if you have a nitrate problem read this

[aquaboy620]

I have been having a nitrate problem now for a good while now(over a year I believe). just started testing about 3 months ago. well I stubbled upon a cooking rock thread that was posted by bomber I believe. that guys method and tank looks unbelievable. anyway the whole cooking rock is a bit hard when you have a 240 gallon like me, but I figured if I take the same concept and put in some elbow grease maybe it would work. from what I experienced today whenI removed rocks out of my tank and scrubbed them like crazy in a garbage can full of new saltwater and dunked it up and down and shook it all around. The outcome was so nasty. the rocks have probaly never been this clean since I've owned them. the water became a brownish yellow in color after a few rocks and the sediment after you drain the water is out of control. so I guess I found out where all my nitrates and problems have been coming from. lol. Granted this was all my fault because of lack of flow in my tank. but that will soon be fixed after I finish the last batch of rocks tomarrow. after you scrub the rocks like crazy and dunk them a few times I put them in a 60 gallon tank with saltwater. Oh yeah I was having a cyano problem so I also dosed Boyd slime remover which also releases trapped slutch according to the box into the garbage can and the QT tank in hopes to get rid of the cyano and release the trapped sediment and the nitrates all in one shot. I had 15 ppm nitrates in my tank before this adventure. after my water change and the rocks are put in my tank I will reveal my results. I am very confident after what I removed from the rocks in crap that I will be a happy camper after I'm done. wish me luck.

 

[Airwolf75]

Howdy, I think the dirty rocks are a result, not the cause of your nitrate problem. Maybe you need to explore options for keeping your tank cleaner so you don't have to do this as it sounds like a highly unsavory way to spend a day.

 

[CICH]

Will you not get die off from scrubbing the rock.I think your scrubbing the rock will have a negative affect

 

[jenglish]

You will remove some of the built up detritus from the rock but it will not be the same as cooking and letting bacteria turgor force PO4 out of the rock. I might look into a rock lift and pegging some distance between your rocks for better flow or this will only happen again.

 

[ginger7286]

IMHO (with only 2 years experience) I think scrubbing the rock also removes good bacteria and copepods. Cyno is usually caused by phosphates. Control those and you control your cyno. The scrubbing may fix the problem temporarily but I think the problem will return. I vaccum my rocks and my gravel every week. I still have nitrates around 10-15 ppm every week but I know I have a heavy bio load. I am going to set up a 55 gallon in the near future to aleviate that problem. Anyway I hope you find your rock scrubbing works for you. Let us know.

 

[aquaboy620]

well as of today I tested my water and the Nitrates are down to 5ppm and tested my phosphates and they are at .25ppm I believe, but not quite sure its a cheap test kit. other than that I lost more fish due to stress and other sickness' that were there before taking out the rock. my rocks, main display, and refugium never looked cleaner except when I started the tank. the tank got this way because of lack of flow and overfeeding and maintenence. so as of tomarrow i am adding a koralia 8 which adds 3250 GPH to the tank and I am looking to get another one after. so after 2 koralia 8's we will see how the tank does with flow. I know what I did made the cycle worse but I had to clean the rocks. And yes it was a horrible 3 days so far. breaks my heart to see my fish suffer like this. hopefully i won't have to go through this again. I am also looking to get a bigger clean up crew. I need like 50 emerald crabs to eat the turf. they love to eat it. I seen um. they did a great job on my girlfriends nano which had the same issue considering she got her rocks from my tank and now her tank is thriving and free of algae.
As for cooking the rock, I know it's not the same or anywhere close to it, but I can't possibly house the rocks in QT that long. so I did a half @$$ cooking. 3 days total in complete darkness and dunking and swishing.
now if anybody has any tips on cycling faster any advice would help. I usually just let the tank do it's thing but my fish are going through it. My corals on the other hand are opening up like it's the thing to do. wish me luck and thanks for your input.

 

[sedor]

I made the mistake of messing with my rock to much once before. It was my first and so far only tank crash.

