Nitrogen gas Bubbles

T

tleilaxu

New member
A little background, my tank will turn 6yrs come Sept, I'm running phosguard & carbon & de*nitrator in a phosban reactor, running a Coralife skimmer 24/7 (decent gunk pulled) with a shallow sand bed., my sump is also a refuge with a dsb & chaeto.

Last month I tested nitrates of 20, after many waterchanges it came down to 10 and is hovering there. Also I'm beginning to get some nasty algae outbreaks (due to the nitrates I'm sure) which I'm removing manually and I'm looking / reading on eliminating/bring them down totally.

The question / problem I'm having is that in a couple of areas in the tank I'm getting nitrogen gas bubbles. Is this because they are low flow areas? Are these bubbles a better or worse sign (not that nitrates are good) ?

I'm also wondering if adding ozone & w/ a controller would eliminate this nuisance algae? Only one compartment in my sump has a dsb & chaeto, would it be advisable to add a dsb to the compartment with the skimmer? (skimmer>fuge>return)

Thank you
 
Do you know they are nitrogen and not oxygen? Algae often traps O2 bubbles as it releases the oxygen that is produced by photosynthesis. Nitrogen bubbles are rarely visible except when the burp out of the undersurface regions of a sand bed.

I wouldn't use ozone to try to reduce an algae problem.
 
They are clear and look similar to what you'd see with dino's but there are no dino's. I could very well be wrong ;) with my diagnosis, how would I get oxygen bubbles and is this good or bad?
 
Thanks for your help, I should have mentioned that one of the areas has no algae growth in the area, I guess it must be coming from some other algae patch, thanks again I was worried about where this was coming from
 
Thanks again for all your help. I have a small question, I've been doing on average 5-10% waterchanges every couple days (for the past couple of weeks) to bring down the nitrates, if I did a 30-50% change would it come down more? After the last few changes it didn't bugde from 10 so I'm inclinded to think it isn't going to come down (or down permanently).

I'm limited with space (for a separate refuge) and am looking into a hang on fuge, I'm wondering if a small water volumes (the fuge I'm looking at is 16X12X4) with dsb/chaeto move my nitrates at all?

Spending $500 on a denitrator isn't really something I want to think about.

Thanks again much appreciated.
 
I've read that, I don't over feed and only every other day, I drain all the water (thawed) from the frozen food and only add the food, I skim 24/7 with good extraction. I grow chaeto which grows nicely in my refuge (remote dsb also) and I'm still hovering around 10. I know that water changes will only let it drop so much but I was wondering if perhaps my % was too low to put more of a dent in them.

I have to find a good solution to reducing them because this nuisance algae is a pain.

Thank you for you response
 
Thanks for the link, I'll read it over lunch :)

I already have chaeto in my sump/refuge but I was wondering if perhaps adding a hang-on refuge (16x12x4) as an additional place to grow chaeto w/dsb would help at all or that size of refuge wouldn't really affect the nitrates much!?

I also didn't point out I only have 3 fish, 2x percs 1x wrasse and some snails / shrimp with lps's and softies, I don't think I'm overstocked (unless it's the softies).
 
I use r/o, I read that article and thanks it was very informative. I think that my nitrates may have accumulated because I have been doing inadequate water changes (size & frequency). I'm planning on beginning 30% / mthly changes.

I'm also thinking about putting a dsb in the skimmer chamber of the sump/refuge, which will make 2x (1 is already in the refuge section) and hopefully this will bring them down to 0

Thanks for all your help have a great weekend
 
I am also having a nitrate problem above 160ppm(the test kit does not go any higher) This was confirmed by 3 lfs. My 90 has 150lbs of live rock, 6 hermit crabs, 10 snails, 1 small lobster, 1 decent size anemone, some macroalgae(colerpa?).
Some history here-I bought the tank 3 weeks ago from a lady moving across country. She had the tank for 1 year. She had 11 fish until 3 months ago when some sort of bacteria crashed her tank and all the fish died. However, everything listed above survived. Note- I bought the macroalgae 1 week ago. The sand was very dirty and nitrates were high so I did a large water change(25%).No change in nitrate level(still not readable). I did another large water change but this time I moved all the rocks around to clean under them with a gravel siphen. This time not only do I have no change in nitrates (above 200ppm) but nitrites were .5 and Ammonia was .25.
The only other things I can think of are, I run a wet/dry system and the lights are on for about 5 hours a day, I feed the anemone 1x-week with a syringe dose of 2.5 ml, I know this is a lot of info but any suggestions would help. I would like to buy fish soon! However I donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t want to kill them! I have read most of Randys articles on the nitrate subject. Any suggestions? Should I consider a 100 %water change or a series oe 25%? Or something else ? Also at what level is it safe to put fish in?
thanks,
Kevin
 
Dsbs MAY be part of the problem if you have had them for a long time. If it is full of nutirents, they just start leaching back into the water column. It is VERY difficult if not impossible to reverse. You may need to suck out all of your sand and put new sand in.

You may also consider looking into vodka dosing. This will increase your bio filtration capability and may help bring your phosphates and nitrates down.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7136590#post7136590 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by kgerbus
I am also having a nitrate problem above 160ppm(the test kit does not go any higher) This was confirmed by 3 lfs. My 90 has 150lbs of live rock, 6 hermit crabs, 10 snails, 1 small lobster, 1 decent size anemone, some macroalgae(colerpa?).
Some history here-I bought the tank 3 weeks ago from a lady moving across country. She had the tank for 1 year. She had 11 fish until 3 months ago when some sort of bacteria crashed her tank and all the fish died. However, everything listed above survived. Note- I bought the macroalgae 1 week ago. The sand was very dirty and nitrates were high so I did a large water change(25%).No change in nitrate level(still not readable). I did another large water change but this time I moved all the rocks around to clean under them with a gravel siphen. This time not only do I have no change in nitrates (above 200ppm) but nitrites were .5 and Ammonia was .25.
The only other things I can think of are, I run a wet/dry system and the lights are on for about 5 hours a day, I feed the anemone 1x-week with a syringe dose of 2.5 ml, I know this is a lot of info but any suggestions would help. I would like to buy fish soon! However I donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t want to kill them! I have read most of Randys articles on the nitrate subject. Any suggestions? Should I consider a 100 %water change or a series oe 25%? Or something else ? Also at what level is it safe to put fish in?
thanks,
Kevin
Click to expand...


Wow, it seems you took over a very troubled tank indeed. If it wer me, I think I would take the live stock to a safe place (possibly a QT) and remove all the LR, Sand etc and start over. If you have ammonia, then you have something dieing in there. That is bad news when you have any amounts of ammonia in a cycled tank. I think I would remove all the rock into tubs, get new sand and start fresh. Let the tank cycle, do a good size water change and then start adding live stock back in slowly. Your only asking for trouble starting a new tank with super high nitrates, ammonia, and probably off the charts phoshates as well.

Not how I would wish to begin a tank thats for sure.......
 
if you go the water change route, it will be slow, but at this elevated level, probably useful. I don't generally like 100% changes unless it is an emergency.

Improved skimming, macroalgae, and possibly even a bacterial driven process (vodka, AZ-NO3, etc) may be useful for you.
 
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