Nitrate problems after adding blue gig.

[Donly1]

added a Blue gig on 11/7/15 its looks great. eating chunks of fresh shrimp and hosting a clown, but I'm having trouble with nitrates since adding the blue gig anemone to my FOWLR 20 gallon tall tank.

I did a 10 gallon water change three days ago. I added a photo of the nitrate No3 test from today (on left my ro water and on right my tank water 3 days later and after a 10 gallon water change today). Very high No3 80ppm for two 50% water changes in three days.

Ph 8.2, temp 77, am=0 No=2

My particular 20 gallon tall has been set up for well over a year with Hydor SlimSkim, HOB reactor, and canister filter with AquaRay Ultima 1500 NP light running 12 hours a day. 20# live rock and sand coral as substrate.

It has had the two ocy clowns, 2 pajama Cardinals, one watchman goby, cleaner shrimp, 2 sea urchins in there from the beginning with 5 gallon changes every week with ro water and reef crystal salt.

Any ideas on how to keep the N03 down under 40ppm?

 

[ThRoewer]

Tell me about it! I have two of these nitrate generators in my system and nitrates are at 25, phosphates at 0.25.

So right now I'm looking into carbon dosing - the big question is only what to use: vinegar or vodka?

 

[Donly1]

new photo

new photo

here are photos from last night. How does it look?

 

[OrionN]

The canister filter will put out a lot of nitrate. It is best if you remove the canister filter and let the sand and rock to break down ammonia to nitrogen.
Remove the fish. In a 20 gal tank, I would just keep the two clowns and the anemone. Don't feed the anemone much either (once he regain his color)
20 gal is not a lot of water for the fish load you have.

 

[Donly1]

I took some advice about the different test kits. I took my water 2 a couple of Lfs and watch them do a test. Both said that your water is perfect. They do not shake the bottle or the test tubes for nitrate after they cap them. The instructions clearly state to shake the nitrate tube for at least one minute. That's what I've been doing. I took my test kit which expires in 2017 and did a test, shaking the bottles a bit, and the nitrate tube for one full minute after dropping, and the another tube with no shaking. Welcome to find out the tube with no shaking looks awesome, but when you shake the nitrate tube for 1 minute after put the cap on it it shows almost 80 parts per million difference. Has anyone else had this issue?

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Not to sound like an asshat but why do you have so many threads asking the same thing?

 

[OrionN]

use this thread for further discussion on this problem

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2538429&page=3