I don't think there is much you can but just wait the cycle out. You could try and get your fish into QT, or even a couple 10G's with fresh saltwater to wait out the cycle. Better to be cramped than breathing in ammonia.

 

[aquaboy620]

yeah I know its a little late. lost half of my fish, but the other half seem to act like nothing ever happened. very weird. I guess some can take the stress better than others. added a koralia 8 and koralia 7 and have 2 koralia 4's that are being replaced by another 7 and 8. so in total I will have 4 powerheads in the tank, 2 koralia 8's and 2 koralia 7's. with 2 seaswirls pumping out 2000 gph. I hope this will be enough flow for my tank and i will never have to deal with detritus settleing in the tank. I doubt it but I will continue to use a turkey baster and toothbrush the rock once a week or so. will feed every other day and cut back on the amount of food. and definately stay on top of water changes and routine maintenence. hopefully doing all of this will bring my nitrates down and stay down.

 

[cindyreef]

Scrubbing my rocks is the method that worked for me . I used 2-- 5 gal pails, one for scrubbing and one for final rinsing. My tank never looked better than the day after I did it. And YES it is a terrible task. The amount of sludge in the bottom of the 1st 5 gal pail was 3" deep and was disgusting.
Ive had the same rocks in my 135g for 11 years. Due to poor flow, detrius and the probable PO4 I was getting alot of HA. Now I have had none for about a year now.
Although with the algae I had to do this about 5 times it was well worth it. No spikes and I didnt lose any livestock or my coraline that I probably would of by cooking it instead.

Lesson learned: have LOTS of flow

 

[sedor]

Only problem with scrubbing your rocks is that you aren't actually dealing with what is causing the problem in the first place. The best option is to use some sort of bacterial driven dosing system like vodka to rid your system of its nitrates and phosphates. Or by using a couple phosban reactors with carbon and GFO in them.

If you want to be old fashion go with the good ol' refugium.

 

[cindyreef]

In my experience scrubbing the rocks and rinsing out the detrius was getting rid of the problem.
I have to add I did remove half of my old sand bed too.

I have to emphasize this would only happen on old tank with rocks that have been building up detrius for years. The vast amount of info available to new hobbiests now just wasnt there 11 years ago. Tried and still have phosban and a large refugium with about 15 g worth of cheato. In this group of old picts you will see the cheato. And the tank was almost completely green with HA.

http://www.arrg.ca/thread-3254.html

It has died back considerably now that the nitrates are gone.
As far s the vodka I dont like adding anything I dont need. Maybe in the future though I will.

 

[cindyreef]

To clarify what I meant above is that the cheato has died back considerably. The HA was pretty well gone when these picts were taken.

 

[aquaboy620]

well after everything now I have a brown diatom algae problem like no other. its driving me crazy. I can't get rid of it. more fish are dying from som disease that looks like the scales on them are lifting off and look like they are rotting away. I should have never removed my sandbed. what an idiot. my tank was doing great before and I saw some barebottom tanks and wanted to try that. never take a sand bed out all at once and if its in the tank just leave it there or you'll regret the decision after everything is said and done. trust me. it wasn't worth 15 of my 31 fish dying.

 

[cindyreef]

Im very sorry to hear of your losses.
Did you test for ammonia?
How are your parameters?
Could you not move your fish to a safer place like a quarenteen or a large rubbermaid?
Most of all how did you remove your sandbed? Did you siphon it?
Removing it all and not replacing any would be scary.
Did you replace the water with new and how much?

