Nitrate help

[Fgtank]

Hi all I have a120 gal with 75 gal sump/fug. Tank has been up and running a few months now. I have a pair of clowns and a clean up crew.all parameters are good, but nitrates are high between 10 & 25 ppm on salifert test kit. I have been doing a 35 gal water change weekly for 4 weeks. Should I be doing anything else or something different? Thanks

 

[drew2007]

How often and much do you feed? What type of filtration are you running?

 

[kfisc]

I think you may still be in the end stage of cycling; perhaps you also have some nuisance diatoms and algae hanging around? A guess is too much nutrient in the water column from some source or the other, perhaps not enough flow and settling of detritus in dead spots around/under the rock. Hopefully your source water is RO/DI.

 

[Fgtank]

I have a filter sock on the drains, some rock and a little chaeto in the fug. I think I have plenty of water flow, I have 2mp 40's and a blue line 70(sump is in the basement). I use ro/di water.

 

[Fgtank]

Also I feed a little bit of frozen shrimp once a day

 

[B.BASH]

how often do you change your sock and how do you clean it

 

[Fgtank]

At least once a week I wash it in the washing machine with just a little bleach and turn it inside out and wash it again then let them air dry, I have four of them so the air dry a long time before I use them.

 

[kfisc]

How about the shrimp as the culprit?

 

[matt9190]

Maybe alternate frozen shrimp with some flake food every other day? Also, run Chaeto in your fuge, and trim out about half of it every few weeks. Removing the macroalgae from your fuge essentially removes the nitrate. Good luck.

 

[MHG]

How much rock and sand do you have? Sounds to me like the cycle is not complete.

 

[Fgtank]

Will try doing shrimp, flake. I have about 120lbs of live sand, and about 200lbs of live rock. Will take care of chaeto too. Thanks will try all this. Also I started the tank November.

 

[solitude]

I think you are @ the end of your cycle. I feel once 3-4 days.