high nitrates

[dabears1983]

Help anybody,,,,,, I don`t know what else to do short of tearing my tank down... No matter what I do I can`t seem to get my nitrates below 30 ppm. I tried several major water changes, at least 40 %. I`ve added a refungian with 4 inches of live sand and grape culerpa, keeping lights on 24/7. I`ve blown the rocks several times , I`ve added a micron filter to help with floating particles, I`ve reduced my fish load by half, I feed every other day, I added 2 becket injectors to my etss 750 gimini skimmer ( working awesome if I may add).
my parameters are:
calcium 420
alk 13
ph 8.2
po4 0.15 [my other problem]
magnisium is 1350
nitrates 30
salinity is 1024
I have a 150 reef , 3 175 watts 10,000 k, 2 six foot vho actinics on a icecap 660 ballast.
I have 3/4 sea swirl hook to one of my returns, a rio 1700 on a natural wave strip....
My make-up water is replaced kalkwasser..
I`ve also been doing a weekly 10 % water change, on top of my big water changes

Like I said I don`t know what else to try, sorry about the tread being so long... any help will be highly appreciated, thank you .

 

[Marcosreef]

Have you tried other test kit brands for nitrate?
You also want to check your make-up water for high nitrates too.

[ April 04, 2002: Message edited by: Marcosreef ]</p>

 

[dabears1983]

Yes I have my lfs can came up with same readings I did, and my top off water tested 0 nitrates,,, by the way thank you for the fast response..

 

[vanillaprice]

Does the water you use for make up water have either amonia or nitrites in it. This was causing me a problem until I got a RO/DI

 

[dabears1983]

I`m using DI water, amonia and nitrites are zero,,thanks

 

[danmhippo]

How's the caulerpa racemosa doing? How big is your refugium and how often/much do you harvest off the racemosa?

Are you noticing any adverse effect of your current NO3 level? Are you battling hair algae? 30ppm is not such a bad thing, actually. Without a little NO3, many species of corals may not do as well, and that goes for the caulerpa as well. How often do you have to scrub your glass? How much/often do you feed your tank?

 

[dabears1983]

The caulerpa is doing fine, has not gone asexual, I harvest a couple of handfulls every week. My refugium is 10 gallons, and its seperate from my sump.I am battling a strange type of algea, its has a dark red color, its definately not red slime, its really hard to get of the rocks{not coralline}. It only grows on the rocks in high water flow. My urchin loves the stuff. And all my corals seem to be doing fine... I like to get some acros, but not till I get the nitrates in check..

 

[danmhippo]

Could the dark red macro you mentioned be the sargassum?

For a 150G main tank, 10G caulerpa refugium is not helping much. I have a 150G main as well, and my refugium is 75G, full of caulerpa. I may be on the extreme, but yours is on the low side.

 

[dabears1983]

No its not sargaussum,,, I also have caulerpa in the sump, along with some live rock...

 

[MarkO1]

I think water changes are not going to do much to affect your nitrates. I wouldn't worry too much about it if they are in the 30 range. (Mine is at 20 and doesn't seem to be much of a problem as everything is proliferating). I'd try to reduce your bioload. How many fish do you have?
It'll probably take a few months of less feeding to see any significant change.
_________________
Creole & Cajun Forum

 

[DK]

What I didn't see was the age of your setup. I have high nitrates at this time but that is due to feeding my fish (they are fat and happy) and defective Rio powerheads that are now ALL removed.

 

[quazi]

When all else fails, put some polyFilters in the sump. PolyFilters cure a lot of ails. It may be the bandaid you need to let your system stabilze and re-establish itself.

I agree that a 10 gal sump is too small. I do not know how you get anything in that sump, much less an adaquate pump to return water to the tank.

Also, you say you have a DI filter, but do not mention RO. If you are not using an RO filter, get one. It has made all the difference with my tank (which has been in operation for over 15 years!)

 

[Mike and Donna]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by MarkO:
<strong>I think water changes are not going to do much to affect your nitrates.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Why??? A 40% water change will reduce nitrates by 40%, assuming no nitrates in the new water.

 

[dabears1983]

Just to clear up some things that we might have been unclear about. We have a 135 living reef with a 30 gal sump. And a 11 gal refugum separate from the sump.
The tank water if being gravity fed from the top of the tank to, the refugum, to the sump. There are several pieces of live rock, some caulerpa, and some crabs and snails in the refugum. Our sump has some live rock and some caulerpa in it, just not much.

We have had this tank up and going on three years now. With one tear down about 9 months ago. Reason being dark reddish black algae growing on just the rocks and not the corals. We cant seem to get rid of it. We had to replace all the sand do to it calsified. We replaced it with living sand to create a two inch sand bed that seems to be doing well. Do you think this is deep enough?
The DI filters we are using are ordered from petwearhouse. They connect to the faucet and we change them roughly every 200 gallons. We have tested the make up water and the tap water and test 0 for nitrates. Any other help would be appreciated thanks to every one who wrote in.
Armando

 

[dabears1983]

My fish load is a follows
1 yellow watchman gobie
1 yellow tang
1 blue sergin tang
2 purple tangs 1large 1small
1 blue green chromis
2 yellow tail damsels
1 austrailian pseudochromis
1 bi colored pseudochromis
2 lier tail antheis
1 coral beauty
1 10 in orange surpant star

sorry I forgot to add my fish load in the last post.
armango

 

[esmithiii]

IMO your fish load is too high for a 150.

As for water changes, they will temporarily lower the nitrates. Two 40% water changes will not lower nitrates by 80% (it would lower it by 64%), three 40% water changes would remove 78%, four 87%, etc.) This is assuming that there is no nitates being added between water changes.