Oh no! Nitrates please help

[mdplavnik]

Help, I've had a tank for about a month, I have a 46 gallon tank, 75lbs of live rock, a Fluval 404 canister filter (with chemipure and phos-x in the other chambers). I test for everything twice a week and a yesterday my nitrates were at 20ppm (mg/L) so I did a 30% water change today and just tested it and now it's down to about 10. Any advice on how else I could lower it and if I just need to wait another day before all the water mixes before testing and is it something to freak out about yet.


Thanks ahead - any help would be great

 

[DrBDC]

Canister filters work good for freshwater tanks and for running chemical media in. But just like a biowheel and/or bioballs they tend to get the rap for being nitrate factories. They themselves don't actually make them they just convert the amm/nitrites to nitrate but do not remove them from the system. You need somthing to remove/consume them.

Get yourself a good skimmer and grow some macroalgae like chaeto in your sump. That and maintain 10-15% weekly water changes, low feeding volume, and plenty of flow to keep detrius from settling and decomposing.

 

[DrBDC]

Oh, and of course, here's an article related to this topic:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/august2003/chem.htm

 

[mdplavnik]

Well I also have a biowheel - the 280 - and a i have the seaclone skimmer, i feed the fish once a day now... someone advised i should take it off - what do you think ? also can you recomend any better protein skimmers?

 

[DrBDC]

Unfortunately I've only heard bad opinions of seaclones aka seaclowns. But,,,,I have no first hand experience.

Remember these are just my opinion:

Low price aqua c remora or bigger urchin versions

Medium price asm, geo

Higher etss, deltec

Very high Bubble king

There are others I'm sure the supporters of will bring up when they do a search on their competitive skimmer and this thread comes up! :lol:

I'd def. take off the biowheel and use that for a mini refuge. Stick a clip on light and some cheato in it if you don't have a sump. Don't remove the biowheel and the media from the canister at the same time. Let the system slowly convert over to allowing the rock/sand/surfaces to increase their biological filtration. Maybe space it out over a couple weeks to a month.

 

[bertoni]

Given that the tank is only a month old, I'd wait a bit before doing much. A better skimmer is a fine idea, as is a macroalgae area, if the problem persists.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I agree that nitrate may drop some as the tank matures, so it may be worth waiting to see what happens, but there are many good ways to reduce nitrate, and you might start thinking about them. Of those detailed in the linked article above, I prefer skimming and growing macroalgae. In my case, the macroalgae handles most of the nitrate and phosphate reduction.

 

[mdplavnik]

is 10ppm too high? Also the only way to grow a macro algea is in a refugium right, not really sure I am prepared to take that on yet

 

[Siapin]

GET RID OF YOUR BIO WHEEL!

I had a bio wheel, and always had nitrates lingering between 5-10 ppm.

I kept everything the same, then got rid of my bio-wheel, and my nitrates went down to 0.

One thing though...a mature tank will help though. Maybe wait some time to get rid of the bio wheel. But in the meantime, wait and let it age some.

 

[Siapin]

This is a quote from the article given above:

"5. Remove existing filters designed to facilitate the nitrogen cycle. Such filters do a fine job of processing ammonia to nitrite to nitrate, but do nothing with the nitrate. It is often non-intuitive to many aquarists, but removing such a filter altogether may actually help reduce nitrate. So slowly removing them and allowing more of the nitrogen processing to take place on and in the live rock and sand can be beneficial.

It is not that any less nitrate is produced when such a filter is removed, it is a question of what happens to the nitrate after it is produced.

When it is produced on the surface of media such as bioballs, it mixes into the entire water column, and then has to find its way, by diffusion, to the places where it may be reduced (inside of live rock and sand, for instance).

If it is produced on the surface of live rock or sand, then the local concentration of nitrate is higher there than in the first case above, and it is more likely to diffuse into the rock and sand to be reduced to N2."

 

[mdplavnik]

thks - i am going to try doing weekly changes in water- small - 10% or so and eventually take off the biowheel and change by protein skimmers from the seaclone to something better

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

is 10ppm too high? Also the only way to grow a macro algea is in a refugium right, not really sure I am prepared to take that on yet

IMO, many organisms will be just fine at 10 ppm nitrate. Some, like certain soft corals, might even prefer it to lower levels. However, I'd aim for less than 1 ppm if possible. Also, elevated nitrate is often accompanied by elevated phosphate, which is a significantly worse problem, IMO.