Nitrate remover

JBinFla

JBinFla

New member
Is there anything that will do this? Any "additive" that will bind it, anything I can put in to absorb? I hear carbon will remove the organics, but then your natural biological filtration will suffer, is that a problem? Also I hear that it will not remove the nitrates, so you have to get them down, then start the carbon. It's an all-in-one small tank so external hang-on devices and reactors aren't really an option - I'm looking for some additive if one exists. I've bought some bacterial additive that said it would reduce my nitrates, water change frequency, etc. Nope, hasn't worked. Actually now I'm at a dangerous level because I didn't change water and just tested and am actually too ashamed to say what my nitrates are, suffice it to say I'm glad I don't have corals in there. School and appts keep me busy and unable to resupply on salt water until this weekend. Maybe Friday I can. Hope nothing bad happens. If it does, lesson learned I guess.

Is there any magic pixie-dust that'll drop my nitrates? Knowing how crappy water changes are on this small thing (I can't seem to NOT spill some on the wood floor...) means my 75g is only going to take longer to get setup because I'll need to design & build something to automate changes (pumps, hidden lines, wagon cart with two 20g tanks, not sure yet). Anyway, I'm not too experienced so any tricks besides frequent water changes will help. I also know if I get rid of the fish things will settle down, so I'm considering going to a no-fish setup but really don't want to do that (is one fish in a tank cruel?). I'm just not sure.

- Joe
 
Carbon dosing. Vodka, vinegar, sugar will all reduce nitrate. Not sure how receptive small tanks are to carbon dosing, but it works well on my 250. Just to put it in perspective, 2tsp of fructose a week keeps my nitrates around 5.
 
+1 big skimmer and purigen. I and the same same problem until I installed an sca302 and Purigen in my biocube 29 and now it's untraceable
 
Hey Joe first question is do you have any type of skimmer on your tank? Second how long has the tank been setup for? How many fish do you have total?
 
Thanks for the many replies.

Yes, I have the Corralife Biocube skimmer (it fits in the back area). It removes "green water" from the tank, about 1/8 cup daily. Nothing like what I see the big skimmers doing where it's a pasty green slime. As it's an "airstone in a tube" I'm not hopeful for much more maybe you can tell me. I do have a new airstone I thought about replacing it.

As to the age, the tank is about 3 months old now. It's got 4 fish, all small by my standards (1-1/2" except the goby, he's about 3" but pencil thin). I'd like to remove them I just don't have their replacement home yet and it's a slow go trolling for deals.

I'm sure I'm overstocked but I have no new home for them. I have a 7g cube that has zero nitrates, or at least is yellow and matches the 0ppm on the color card for the test. It only has one fish, a damsel that I used to cycle it and the liverock/sand/filter seem to do the trick. The 7g has a HOB filter with replaceable filters which also have carbon so maybe that's it's luck.

Anyway, can you explain more about the sugar/fructose. Do I just add a bit of table sugar? Something like Karo fructose corn surup? I'd need 1/10th tsp it sounds like?!?!

And on to purigen. Does that remove nitrates by absorbing them, or absorbing the organics? Will it mess with the cycle? Could I just get one of those bags, replace the bio-balls in the back of the biocube and that'll work? I don't mind fiddling with this thing but I'm finding fish aren't as easy to kill as I'd have thought. What I mean is before (15-years ago, fresh water) I always thought "Eh, if a fish dies it dies", suddenly now I'm all worried that's it's breathing in the aquatic version of second hand smoke. I don't want a Chernobyl for my tank!
 
I think purigen asorbs both.I don't think it would mess up the cycle. You can run purigen in a bag and renew them by rinse or let them sit in bleach overnight (got the info from the official website).Do you clean your bioballs often? b/c sometimes they tend to trap detritus in them.
 
I hate to say but that skimmer sucks. Your better off finding a HOB skimmer you will be happier in the long run. I would say ditch the bioballs and just make a mini fuge or just RL.
 
so I bought some purigen from petco. How do I know if it's in a bag? It's in the plastic outter pouch, open that and there's a clear plastic bag, with another clear plastic bag full f the little balls. Is that inner clear plastic bag the "filter bag" that I put it in the tank with?
 
