Help nitrates still arent down.

[Matt bussell]

I got home from work two days ago and my nitrates in my 125 were through the roof. I've done two 30 percent water changes with ro water and my nitrates are still at 80 ppm. I two treatments of natural nitrate reducer And they at still high. What should I do?

 

[mwilliams]

How many days apart did you do the water change in?
Also how much food are you feeding? Might want to cut back a little. I had high nitrates too and did two water changes in one week and cut back on the amount of food I was putting in the tank as well and it has come down but not a lot. I might end up hooking up the Phosban reactor to the tank if it continues to be an issue here real soon.

 

[Matt bussell]

I did the water changes back to back the past two days. And two treents of natural nitrate reducer.

 

[crister13]

Keep doin pwcs! Lol

 

[bskerrichard27]

Cut back on food pwc and maybe some chaeto if u got a fuge

 

[bavass]

Keep doing the big water changes!

 

[TigerBarbs]

You could try a biopellet reactor. They take a while to kick in though.

 

[carey]

I'd vote for just doing large water changes. It's a matter of math so it will take a few changes for it to impact the high nitrates.

 

[buucca]

I'd vote for just doing large water changes. It's a matter of math so it will take a few changes for it to impact the high nitrates.

Keep the feeding to a minimum. Doing large water changes will keep the system from stabilizing. You want to build up your beneficial bacteria so your system can take care of itself. Do small frequent pwc's over a period of time and test to see if the levels are dropping.

 

[tonedogz]

Matt,I don't know how much rock you have or how long your tank has been set up but I can tell you what I did to help reduce the nitrates. I mixed a bucket of salt water and took out the rock and rinsed it all off in the bucket. Underneath the rock was a lot of gunk that I vacuumed up an it lowered it from 100 to around 50. Since then I've been dosing vodka for about 4 months and have gone from 50 to between 5 and 10. you still need to do water changes but not so large and not so often. I do 10% every other week.