 

[aquaboy620]

I took a water sample to my LFS and they said my ammonia was at 0 and nitrite at 0 and nitrate was at .5ppm according to my test and phosephate was at 0 as well. I removed the sand by taking a red plastic cup and scooping it up one by one. then used a brine shrimp net to remove some of it because the brine shrimp net worked out better so I started using it instead. I still have some sand in there but not much. I am debating on putting some back in. kind of defeats the purpose of what I did. But so far I have only had negative effects. Granted it's only been about a month or so. And if I decide to put some back in I am faced with another cycle. I don't know how much of this my tank can take of this. My animals are dying off so fast and its killing me. I take pride in keeping fish alive in my system and I am very picky about what goes in my system. which usually means expensive losses. I hope I do not lose my dwarf golden moray. I paid 400 for him. I have lost well over 400 dolloars worth so far and counting. my tank looks so empty right now.

 

[cindyreef]

Ive never gone without a sandbed so maybe someone else with experience in that can chime in here.
Siphoning it out a little at a time during water changes would of been safer Im sure. Scooping it out the way you did would of released alot of nasties into the water. It must of been very cloudy. Not much of a stretch to think one of those stressed fish would of caught something and now its spreading to the rest.
I realize to you it is hindsight now but it would of been safer to remove the fish,etc and put then in a large holding tank (or rubbermaid) with most if not all of your tank water and some rock for hiding. This would of kept the water clean and caused somewhat less stress while you removed your sandbed.
Its hard to believe you never had a spike doing it like this. Ammonia can spike one day and be down the next so it could be easy to miss. Have you checked your pH? A lower pH can be a byproduct of cycling and 20 % water changes will help. You probably already know this but...... if it is low dont raise it too fast with your fish, etc in there!
BTW Have you done any water changes since?

 

[aquaboy620]

i have not checked the PH yet but as for the spike in ammonia I'm sure it did and did not notice it. I've done water changes that added up to 130 gallons in about 3 weeks. i did a 50 then another 50 then a 30. the system has about 300 total water volume with all the rocks, corals, and equipment. And yeah I wasn't thinking about what I was doing to my tank until It was done. Big mistake. I'm still debateing on putting sand back in the tank just not as much and only in the front kind of like a beach area for my gobies.

 

[cindyreef]

I think it would be dangerous to put your old sand back in and cause another spike. You can add new sand though. Your old sand in there will seed it. I used a 2 1/2" pvc pipe. Fill the pipe with sand (I used dry ...it worked better and by moving it slowly you can put a layer of sand down without making much dust and cloudy water. When your done the water in the tube will be VERY dirty. If you dont want this dirty water into your tank you can siphon it out before you remove it.
Hope this helps.

 

[sedor]

Your poor tank. If the moray made it through this long he's got a good chance of survival.

If you do add another sand bed do yourself a favor and make it shallow, 3" max. That way you won't have nitrates building up in it and you can even stir it up to keep it clean and detrius free. It won't support a lot of the life and deep sand bed can, but IMO if you really wanted to go that route you could always add a remote deep sand bed with a bucket and some plumbing.

 

[CubeNoob]

I had to deal with a tank that had nitrates in the 200s and only then were the persons corals showing major problems, but I was able to resolve it in 5 days. Nitrates went from 200 down to under 5 on a 5 year old 135G tank stuffed with live rock that ran into the same problem you did, build up of deitrus. Simple solution was to not remove anything, or stir up the sand, it was to use a small powerhead like a Maxi-jet, put a small hose on the end of it and blow out every nook in cranny in every rock and then immediately do a 95% waterchange. Do this every 24 hours until your nitrates are where you want them. On the 135G we did 125G waterchanges every 24 hours, each time spending about 10mins each between 2 of us with 2 pumps blowing out the rocks then doing the water change. Day 1-3 hardly made a dent, but day 4 made a huge impact, and after the 5th straight day of doing it the morning of day 6 nitrates were maybe 5 and his tank was good to go again.

Myself, I do 50% weekly waterchanges on my 75G and use a turkey baster for 10 minutes on the rocks before waterchanges each time I do them so I do not get a buildup. I also have a DSB in my display tank, but I suspend my rocks above the sand, no rocks touch any sand or glass. This keeps the deep sandbed working its best and keeps it clean. My nitrates bounce between 0.25-0.5 and phosphates .02-.03.