Another question.... What are your nitrate reading? I would let you biological filter get stronger first with the help of purigen should bring them down. I would put the carbon dosing (sugar, vodka) toward the end of your list. Sugar can be overdosed very easy especially with the skimmer your running. Your tank is really "young" maybe add some liverock pieces to help the bio system
 
At three months old, I would agree in holding off on carbon dosing. For a tank that size a bag of purigen may be all you need. Purigen worked well for me when I had a 55g.



To answer your question on fructose... Unfortunately I have no scientific days to back it up, but here goes.... I didn't have much success with other carbon dosing until I used fructose, and I was well over 100 on nitrates. I read a TOTM that had a maintenance schedule that appealed to me. Part of the maintenance included granulated 100% fructose, preferably not derived from corn. Short story is it has been a little over a year and I'm having the best success I've ever had in this hobby. The fructose is super easy to dose, and cheap. The fructose is very effective in reducing nitrates, but consistent maintenance routine is probably the primary reason for success.
 
Your best bet to lower nitrates? Husbandry - Plain and simple.

No - there's no magic bullet to reduce nitrates to nitrogen gas and let it off gas from your aquarium (at least in a way that will allow life to still exist).

People will say carbon dosing, biopellets, and any other number of tricks. I disagree.

What do I mean by husbandry? More frequent water changes. Siphon the sand bed, reduce feedings, make sure the live rock is sufficient and free of clogging. If your running any type of filter - clean it out more often. If you are light on live rock (you dont have enough rock) - you may want to consider some other sort of biological filtration that you can place outside of the display tank int he rear filtration area- like the cermedia ceramic balls.

What does all of this do together? The water changes will reduce the nitrates - slowly though. The other cleaning tips remove the available organics before they can be processed by the bacteria into nitrates. The live rock / cermedia provides the potentiol for an anerobic zone to reduce nitrates to nitrogen gas.

Remember - the skimmer is only going to remove organics - it is likely it wont reduce the number of organics enough to make a dent in your nitrate levels by itself (nitrates are a by-product of the bacteria feeding on the organics).

All carbon dosing does is allow an overabundance of organics to boost the bacterial population to process more organics. Nitrates are stripped more because your catching some of the bacteria in the skimmer before they release the nitrates. It's the same concept as biopellets. The dangers here are - if you have an overabundance of bacteria - if you effectively do balance your aquarium - many of them die off - leaving you back in the same situation you were in before.
 
Thanks. One question - you talked about cleaning the sand bed. I was under the impression with live sand I should "leave it alone". Is that not true?
 
Oh and my nitrates are somewhere between 20ppm and 40ppm. I do weekly water changes (about 25%). I've started feeding more as the regiment I was given I've found out isn't too nice to my fish (lfs said to feed once every 3 days). So, I bought pellets and feed a few pinches here and there throughout the day with occasional treats of Mysis and krill, about on the three day schedule I was on before so I'm basically feeding just like I was but with more in the middle and that's when my nitrates went from pretty constant 10-20ppm to 20-40ppm. Hard to tell the color sometimes!

I added purigen last night so I'm itching to test again. Figure I'll test it this weekend before the next water change see how it went. I'll also start slowly removing the bio-balls. I already removed the sponge that was in the bottom as I heard it was a crap trapper but I use filter floss which I change daily to clean out the nasty stuff from the water column. I'm certainly learning a lot and I wonder if I should have skipped the biocube and went straight to the bigger tank as I keep reading the larger tanks (and I'd have external filtration) are more forgiving. Ahh, I'll figure it out sooner or later. I'm really leaning towards a no-fish or minimal fish setup. I like fish, but it seems they're the biggest culprit of tank issues and really I am just happy staring at corals under beautiful lights, with crabs, shrimp and other non-fish things to keep me entertained.

I digress, thanks for all the help!
 
Not true. Live sand (assuming you mean sand w/ bacteria only) should indeed be siphoned during water changes - there's no where for the poo to go once it's in the sand bed but decompose into phosphates and nitrates.

Even if you went the route of Shimek and followed those directions for a deep sand bed with spaghetti worms and bristle worms and clams and such - there's been alot of experience and testing to show that this method doesn't help reduce nitrates at all. In fact, it probably does more harm than good - as the bacteria start producing sulfides in the bottom of the sand bed. Everybody poos - even the critters in the sand bed.
If your concerned about the critters and such in the bed - siphon 1/2 (half) of the sand bed per water change.

Your other changes you've made are also on the right track. I'm not sure about the purigen - but bioballs - yes get them our of there - good call.
 
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