Need advise on nitrate issues

YOU GUYS ARE GREAT!!!!

Here is what Im going to do. I did on a side note find two of the emerald crab bodies I got to one but cant to the other. I have a ton of rock and I agree 100% opening it up will be a good thing. I actually told the wife last night that I need to get that 60lb rock out of the tank and go with a two island look.

With the 300 gallon water change sI was just doing what was suggestions to me. Reason I said I would buy the water is because it would take a couple days to do it and I dont have my other tank up in the laundry room yet. Stand is together but I dont have it ready. Still working on it.

Im deffiently gonna work on this tonight with the wife since she is the arcitech...LOL Ill have to thin out some stuff however no big deal.

Im still gonna pick up a media reactor just to have one. Now my question is while doing all this rock work Im gonna stur up alot of gunk should I go and try to move the fish into a different tank if I get it set up?

Just wondering if I should do that 1st is get the fish in a 2nd tank or just remove the rock slowly. Opinions.
 
The fish will be fine...a bit stressed but should be fine. When i started out i had crushed coral and did a change to fine sand with all the animals still in. I was mostly worried about the foxface getting me. I did lose some corals...but that is because i physically lost them in the tank, only to find them weeks later upside down and to the skeleton. But it was like pea soup in my tank. It would be a great time to siphon that crap out though.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using Tapatalk 2
 
bill4t said:
gfo reactor I have bio pellets in it right now lol. I can dump the pellets and you can get some gfo and put in there and hook it up. guaranteed to drop the nitrates then lol
Click to expand...

GFO drops phophates not nitrates!


Do you have any circulation behind the rock work? could you be getting a build up behind it? Don't give up I had nitrates 160+ tets kit looked like I had given blood. I did 50% water changes every other day and it took awhile but eventually they came down and stayed down. I have a 55g and had about 90lbs of rock. I took a lot of the rock out and re-aquacsaped made it easier to clean and made sure I lifted all that I could of the sand.
 
Well i see there was no point to that post i just posted i have no idea why computer didn't load the entire thread, lol sorry please disregard
 
bucksfan1976 said:
YOU GUYS ARE GREAT!!!!

Here is what Im going to do. I did on a side note find two of the emerald crab bodies I got to one but cant to the other. I have a ton of rock and I agree 100% opening it up will be a good thing. I actually told the wife last night that I need to get that 60lb rock out of the tank and go with a two island look.

With the 300 gallon water change sI was just doing what was suggestions to me. Reason I said I would buy the water is because it would take a couple days to do it and I dont have my other tank up in the laundry room yet. Stand is together but I dont have it ready. Still working on it.

Im deffiently gonna work on this tonight with the wife since she is the arcitech...LOL Ill have to thin out some stuff however no big deal.

Im still gonna pick up a media reactor just to have one. Now my question is while doing all this rock work Im gonna stur up alot of gunk should I go and try to move the fish into a different tank if I get it set up?

Just wondering if I should do that 1st is get the fish in a 2nd tank or just remove the rock slowly. Opinions.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:
 
ssgtgonzo said:
The fish will be fine...a bit stressed but should be fine. When i started out i had crushed coral and did a change to fine sand with all the animals still in. I was mostly worried about the foxface getting me. I did lose some corals...but that is because i physically lost them in the tank, only to find them weeks later upside down and to the skeleton. But it was like pea soup in my tank. It would be a great time to siphon that crap out though.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...

:thumbsup: when you take some rock out you might need some water to take it place.i would take your powerheads and point them to your overflow to push the junk to your sump. your fish will be fine just make sure they are not hiding in your rock when you take it out.that was something i did not think about.when i had to open up my rock work.
 
If you remove a 60lb rock. I would suggest not doing anything else other than replacing the water. Do not worry about a perfect aquascape. Just Remove the rock then let the tank adjust to the bioload. Then in a few days rearrange.



How long are you mixing your saltwater before using it?
 
Ended up not taking the rock out, wife loves it to much. I did the following

1. Removed all but 10% of the rock and cleaned the sand and let me tell you that water made it look like my fish were living in a creek. Nasty and dirty so that seems like I got alot of gunk out.

2. Found all dead things, snails, 2 emerald crabs but did not find the fish ....oh well

3. Cleaned all the gunk out of my sump again just to make sure

4. Did a 40 gallon water change

5. Also since i had to reaquascape i slid a maxi 900 about 3/4 the way down the back middle. I positioned a rock about 6 inches in front of it so hopefully it will dispurse any gunk back behind the rock and keeps a good flow in the back of the tank.

Now Im going to go and do 40 gallon changes every other day for a couple of weeks to see if it fixes the problem. If not I will throw a stick of dynomite in there and pray... LOL kidding of course
 
did you really think there was that much stuff back there? i found stuff i did not know was missing when i had to open up my rock work.
 
lowscooby76 said:
did you really think there was that much stuff back there? i found stuff i did not know was missing when i had to open up my rock work.
Click to expand...

OMG no , I found skeltons of corals I thought were missing. One was still alive but it was a mushroom so nothing special. But Ill tell ya I feel bad for the fish having to live in that. If I would have known it was that bad I would have bought finer sand and done a thinner sandbed.

Went down this morning and everything is still alive so thats good I know I sturred alot of nasty stuff up but it seems nothing suffered to bad. So Ill go home tonight do ANOTHER water change and then I have to wait til saturday to do the next one bc i will need to buy salt.
 
i would wait to saturday or sunday to do another water change.you don't want your tank to start to cycle again.just put a powerhead so it is pushing the bad stuff out of your tank and down the overflow for your skimmer.that will give your fish and corals time to get used to all the stuff you took out last night.
 
bucksfan1976 said:
Ended up not taking the rock out, wife loves it to much. I did the following

1. Removed all but 10% of the rock and cleaned the sand and let me tell you that water made it look like my fish were living in a creek. Nasty and dirty so that seems like I got alot of gunk out.
Click to expand...


If you removed 90% of the rock you went to far. You will likely have severe ammonia and cycle issues because of the bioload.

I was going to say not to do large water changes every couple days just do one weekly and let things settle out but if you took that much rock out, you have to put some back in. You will need to manage the Cycle with water changes.
 
Will do Amber. I put it all back in though after rinsing it off in fresh saltwater (same temp and salinity as the tank) to get the debris off....LOL... I had to do it where I found the dead stuff was back in the middle and to remove that. Also that large piece of rock was in the bottom middle. So I have water on stanby and will work with it, getting that powerhead behind the rock was a excellent Idea and I can see it working you can see a occasional sand or dirt flowing out from behind the rock ..... So hopefully this will be the beginning of the end of this issue.
 
NOW it sounds like you did not take any rock out. Just cleaned and rearranged it?
You need to be clear about the changes you make so that the advice we give will pertain to the situation. Taking out 90% of the rock is very very different from taking it out rinsing it off and re-aquascaping.

You have a lot of rock. So much so that it went around the 3 sides of the tank going by the picture. Cleaning it and moving it against the walls is a good start and you should give that time to see if it does not work but be prepared in a few weeks to need to remove some of it, either to the sump or just out.

The reason why is that even though it is now away from the walls of the tank it is now stacked in a smaller tighter space. You still will have dead spots. Maybe more so. I hope the power head blowing at it will be enough. It would have been if you had also removed some of the rock. But I can not say for sure that just rearranging will do.
 
Have you added any filtration yet? Like a fuge or LR in your sump, or do you have nothing but a skimmer yet? If that's the case you definatley need some type of filtration a sump with nothing in it but a skimmer wont do much for your bioload at all, you can do all the water changes you want, the nitrates will just come back.
 
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