Lowering Nitrates
- Thread starter John&Lynn
- Start date
sir_dudeguy
Active member
Are you doing 10% weekly water changes? Are you using tap water instead of RO/DI? Is there left over food when you feed that just sits at the bottom or on rocks? Do you have a skimmer? How bout a fuge with a ball of chaeto algae or caulerpra? What fish do you have in the tank, how big is the tank?
srry for all the questions, but there's lots of things that can cause high nitrates.
srry for all the questions, but there's lots of things that can cause high nitrates.
Craig Lambert
Premium Member
What's the tank info?..bioload/how often you feed? A fuge, and if needed, better skimming are the likely answers.
Tank is 360 litres (420 litres before displacement). Have 20kg of live rock and 10kg of live sand. A Rena Filstar P3 External canister filter. Berlin Airlift 90 Skimmer. 1 Powerhead.
Stocking is 1 x Orange Spotted Sleeper Goby, 1 x Scooter Dragonet, 3 x Blue Chromis, 2 x Common Clown, 2 x Lyretail Anthias. 14 Turbo Snails, 3 Red Legged Hermit Crabs, 1 x Cleaner Shrimp, 2 x Peppermint Shrimp, 1 x Common Sea Urchin.
Water stats are:-
Nitrites 0ppm
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrates 40ppm
pH 8.0
Copper 0ppm
Calcium 440ppm
kH 15dkH
Water changes are 25 litres per week. Use tap water with conditioner to remove chlorine and chloramine. Also treating water change water with Nitrate Minus.
Stocking is 1 x Orange Spotted Sleeper Goby, 1 x Scooter Dragonet, 3 x Blue Chromis, 2 x Common Clown, 2 x Lyretail Anthias. 14 Turbo Snails, 3 Red Legged Hermit Crabs, 1 x Cleaner Shrimp, 2 x Peppermint Shrimp, 1 x Common Sea Urchin.
Water stats are:-
Nitrites 0ppm
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrates 40ppm
pH 8.0
Copper 0ppm
Calcium 440ppm
kH 15dkH
Water changes are 25 litres per week. Use tap water with conditioner to remove chlorine and chloramine. Also treating water change water with Nitrate Minus.
Avi
Premium Member
Two things occur to me that may well be contributing to your elevated nitrates. The first is IF you are using the canister with a filter medium like any kind of foam or floss, then that could be part of or even all of the problem. That kind of filter medium will actually contribute to the generation of nitrates. So, if you have carbon in the canister which you replace every three weeks or less, then, IMO, it's all right, but if you have a medium then discontinue its use.
The other thing that I believe would help is to increase the amount of live rock. I'd say that you have less than half the amount you really should have in order to create an effective envirionment water-quality-wise. The live rock, if you have about 1.5 time in weight to the volume of water should be a good basis for the correction of your nitrate problem.
The other thing that I believe would help is to increase the amount of live rock. I'd say that you have less than half the amount you really should have in order to create an effective envirionment water-quality-wise. The live rock, if you have about 1.5 time in weight to the volume of water should be a good basis for the correction of your nitrate problem.
sir_dudeguy
Active member
thats probably it right there. The media in canisters cant break down nitrates further (while live rock can..thats why live rock is the "filter of choice" now) so they just build up there. The media like "biomax" and all that jazz is the type of stuff that causes it.
So if you got anything besides carbon in your canister, take it out SLOWLY over a few weeks.
i'm not sure offhand what the weight converts to in kg, but you should have at least 1 pound of rock per gallon of water...so like avi said, get more rock.
ok i just did a metric conversion thing and you have a 95 gallon tank (after displacement). And you've got about 44 pounds of rock. Like avi said, you need to at LEAST double the rock, but more is better and can hold a bigger bioload.
also, 1 powerhead in a 95 gallon tank is not gonna be adequate. That right there could be contributing to it cuz stuff will just be settling on the rocks and sand/bottom and rot there. You need more flow so that the stuff will stay up in the water column and be more likely to get sucked into the skimmer.
Avi
Premium Member
Increasing the amount of flow that you have would be a big help. You surely don't have enough. I've found that cranking up the flow, even if you have only soft coral, really makes a significant difference in water quality. Consider the total amount of flow you have right now, and add more so that you have a total of 2800 lph and you'd be surprised what a difference it'd make. Also, when increasing the amount of flow, get the kind of powerheads that create a broad water movement like Tunzes or Seios. That's a lot more beneficial to a reef than the kind of flow that regular poweheads create.
hawaiianwargod
Active member
John&Lynn
[welcome]
[welcome]
Avi
Premium Member
The idea of using filter medium, whether it be bio-balls, filter floss, foam, etc. becoming a "nitrate factory" is the popular wisdom in reef-keeping. I've read it in books and countless posts here in RC and to an extent, I'm accepting it as correct since the sources of this information are credible. I have also seen posts here in RC by people who report using medium of one kind or another, that their nitrates are consistently at zero. I don't know of, and would like to see, the results of a serious study on the issue. I can say that I have set up my reef in a way which doesn't include any filter medium and even with having added a sizeable refugium, while it did drop them down significantly, only the addition of a sulfur denitrifier brought them down to negligible.
So, while I did say that using medium may well be part or even all of the cause of John&Lynn’s nitrate problem, I am not positive from my own experience that this is the case. It is definitely, IMO, something to consider, though, if nitrates are elevated and filter medium is in use.
I would have to say that if the filter medium is washed out frequently like you suggest, cpatbay, I don’t see how it could get to a stage where they would foster elevated nitrates.
Still, I don’t see the need for any filter medium of any kind, if there is sufficient live rock and a good quality protein skimmer running on the reef. It’s less maintenance at any rate than any kind of filter medium would require.
JeffersonReef
New member
Just do water changes. Do a series of large water changes... maybe 30% a day for 3 or 4 days... then keep up with regular water changes. Maybe upgrade ur skimmer (assuming you have one... didnt have time to read the complete thread).
HTH
-TJ
HTH
-TJ
Manuel Martinez
New member
Ok, but what about Vodka?
Fiziksgeek
New member
Vodka is for drinking!
RichConley
New member
People are mostly wrong in their interpretation of the problems with mechanical filtration. The problem is that, you're trapping detritus, and exposing it to a highly oxygenated water flow. It breaks down extremely quickly into nitrate. You're also preventing said detritus from being skimmed out.
The issue isnt the bacteria in the pads, its the fact that you're keeping the detritus in the tank.
