Nitrate!!!!

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milmokes

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Nov 16, 2004
Messages
33
Location
Pennsylvania
I have between 80-160ppm of nitrate in my saltwater tank. I measured the tap and possibly 5ppm is coming from there or none at all. I have a 29 gallon tank with a skilter 400 and 30-40lbs of live rock. The skimmer on this doesn't work. Does anyone have ideas how to lower or get rid of the nitrate? Any help is appreciated.
 
What is your substrate. If it is crushed coral (large chunks) replace it slowly with a dsb. This worked for a friend of mine. I personally used a shallow sand bed and have barely any nitrates usually less than 5ppm.
 
Yea, I didn't catch the gal size, I would do a 100% water change (or as close as possible). Nitrates kill alot of stuff.
 
The bacteria should still be there if you keep the parameters similar... you can always do a 50% and another 50%.... that should reduce your nitrates to 25% of what they are....... and keep going.......
 
Dont do drastic things like that. Nitrates kill a lot of stuff, but your animals are used to it. A 100% water change would be worse than not doing anything at all, namely, the shock of a NO3 free environment would kill off most of your animals. Do a small water change, approx 25%, and then add some live sand. You want the deph of your sand bad at at least 2-3 inches of fine sand, but not sugar sand, that one tends to be sucked up a lot durring water changes. Finally, when you have done all of this, I would suggest lowering the feeding for a little while. You also might want to look into a better skimmer, or just improving the function of the current one. Doing all of those things will slowly and safely bring the levels down. Just take it easy, and slowly fix the problem. You dont want to shock the little animals.
 
100% water change is not a good idea al all. Like Reef G says 25% is a good start, do a few over a week to get them down slowly. What fish do you have and how are they doing. A new skimmer is a good idea.
How old is the tank and do you have sand or CC
 
and a functional skimmer will lower nitrates by removing the organic compounds before they ever turn into nitrates.
 
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