Nitrate levels through the roof.

Bent

Bent

I got nothin'
What. Is. Going. On?

Recently, my tank is going downhill and I can't figure it out. I recently, clutching at straws, posted a pic of one of the symptoms thinking maybe it was dinos and not a cyano outbreak. I never thought to check the nitrate level. Low and behold, it's sky high. So I did some water changes this week, I check it again today and it's exactly the same. No change at all. Granted it's an API test so it's not like I'm looking at something super accurate her, but when the vial is glowing bright red, I would think that would be accurate enough. Where is this coming from?

During these water changes I sucked the sand sparkling clean. I blew the rocks off (lol) and sucked the sump out with a shop vac (and half electrocuted myself in the process. Thank god for breakers). I put in some socks and have been cleaning them daily. Nothing helps.

Almost everything is dead, my birdsnest is gone my Monti is cooked, my huge toadstool is Swiss cheese, my euphyllia have no extension. The only things making it so far are some Zoas, my sinularia, and my Favia brain.

What is going on here? I'm a decently experienced hobbyist but this is beyond me. I mean yeah I could vodka dose, but I'd like to figure out what's going on. Its not like I have a huge bio load or anything.

:hammer:

I'm about to go FOWLR here.
 
Currently here's what I have:

blue streak wrasse
A lyretail anthia
flame hawk
A tiny fuzzy dwarf lion
lawn mower blenny
green mandarin

I have an auto feeder that feeds a mix of freeze dried mysis, omega flakes, and nls pellets. It is on the lowest setting, tumbles once and does it 3x a day. Once or twice a week I will suck up a turkey baster full of blender slop and target feed the nem and the euphyllia. Also 3x a week I will get a small frozen piece of shrimp or other critter to feed the lion.

That's pretty much it.
 
first off get rid of the API kit and get a good one like salifert . and check your phosphates . if you have room start a fuge a big one I recommend at least 1/3 of system volume . if you can . I have a 50 gallon fuge on a 220 and it takes care of what I have for bio load no problem . Plus I get all the pods I could ever need from it . Continue doing water changes about 30 % or more every few days and the levels will start to drop . you can do a bigger water change as long as all the parameters of the new water are close to alk mag and calcium as what you need . biger changes will bring down the phospates and nitrates faster . Good luck hope this helps
 
That sucks bud :(
It's kinda hard to say what caused it without the history of tests, but there's a few things that can help.

For starters, if your original high test was all the way in the red, you don't really know how high they were. If they were 300 and the test only goes up to 100, you could half them and still be redlining. There's a way to dilute your sample to get a high end reading. Idk, either you use twice as much water, or add rodi, something like that; then you double the number. I think you can find it on google. That'll at least give an accurate number to track.
API tests haven't ever given me trouble (when I follow the ridic directions).

I know you added the anthias not to long ago, the pellets are suspect. Idk what you can really do though. That's a change in imports, without added export.

Re: export - I bet your big filthy sump is your culprit. If I remember your pics, I think I made a face when I saw them. I'm sure cleaning it will help, maybe also rearrange some of the clutter so that there's less places for crud to settle and collect. It's not just a matter of socks where the DT dumps into the sump, the critters and bac in your fuge are pooping too. That's another detritus source, it's a whole nother bioload. Thats why I don't buy it when people say having a bunch of extra rock in the sump is good for nitrates.

Your plumbing is also... dramatic, right? Some folks with long pipe runs wind up with the same issue as bioballs. The surfaces of all the tubes get colonized with only some of the necessary bacteria and the high flow makes a nitrate factory. Again, idk the fix for that.

With your corals already mad, be careful matching alk if you do big changes. It's a balance between removing enough to make a diff and not shocking them.

Skimming wetter can help. I'm just throwing ideas at the wall to see if anything sticks for you. Could be any of those, or none, or a combo.

A couple months ago I lost my temper with my devil blenny, the one that "got mad at a starfish" :) I managed to rescape the whole tank stupidly trying to catch him and my trates rocketed up crazy high. I did a couple 30%, then a few 20% changes; and dosed vin with reckless abandon for a month. All better now. So it's fixable if you address the cause.

PS the blenny looked so sad and lonely in time out that I put him back in the DT after less than a week so the whole thing was for nothing. And he did kill the starfish eventually. Bastard's lucky he's cute
 
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The tank is a 55g, the sump is a 50g stock tank, a chaeto ball tumbles in a 10g tank, and I have a 30g fuge plumbed in. So about 100-110 gallons total volume give or take.

As I said, the lion only gets a tiny chunk of meat about 3x a week. He's only about 2" long. So I doubt that's the issue, but at this point who knows..

I didn't worry about getting a super accurate nitrate test here because really I'm just looking to get it, you know, not sky high. Then I'll worry about the hair splitting.

My last parameters are as follows, I just took them.

