Nitrate levels through the roof.

[Dr.Duff]

A fake Doctor? What's that mean? Is that a jab of some kind? If so what did I ever do to you?

I've never eluded to being one.

Edit:
I do know a guy named Dr. duff speaking of doctors.

Edit 2:
I can only figure you are talking about the few times that I've said I know some stuff about people diseases. Considering I'm an RN who's worked in the ICU for the past 10+ years and about to finish up my FNP, I feel like I have at least a decent enough understanding of human patho to be able to make that claim.

Hello... I am new to the group. They call me Dr.Duff since I am a Duffy and my bands do lots of charity work for cancer, autism YMCA etc etc. I've been pretty busy with work and tanks and don't remember the post but I can assure you that I wasn't referring to you etc. (I'm not a drama internet kinda guy.

 

[CStrickland]

:facepalm:

I was doing the 1000 gallon dose, not the 100 gallon.

Groan.

Ha! You skipped the first month!
I wouldn't worry too much. The downside of ramping up too fast is stripping nutrients from the water so severely that you upset the coral, or causing blooms of bacteria - either harmless whit chunks or cyano. But your corals already mad, and you've got cyano so...

That chart is well-known to be overly cautious. Idk if I were you whether I'd slow down or just plow ahead now that you're in it. Maybe post in the chem forum? Id prolly plow tbh

 

[Bent]

Hello... I am new to the group. They call me Dr.Duff since I am a Duffy and my bands do lots of charity work for cancer, autism YMCA etc etc. I've been pretty busy with work and tanks and don't remember the post but I can assure you that I wasn't referring to you etc. (I'm not a drama internet kinda guy.

Eh don't worry about it. Depending on how tired I am I tend to get a little overly hostile for some reason.

 

[Bent]

Update.

I've kept doing daily water changes, up till yesterday. I decided to let it go for a day and see what happens to the nitrate levels.

Tonight they are registering zero on the API test. At least it looks yellow, still have yet to test with something reliable, but it's no longer orange or bright red. So whatever I'm doing is working.

Just to recap this thread and my interventions for all surfing in here looking for information.

2/25- noticed everything looking like death. Cyano growth out of control. A Otherwise healthy nem looked shrunken and bleached, euphyllia with no extension (especially torch), leather coral hadn't blown up in a while (I mistakenly attributed it to shedding), monti and birdsnest both were necrosing. I checked everything at this point except nitrates.

2/26- more decline, birds nest all but dead, only a rim left on the monti. Toadstool starting to get reproduction "holes", 'nem is a shadow of its former self.

2/27- cyano is vicious now, covering the chaeto ball, sliming the entire tank. Almost all corals are gone. Checked all parameters and discovered the nitrates are sky high. Immediately changed 50% of the water volume, siphoned the sand bed in both the refugium and the display tank. Shop vacced the sump, blew the rocks off and added some filter socks.

2/28- no change in testing results, API vial still looks like kool-aide. Posted here on RC. Did another 50% water change. Changed socks, blew rocks again, vaccummed all substrate again.

2/29- no change in API results. Started dosing vinegar at 30mls d/t misreading the guide. Kept up with water changes. Another 50% change.

2/30 - another 30mls of vinegar, another 50% water change.

3/1- another 30mls of vinegar, another 50% water change.

3/2 - nitrate results improving. Now we are down to "nuclear orange" and not "kool-aide red", kept dosing 30mls. Decreased water changes to 25%.

3/3 - nitrate levels rising back up, starting to turn red again, did another 25% water change and increased dose to 40mls.

3/4- water change 25%, dose 40mls vinegar. Nitrates back down to orange.

3/5- held water change, dose 40mls vinegar. Nitrates down further, light orange.

3/6- still no water change, dose 40mls vinegar. Nitrates are now Yellow!!


Now tomorrow night after work, I plan to recheck the nitrates. If they are still down I think I'm in the clear.

 

[CStrickland]

Yay!
How does your stock look? I wouldn't expect the birdsnest or monti to have responded much, but maybe the nem is fluffing up? And is the cyano backing off any?

 

[Bent]

Yay!
How does your stock look? I wouldn't expect the birdsnest or monti to have responded much, but maybe the nem is fluffing up? And is the cyano backing off any?

The cyano seems to be receding, though it's hard to tell if my manual removal is more responsible.

The nem looks much better though not quite back to his former glory. All the euphyllia is improving but not fully extended yet.

Strangely, my worm brain was never even phased by all of this.

 

[Happyschneider]

If you are aver in the situation that you are well above the detection limit of your test kit, try diluting the tank water before testing.

For dilution I would use rodi water (as pure as possible). You can start with a 1:10 dilution (F. E. 1 ml tank water mixed with 9 ml of rodi, the bigger you choose these volumes the more accurate it will be). From that mixture, you take your 2ml or whatever your test needs. Then you multiply the result of the test by 10 (or whatever dilution factor you used).

Hopefully, this will help you testing if your measures have an effect even if the nitrate levels are still beyond detection limit.

 

[Bent]

I thought I'd update this with some weirdness.

So a while back the vinegar dosing seemed to be working. Then I had the display tank crack, I took it down and moved everyone to the refugium. Total water volume has now gone to about 50 or so gallons.

I was up to about 40 mils and everything seemed fine. I figured since the water volume decreased to about half, that I would leave the dose amount alone and watch for some bacterial blooms...

Well the weird thing is, that the very next day the nitrate levels in the system were off the charts again. I checked my pump and the level in the the jug and the pump is still working. So I've been slowly increasing the dose amount since the accident and I'm up to about 60mls a day. I'm hesitant to go over that on 50g of volume.

Today I checked and the nitrates are still off the charts.

Wth?

Edit:
I just thought of a reason. Could it be because the bacteria colonies in the display tank were destroyed since I removed it and they have to build up more in other areas to make up the difference?

 

[xcvnhvj]

Tagging along this thread. Very interesting info from the group to learn more about and trouble shooting ideas.

 

[cambo123]

This is probably not it, but, I remember reading somewhere that trace nitrite can cause a huge false positive on nitrate.

 

[splix]

I was sort of in the same situation, but not as drastic. My nitrates were always 1 or less. I had a tank emergency and had to swap tank and etc. New tank in, never cycled due to doing the entire transfer in a day with all the LR still wet. Due to something during the transfer, my nitrates went up to around 10 or so. Po4 stayed low which is good, but still in an SPS tank, nitrates at 10 is horrible.
I started vinegar dosing and that started to lower them but I didnt want to have to sit there and manually dose every day.
1st thing that really helped was I went and upgraded my refugium light to something that I knew worked. 6500k LED bulb and clamp light. Now my chaeto was growing like a weed, good!
2nd thing that really helped was the addition of biopellets in a phosban 150 reactor. Once those kicked in my nitrates started dropping dramatically.
Keep in mind, all of this is without having to manually dose anything.

Not even a month later, today my nitrates are around 1, and probably still slowly getting lower. Biopellets work.