of a different bacteria not sure how true or if it was ever proven.
 
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