Tips For Reducing Nitrates Please!

[Aquaman101]

Hello All,

I'm hoping people can chime in with the favorite tips to reducing nitrates.

Here's my current scenario.
Bought an existing 55 gallon FOWLR system that includes the following:

Blue Tang - I know, to big. Remember he can with the tank
Dwarf Angelfish (I think)
Damsel
Mandarin Goby
Pajama Cardinal
Sea Urchin
Spiny Starfish

It has around 70 lbs of live rock, plus a new 2" - 3" sandbed. I ditched the old sandbed, but laid a thin layer of it on top of the new sand bed.

When I picked up the tank it was in pretty bad shape algae wise. I cleaned it up and it looked pretty good.

The fish were being fed every day. 1st day - 2 cubes of frozen brine shrimp. 2nd day - 1 frozen cube of brine shrimp and back to 2 cubes on day 3 and throughout the week the pattern was rotating like.

All it has for filtration at the moment is a 3 stage HOB filter that has a sponge, bag of carbon and some sort of bag of rocks.

When i got the tank home I added 20 gallons of new RO/DI premixed saltwater that I got from the LFS and the rest was water I had saved from the existing system.

I kept the LR submerged during transfer.

Days 1 - 4 were great. A pristine beautiful tank. On day 5 a thin layer of diatoms / brown algae appeared. I was running the 50/50 65 Watt Coralife lights for 12 hours a day like the previous owner

So, here's what I have done so far to correct the issue:

Reduced feeding to M,W,F - 1 chunk of frozen Mysis shrimp and a couple of flakes for the Tang. The food is eaten within 5 minutes.

Reduced light cycle to 8 hours.

Bought 7 Astrea snails and 7 Nassarius Snails

Bought 2 Peppermint shrimp to try to battle the aiptasia that was on the LR.

Purchased (have not received yet) a Reef Octopus BH-100F HOB Protein Skimmer that will hopefully get here soon.

I will do a 15% PWC change tomorrow as that will be 1 week since I had setup the tank.

Current water params:
Ammonia - 0 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Nitrate - 20 ppm
pH - 8.3

I don't have the means to create a sump system immediately.

So..let's have them.

I'm hoping the diatoms are breaking out cause of the new sandbed and will burn themselves out. But I'd rather not see it my tanks for months if I don't have to.

I'd love to hear any tips the you have employed to combat this stuff! I don't have the means to create a sump system immediately, but will be looking to in the near future.

Thanks for helping a noob!

 

[Dave VG]

20 ppm is not all that bad for a FOWLR set up. What test kits are you using?

 

[dcombs44]

1 - Pick up some nori or dried seaweed for the tang.

Agreed that 20 ppm is not bad for FOWLR, but eliminating nitrates would help the algae issue.

To battle nitrates:

1 - Continue with your plans for regular weekly water changes.
2 - Get that skimmer up and running, dial it in, and clean it regularly.
3 - Be meticulous about cleaning the sponge in that HOB filter. I've heard of washing them in the laundry with some bleach on hot or in the dishwasher (no detergent). Should probably be done a couple times a week.
4 - Keep your feeding down. Since there may be some omnivore or carnivore inverts, a little leftover is ok, but keep it to a minimum.
5 - Leave the lights off for 3 days or so to starve the algae out.
6 - Once the skimmer is going, consider dosing vodka, running nitrate reducing pellets, or other methods of nitrate removal. These are optional, but have been proven to work.
7 - Phosphate removing media is also an option.

 

[DustinB]

Just keep up with the weekly 15% water changes and rinse the sponges twice a week or replace as necessary. You don't really want them to do any filtering other than physical removal of particles. The diatoms should go away before too long.

 

[Aquaman101]

I use the API test kit that is the little dropper bottles.

I was thinking it's probably only 20 ppm cause the algae eating it. I figure it's higher than that actually.

Thanks for the tips! Keep'em coming!

 

[mgdth]

Frequent water changes will do the trick...

 

[new2r33f]

I have a 29g tank and my nitrate levels were very high (>100 ppm).

I have brought it down to 20 ppm, with weekly 20% water changes and I have also added nitrate removing resin (I don't remember the brand name) and put it in the filtration chamber in my HOB skimmer.