Alk-11 (salifert)
Total P - 9. So about .028 po4 (Hanna)
Calcium - 498 (Hanna)
Magnesium- 1100 (salifert)
 
CStrickland said:
That sucks bud :(
It's kinda hard to say what caused it without the history of tests, but there's a few things that can help.

For starters, if your original high test was all the way in the red, you don't really know how high they were. If they were 300 and the test only goes up to 100, you could half them and still be redlining. There's a way to dilute your sample to get a high end reading. Idk, either you use twice as much water, or add rodi, something like that; then you double the number. I think you can find it on google. That'll at least give an accurate number to track.
API tests haven't ever given me trouble (when I follow the ridic directions).

I know you added the anthias not to long ago, the pellets are suspect. Idk what you can really do though. That's a change in imports, without added export.

Re: export - I bet your big filthy sump is your culprit. If I remember your pics, I think I made a face when I saw them. I'm sure cleaning it will help, maybe also rearrange some of the clutter so that there's less places for crud to settle and collect. It's not just a matter of socks where the DT dumps into the sump, the critters and bac in your fuge are pooping too. That's another detritus source, it's a whole nother bioload. Thats why I don't buy it when people say having a bunch of extra rock in the sump is good for nitrates.

Your plumbing is also... dramatic, right? Some folks with long pipe runs wind up with the same issue as bioballs. The surfaces of all the tubes get colonized with only some of the necessary bacteria and the high flow makes a nitrate factory. Again, idk the fix for that.

With your corals already mad, be careful matching alk if you do big changes. It's a balance between removing enough to make a diff and not shocking them.

Skimming wetter can help. I'm just throwing ideas at the wall to see if anything sticks for you. Could be any of those, or none, or a combo.

A couple months ago I lost my temper with my devil blenny, the one that "got mad at a starfish" :) I managed to rescape the whole tank stupidly trying to catch him and my trates rocketed up crazy high. I did a couple 30%, then a few 20% changes; and dosed vin with reckless abandon for a month. All better now. So it's fixable if you address the cause.

PS the blenny looked so sad and lonely in time out that I put him back in the DT after less than a week so the whole thing was for nothing. And he did kill the starfish eventually. Bastard's lucky he's cute
Click to expand...

:wavehand:

Heeey buddy.

Thanks for all the typing.

1: that's true with the testing, I never really thought of it that way.
2: I'm also highly suspect of the feeder. There's nothing I can do there. So that says carbon dosing since I can't get rid of it.
3: I did re-arrange the sump and left about 3 rocks in it specifically for grumpy crab, I moved the rest to the fuge and the display. I also sucked the guts out of it with a shop vac and that sucker was disgusting, so maybe that will eventually help.
4: I never thought of the plumbing, and yeah it's a holy mess. I really really really need to find the time to re-do it all. That could possibly be it.

So if I finally fix the plumbing, and the issue still isn't resolved I guess we can just start pointing fingers at the feeder?
 
In addition to what everyone else has said, do what I did and get NoPox. It helps feed the bacteria that consumes nitrates and phosphates. I had a similar problem where I wasn't testing nitrates or phosphates since everything was so stable. Well I had added two new fish and increased feedings and didn't watch what was going on, next thing you know nitrates of 80ppm. Well I cut back on feeding did weekly 20% WC's instead of two weeks like I had been doing and the nitrates were still above 40. So I bought NoPox after reading up on it. I dosed it for 10 days did a 20% WC and now my nitrates are <5 and phosphates aren't detectable with my kit. NoPox works IMO and IME and I do think you should give it a try.
 
Headed to Amazon as we speak..err type.

Thanks!

Edit:
Ok there's different sizes here...and dosing isn't on the description. How much do I need?
 
Im not sure about nopox, it's like a blend of vodka and vinegar. There's a diy recipe thread in the chem forum. I just did straight vinegar. Vodka is about 8x stronger than vin, so you don't have to measure as carefully with vin. I used the table from here, http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/index...ar-dosing-methodology-for-the-marine-aquarium
but went much more quickly. Everybody does.

Vinegar is handy, cheap and hard to screw up. It can affect your ph, but I run kalk so it evens out. This way I didn't have to buy (or repurpose) a dosing pump. I ramped it up to about twice the recommended dosage, 2 or 3 times as fast as the chart says. I started by splitting it into like 4-5 daily doses but after a week or so I was just cranking in a glug or so twice a day. I slowed down when I started to see chunks of white goo floating around. I didn't see much effect for a week or so, then a little drop, then boom. Nitrates gone.

That's not what you should do. But it's what I did and nothing bad happened ;)
Also, like I said it was a stupid mistake on my part in the first place so a lot of the reduction was prolly recovering from being all disrupted. If you're going on a long term carbon expedition you might want to do it right.
You've got a decent skimmer, right?
 
Ok cool. I'll look at the options here.

Here's the current state of my sump btw after vacuuming the crud out of it. Which grumpy was none too happy about btw. He's huge now, about the size of a baseball.

