Nitrates problems

[Leeh24]

Hi all,

Can anyone give me some suggestion on how to bring nitrates down and keep them down.

At moment they are sitting between 5 and 10.

I have been doing 20% water changes weekly with ro water and still to now avail. I am feeding every couple of day and not too much.

I am using live rock in back chambers with skimmer it's 94l river reef tank.

Tank been running for around a year however it was moved around 2 months ago.

All other params are good and fish are healthy enough but it's just very annoying.

Any help would be great.

Lee

 

[scottayy]

That's a very acceptable level of nitrates. Not bad at all. I bet if you did a couple of 20% water changes back to back for a few weeks you would get them down and keep them down.

 

[Leeh24]

Hi Scott,
I know there not extremely high but just annoying when I see the test going slightly orange every time I test.
I been doing about 20% weekly but you think if I do a couple of back to back changes they will drop and stay dropped ?
Lee

 

[Leeh24]

Sorry when you say back to back do you mean daily ? And should I still use ro water or salt water from lfs.
Lee

 

[AquaRick]

Use SW if you're doing PWCs. Use RODI water if you're doing topoffs.

 

[scottayy]

I used to could (is that a proper phrase? lol) never get my nitrates down under 20 no matter how many water changes I did.

If you are sure you're doing everything properly and can't get it down with water changes you could try "the vodka method". I didn't want to deal with that, so I bought Instant Ocean Natural Nitrate Reducer (it uses suspended carbs like the vodka method does) and works in conjuction with your skimmer to bring organics out of the water.

I now maintain between 2.5 and 5 nitrates. Occasionally I will get a reading lower than 2.

EDIT| I think you're also using the API nitrate test kit. These are not terribly accurate. If you can, get a salifert nitrate test kit! They're a little bit more expensive but much more accurate.