high nitrate levels..help?

[Snoopybdb]

On thursday i added some live rock and did a 30% water change. On saturday i added a few more pieces of liverock. Yesterday i tested te water and the the ph, nitrite, and ammonia levels were fine, but the nitrate was very high, so i changed 6 gal of water again. What should i do? Is there anything else i can do to reduce the nitrate levels other than water changes? I don't want to loose the new corals i just put in. Any ideas on what could be making the nitrate levels so high when all the others are ok? Thanks!

 

[seaham358]

We need more info about your tank..
Size, what type of substraight.... Sump or wet dry, use of bioballs? How long has it been up
Canister filter do you change/clean
what type of water do you use
Was the lr u added cured?
What were your amm and nitrite levels and what is you nitrate readings.

 

[Snoopybdb]

30 gal. crushed coral. wet dry. no bioballs. the tank will be 2yrs in aug. the water i use for changes is bottled spring water, bought from the store(is there somthing better to use?). yes cured lr. amm was between 0 and .25 ppm. nitrite was 0 and nitrate was 40 ppm. my boyfriend thinks that rinseing the testing viles in tap water might be giving me an inaccurate reading, but the the almost 2 years that i've been testing the tank my levels have stayed at or near 0 since the original cycle. i have never seen any levels this high, since the original cycle.

 

[Thumper]

Actually adding the lr will decrease your no3 in time. I would opt for a few more water changes untill the lr has time to catch up and not sweat it to much untill then. If and when a week or so passes and then you still have high no3 I would lean toward the cc bed. Could be that you adding the lr disrupted it enough to let the built up no3 escape into the water but should still clear up in time either way. IMO

 

[lando]

First, have the tests verified by another kit or the LFS. The two main causes of high NO3 are over-feeding an over-stocking. What is your current livestock list? What and how often are you feeding?

 

[seaham358]

CC can trap waste and break down into NO3, do you vac the CC bed?
Have you tested the spring water..... IMO and from reading Spring water can be worse then using tap water.
RO/DI is the best we can get, they sell them on ebay for $100 and there are a lot of sites that sell them also. rinsing the vials is fine they will dry before you use them again...

 

[Snoopybdb]

up until the day i tested the water i had a yellow tang, a clown fish, and a black and white stripped damsel, also a feather duster, a cleaner shrimp and some turbo snails, that day i took the damsel out and added a purple and yellow dottyback and since have added a firefish, and a couple of corals. i am concidering taking the dottyback out since it's picking on other things( lfs guys sold it to me and then today asked me how my cleaner shrimp was doing and when i told him the dotty back was picking on it he laughed HOW MEAN!)
Now that i read some of the posts you have left me i had to move all the lr to catch the damsel, so it might be that i stirred up the tank alot and that's what gave me the high reading. i'll try the test again tomorrow since it's been a week now and see if it's any better. Thanks!

 

[lando]

You may want to consider taking back the yellow tang as well. A 30gal tank is way too tight for even the smallest of tangs. It can really lead to problems.

 

[AR15 guy]

I kept a tang in a 38 gallon with two percs and a royal gramma. The tank seemed very territorial and killed my gramma. Didn't attack it directly but picked at it and had it very stressed out. It eventually died. It never bothered the percs though.