56195F01-0A25-495D-8EF0-B72560AB25F5.jpg


Wait a minute wait...

That chart and article is saying 45ml of vinegar a day? Dang that seems like a lot.
 
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:cool: nice work!
Might help if you can get those rocks in the dark too. A trimmable ball of chaeto is one thing, but if they are hard to get the algae off of they might be working against you by growing algae there instead of letting the chaeto get those nutrients. Algae can be "leaky." It'll take up and release nutrients if it's left in the water. Of course you need enough for grumpy to eat - can't have him hungry
 
Yeah, I feel like I was over a 1/4 cup. Def a couple shot glasses worth.
People who mix vin and vodka reduce the dose accordingly, every ml of vodka being worth 8ml of vin.

Also, it's not uncommon to see a little cyano with any carbon dosing (biopellets, vodka, vin, nopox), I didn't tho. If you were having trouble with that you'll want to be prepared.
 
:Scratches head:

Ok ok. So I guess tomorrow I'm going to go grab a couple jugs of vinegar, suck out all the saline out of one of my 3 liter bags I have laying around, fill it back up with vinegar, spike it with some IV tubing and drip that thing at about 25mls over 24hrs? I might have some micro drip tubing I can use until I can get a dosing pump.

So @ 20gtts/ml I'm looking at...

Let's call it 24mls in 24hrs for simplicity.

That's a ml an hour, so that's 20gtts an hour or about .3gtts a minute? That's impossible. I'll have to do this by hand or a doser I guess.
 
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Or don't fill it, just put in a day's worth in each morning so if it's not spaced out perfectly you aren't od'ing. Idk anything about ivs, but if it's impossible do go that slow you can always tie a knot in the tubing to slow it down. I mean, not for actual saline drips, just fish tanks :D
 
CStrickland said:
Im not sure about nopox, it's like a blend of vodka and vinegar. There's a diy recipe thread in the chem forum. I just did straight vinegar. Vodka is about 8x stronger than vin, so you don't have to measure as carefully with vin. I used the table from here, http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/index...ar-dosing-methodology-for-the-marine-aquarium
but went much more quickly. Everybody does.

Vinegar is handy, cheap and hard to screw up. It can affect your ph, but I run kalk so it evens out. This way I didn't have to buy (or repurpose) a dosing pump. I ramped it up to about twice the recommended dosage, 2 or 3 times as fast as the chart says. I started by splitting it into like 4-5 daily doses but after a week or so I was just cranking in a glug or so twice a day. I slowed down when I started to see chunks of white goo floating around. I didn't see much effect for a week or so, then a little drop, then boom. Nitrates gone.

That's not what you should do. But it's what I did and nothing bad happened ;)
Also, like I said it was a stupid mistake on my part in the first place so a lot of the reduction was prolly recovering from being all disrupted. If you're going on a long term carbon expedition you might want to do it right.
You've got a decent skimmer, right?
Click to expand...


Well I am sure about NoPox or I wouldn't have suggested for him to use it. There is a natural bacteria that is in mature tanks that consumes the nitrate and phosphate in our systems but only on mature systems. Once this bacteria has been formed it's no longer necessary to have other ways of export. This bacteria is the reason that so many SPS tanks start having water that is "too Clean" and provides no nitrates or phosphate nutrients for the corals to consume.

I agree the dosing amount isn't quite clear but it is based on what your nitrates are. Mine were high at 80 ppm so I dosed 3 ml per 25 gallons of water total in my system. I've got just under 50 gals so I dosed 6 ml daily for 10 days. Then did a 20% WC and was done. This alone straightened out my nitrate and phosphate issue I described above. Since the amount of dosing depends on what your current nitrates are and from the sounds of it, you need to dose the same as I did 3 ml per 25 gals of water.

NoPox isn't a snake oil it just feeds the natural bacteria that is already in the tank so it can grow and mature to numbers large enough to consume the nutrients naturally. The same way that during the initial nitrogen cycle of a saltwater tank works. This is just the final stage of the tank cycle.

This is not adding a carbon source like sugar or vodka, this is doing what is naturally occurring in your tank. A lot of R&D went into this product, it's worth taking the time to read about it. It's not a quick fix one and done in many cases, just depends on the maturity of the tank and how bad of a problem you have with nitrates. Even with WC's I couldn't get my nitrates below 30-40 ppm but the one 10 day treatment with NoPox got rid of it for me.

It's worth it to have this product and it's not expensive, hell it's cheaper than a bottle of decent vodka that I'd rather keep for personal consumption than getting my fish drunk :D :lmao: Yes that was a joke!
 
as someone else said, get another test kit and verify the reading. have you checked your make-up water, are you using a ro/di? vinegar (ie carbon dosing) is better at maintaining no3 than reducing it. i would start with a few large wc and detritus removal and then start vinegar slowly(if that is the route you chose)! maybe reduce the auto feeder to two feeding and stop feeding the nem and corals, they don't need it!!!
 
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