Nitrate Problem

M

moonp13

New member
So, let me first give you the facts. I bought my 75 gallon saltwater fish tank from a guy that has had the tank for three years. I got it transferred to my house by a "professional crew" on Thursday of last week. A few things i noticed right off the bat that sucked:
-my larger coral was cut off of the single rock it had been on. I think it is a toadstool leather. He has not been easy to reattach to rock.
- they set him up by an anemone and he was stung the first day so we had to rearrange all our rock to accommodate him.
- the protein skimmer was set up wrong so it took me a long time to adjust it properly.
- THE NITRATE LEVEL IS 200!!!

Its been 200ppm since Friday. Since then, Ive done a 50% water change and have seen no results. granted, i am using the mardel 5 in 1 tester so it isnt exact by any means.

Im sure I will get trolled on for buying a tank with no experience, but i need some help. Ive been givin a lot of advice and im not sure which to follow. A friend referred me to this site and I was hoping to get some help. My current plan is to do another large water change tomorrow and see where that gets me. The process pretty much takes out a majority of the water and dilutes it down to where the nitrate levels will be eliminated in one day. Ive heard there are risks with this process, but I just dont know what to do. Everything is doing fine in my tank right now, but I dont know how long that will keep up. I want to fix this now. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

cliffs: Im a noob, help me. :-)
 
50% water changes will help get the nitrates down pretty quickly. Space them 2-3 days apart and you will have no issues. It's better for the livestock to be immersed in fresh new water than to exist in "poisoned" water with high nitrates.
Those who will tell you not to do this usually have no experience, only heresay..."I heard that large water changes can be bad."

I did exactly this on my 180 last summer and had zero issues. The corals were much happier after each 50% water change and now my nitrates are consistantly below 5 with 19 fish in my tank.
 
well the test kit has like 5 different colors and the color that matched up was 200. it definitely could have been higher and did go down, but i wouldnt know. 200 is the highest on this test strip indicator.
 
how long should I do 50% water changes before giving up and changing the sand bed. the bed looks a little grimey. there is a little discoloration on the right side of my tank in the sand. sort of a caramel color. to my knowledge the previous owner had never changed out the bed in three years.
 
"mardel 5 in 1 tester so it isnt exact by any means???"

Get a real test kit.
An API nitrate kit will be better than that.
You're only as good as your test kits in this hobby.If you don't have good ones........you're basically blind.
You nitrates could be much lower than that test shows.
I would suspect you have nitrates from the move.But how will you know if you're making improvement?
 
#1, get a good test kit and give us all the information we need to help you, partial information about water quality will lead to bad advice. At minimum we need: salinity, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and alkalinity. I would go initially with API since they offer decent accuracy and are the least expensive of the quality test kits. If cost is not much of an issue, get Salifert test kits, as they can be read to a greater accuracy. Ph, calcium and magnesium tests will also be needed at some point, but for right now at least get everything in the 1st group.
 
what do you recommend i get as far as test kits? right now, all i have is the mardel 5 in 1 test strip kit and a hydrometer for checking on levels.
 
ok. np. right now nitrates are showing to be 200pm or above, nitrite are ~0, alkalinity is between 240-300, and ph is ~8.2. of course this is with the cheap test kit. ill post results with the new kit asap.
 
I'd reccomend the salifert line of test kits. Also get a refactometer, something like this: http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/refractometer-for-reading-salinity-w-free-calibration-fluid.html

If you want to have good water makeup, good testing equipment is something you can't do without.

Also remember to enjoy the tank, i'm sure you were really excited to get into the hobby, and don't let yourself get too stressed. Tons of good info on this site and a lot of members willing to help.

Got any pictures of the tank?
 
SAM_0341.jpg


here it is. light just came on not too long ago. everything is still coming out. damn anemone in the middle has been moving around everywhere stinging stuff. wish hed just stay put i keep having to move my coral around. the big one looks like he is gonna break free again. :-( i have him anchored down with a tooth pick and some rocks, but he is not doing well since mr. aquarium cut him off the rock he was attached to.
 
We purchased a tank that was already set up and moved to our house, and we had the same problem but to a lesser degree: our nitrates were over 100 the day after the move. We did 40% - 50% water changes every 3-4 days to bring them down, and we stir up the sand on a regular basis to try to prevent the accumulation of nitrates now. Good luck!!
 
I had the same issue when I moved my 150gal after it had been established for 4 years. I would not have moved the sand in hindsight. The anemone will move around for a while until it finds its sweet spot. You will probably lose a few things, don't let it discourage you, it's just what happens. I found that posting all your questions here is the best thing and you'll have a great set-up when things calm down, probably a month away though. Remember that the good bacteria that will naturally get the nitrates down will take about 10 days to develop so it won't get fixed with just water changes and you should expect some algae during that time. My tank is down to nitrate reading of 2 after about 6 weeks, I'm still having issues with phosphates, but it will get there. Post what the problems are as they come along and people here will help you. Good luck.
 
The local shop was out of salifert testing kits so I had to go with api. The nitrate level is about 160. The nitrite and ammonia are 0. And the alkalinity is 8.
 
so i may have figured out what my nitrate problem was. we have tried everything to save that leather coral but to no avail. today he went in the dumbster. i took him out of the tank to put him in a separate section and it smelled AWWWWWWWWWWWWWFUL. i almost threw up. watery substance was spewing out of a hole in the stock of it and i put a nitrate test strip on it and it was well over 200ppm. so yeah, threw it away. on a plus side, i got my tank nitrates down to 30 ppm by doing 50-60% water changes this last week. everyone but the big guy is doing fine. damn the lfs!
 
Good to hear that your tank is doing well. Keep posting test results and ask questions there are lots of people here that are glad to help you out.
 
I have a ? (I am moonp13's wife)

Since the death of the giant expensive coral was due to neglect from the transfer fish shop, would u complain?
They have done nothing but harm and normally would complain in a second, but the are the only LFS in the city. So we don't want to **** them off...but you don't cut a coral like that off the rock it was on and leave the connecting stock so short (among the many other things they have messed up)

What do all think?
 
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