High Nitrate Reading

[yellowfish]

Having a real tough time getting my nitrates below 35ppm. I've done evrything from 50% waterchanges once a week,to Vodka dosing(which i stopped after a couple of days after it blew my calcium and alkalin. readings off the charts.)I've tried De-nitrate carbon to no changes!My Calcium and Alk. are 400 and 420,my Amonnia is 0.
Any input or ideas will be greatly appreciated.I really got to get it down to at least 15ppm in order to get any Anemones.
Thnx Mike

 

[thincat]

Lets start with the basics,
1) are you using RO/DI water?
2) what is your tank load, ie..fish count, etc
3) how much do you feed your tank?
4) what are your other readings?
5) What size tank do you have?

 

[BucJason]

If you are doing 50% water changes every week and still can't get nitrates down, you have way too much load.


Is your tank overcrowded?

are you over-feeding??

could there be something dead and rotting somewhere in the tank?

The only other possibility I can think of is if you are using tap water that alerady is loaded with nitrates or ammonia .

 

[RWaltman]

whats the size of the tank? whats in it? are you changing with tap water? I'd suggest using distilled water...sumthin dead in there!?! haha...no seriously...how long has this been going on? how long have you had the tank?

 

[yellowfish]

Lets start with the basics,
1) are you using RO/DI water?
2) what is your tank load, ie..fish count, etc
3) how much do you feed your tank?
4) what are your other readings?
5) What size tank do you have?

Yes i am using ro/di water,my load is a little heavy i have 9 large fish in my 135gl tank(yell,purp.tang,koran angel,flame angel,yell gob,2 percs,naso tang
I feed once a day and my other readings are
Parameters = Ammonia 0,Calcium 480,ALK 11.2, Salinity1.022,Nitrite and Amonnia 0,With a 75gl Sump/Refugium 3'' sand bed

 

[yellowfish]

Sorry forgot to mention the tank is 3 years old and no dead fish.... havent lost a fish in 2.5 years.

 

[melosu58]

Are you using a skimmer?

 

[yellowfish]

H&S A150-F2000 external skimmer,rated at 200gl

 

[melosu58]

Do some water test on your PWC water to make sure you are not adding it to the tank.

 

[CaptainAhab]

If your 'my tanks' is correct you might want to add to that CUC. Is this correct?

200gl tank, 135gl sump/refugium,H&S A150-F2000/1 External Protein Skimmer, 3 -175w-20,000k-2-5'vho,4 Seio 1500,Mag 36.,Water Gen.RO/DI300lbs live rock,purple tipped acro,candy cane,kenya tree,zoas,Hippo,Yel. Tang, Sohal Tang,2Perc.Clown,2 Clown Gobies,4 Turbo Snails,2 Blue Leg Crabs

 

[yellowfish]

Water is good,Ive tested it in the past,what puzzles me is i have a 180gl predetor FOWLR tank across from from the 135gl tank i am using the same salt,same ro/di water,same everything and this tank has a higher load(triggers,10 in total averaging 6.5'')and its Parameters are 100%.What i am starting to believe that it may be is, the high amount of tangs i have in this tank......

 

[RWaltman]

aaaaaaaaah....maybe I'm just being dumb but wouldn't a simple solution be to use a de-nitrate product?

Seachem. denitrate

 

[yellowfish]

Hey Why didn't i think of that!!!!!!!
Read my thread,i tried that........
Don't mean to sound nasty,
I do appreciate the feedbacks and i am willing to try anything to keep my existing fish.

 

[Ziggy953]

What kind of flow do you have in the tank?

Do you have any sponges or other filter media anywhere on the system? Check in your sump for collected detritus. When I was battling high nitrates if turned out that I had a dead spot in my sump and was loaded with detritus. After correcting that issue my nitrates run around 10ish.

BTW to get the full benefit of dosing vodka you have to do it for a while. It doesn't happen overnight. I'm not a fan of adding sugar to the tank though it has proven benefits. As you found though it can mess with other parameters.

Do you have a TDS meter on your RO/DI unit? Have you tested your source water before the RO/DI and then tested the pure water to see if there are nitrates there?

 

[RWaltman]

Hey Why didn't i think of that!!!!!!!
Read my thread,i tried that........
Don't mean to sound nasty,
I do appreciate the feedbacks and i am willing to try anything to keep my existing fish.

hehehe...sorry!

 

[CaptainAhab]

If you're going to use a denitrator then you need to do it right and not use the voo-doo products over the counter. A good denitrator will use sulfur and slowly reprocess the water through the packed sulfer several times until the anerobic bacteria can process the nitrate. When done properly you will see nitrate in and 0 nitrates out.

However, in the end you have nitrates for only a few reasons. 1) You are introducing them via food or your water supply. 2) Your cleaning habits (be that manual cleaning, cleaning thru macro algae (or lack there of) or your clean up crew are not doing their job 3) You have dead spots which relates back to #2.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1288082&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

 

[thincat]

The only other thing I can see is that you have to many tangs. They are Algae eaters and therefore deficate alot. Try feeding every other day and see if that and PWC's can bring your NO3 down to at least 20ppm.

 

[Dr. Dai Phan]

Controlling Nitrate

Greetings,

I did have problems of controlling nitrates until I started to use the sump/ref with caulepra and live sand. I did not employ this until my 4th tank (55 G, 80G, 120G and now 125G) and what a difference it makes. With LR, light fish load, controlled feeding, PWC (I do 20 G every two weeks) and sump/ref you should be able to get to 5. Of course a skimmer is a must too. DP