Do nitrates naturally go away?

[Animal-Chin]

So my lawnmower that never took to frozen or pellets has dissapeared and I'm assuming he's in some rocks dead. I've noticed this week my nitrates that are usually around 5 shot up to 40. I'm figuring this is because of 2 things, the dead fish and me trying to train my lionfish to eat frozen food. I've had a few really big krill get sucked under some rock work.

So, I've done a 20% change and they've come down by 10. If I just maintain my regular schedule now will they just start going down by themselves because the dead fish/krill are gone? Once the nitrates are produced do you have to actually remove them or will they eventually be skimmed/filtered out?

 

[crister13]

The skimmer only removed the organics score thy real down. A DSB or anything with anaerobic bacteria will process nitrates into nitrogen gas. If your carbon dosing that will also take nitrates and phosphates.

 

[MrPillow]

Unless you physically remove something from the system via water changes, protein skimming, de-nitrification, etc. the nitrates will not disappear.

They may become bound in live organisms be it algae, bacteria, etc., but unless they are physically removed they will only recycle themselves into the system over time.

 

[Sniperhank]

Well, under the def of naturally removing nitrates, this is why we run refugiums. Algae feeds off of nitrates, which is why we see blooms in our tanks when levels get high. By placing the algae off to the side, nitrates are still exported by the algae. Same goes for an algae turf scrubber. The only unnatural part of this process is when you need to trim the algae back, which then removes nitrates from the system all together.