hight nitrate levels

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kraig m.

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Jan 28, 2005
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I need help with my saltwater tank. I have a 75 gal. tank with only 2 fish in
it. A spiny puffer thats about 10 inches long and an snowflake eel. that's
well over a foot long. I have a ETS pro reef devil sump with an ETS pro reef
devil skimmer. Also there's a 1000 cascade canister filter, and a emperor 280
mechanical filter. My lighting is a coralife (4x65) watt PC. And I'm getting
ready to ad on a UV sterilizer, and in place of the (4x65) watt light put a current usa orbit PC (4x96), hopefully to improve coraline algae growth. My
actual problem is nitrate's. I can't get them down to reasonable levels. I'v
tried everything. I was doing like 30 to 40% water changes once a week, with live ocean water. At 17 dollars for 4.4 gallons that gets pretty expensive. Well that didn't help it went down a little around 60ppm,within the week it was well over 100ppm. So I started doing water changes every month. I thought I might be messing up the cycle. That also didn't work. My nitrate's now are testing off the scale over 160ppm. It's like the nitrates
just keep accumalating and going nowhere. I recently talked with algone personell. They said their product would help bring it down. Please help me
I have tried everthing I can think of. I have live rock in the tank, probably 40 to 50 pounds. I thought that suppose to help with the nitrates. I just don't know what to do anymore. I would appreciate all the input I could get on this matter and also on growing good coraline algae besides, growing red slime, and green hair algae.
Thank You,
kraig m.
 
Have you recently cleaned the rock off? This might help--with messy fish like puffers and eels, you can't keep a cleaner crew, so you have to increase the amount of solid waste removal you do. How often do you clean the media in the power filters? They too can trap solid wastes that will push nitrates up substantially. You could try adding some macroalgae as well--but putting it in the sump or adding a fuge would be best, to prevent the macro algaes from taking over the main tank (with good lights and lots of nitrates, macro algaes can really take off).
 
high nitrate levels

I change the filters out at least once a month if not sooner. And yes I did clean the rocks off recently. I try to keep the slime off of the rocks as much as possible. My puffer does eat alot of krill but I feed him out of the tongs that way there is no excess krill left in the tank. I even have cut back on his feeding a little bit. I'm afraid to cut back on his feeding to much, because this fish is huge. The eel doesn't eat near as much, so I'm not worried as much about how much I feed him. I do plan on getting a bigger tank, probably a 180gal., but for now I need to get this one under control. How do you add the macroalgae to the sump? Do you have to put live rock in the sump with a light over it or what. As far as macroalgae in the tank, I picked out good live rock with the purple coraline all over them. But even with the light I got I haven't seen any more growth in the good coraline algae.
Thats one reason why I wanted to go to a higher watt light to hopefully start producing better algae. I also know that if I don't get this nitrate problem, and the microalgae problem under control there's know need even putting on the light, because the microalgae will get worse.
thanks,
kraig m.
 
Coralline isn't a macro--it uses some nitrates, but not nearly as much as caulerpa, or the other macros. They can be harvested too, to actually remove the nitrates from the system completely. When nitrates spike, it means there's a lot of waste being produced. The macro algaes will need light, though they do not need live rock--they will happily grow in a clump in the water column, or attached to something.

Coralline algae needs high calcium levels, but normally isn't that picky about lighting levels--I have good growth in a tank with about 3 wpg.

For feeding...I feed my predators every other day. Puffers need lots of crunchy stuff to keep their teeth in good shape, but don't need daily feedings. I'd start offering more crunchy foods, like mussels and cockles, and reduce the soft foods.
 
EDITED,

you may have some kind of nitrate factory in this system.

Do you have Live rocks?
is there an undergravel filter?
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If you have cured Live rocks, you can slowly take out the wet dry bioliogical filtration on your canister and emperor....and let the Live rocks do the biological filtration.
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The other effective way is to your water reach the skimmer first before the canister. because if its the other way around...there isnt much left to skim easily after being processed in the canister and your emperor..
 
high nitrate levels

Yes I do have live rock. Around 40 pounds or so. I don't know what you mean about the water reaching the skimmer or the canister and mechanical filters first. The skimmer is connected to the outside of the sump. the sump is fed by a cpr overflow box. the canister filter has a seperate filter and return as does the mechanical filter. So I am confused on what you mean by which one the water gets to first. I guess there's no certain one. I do have a Iwaki 40RXLT return pump it pumps out the water at a pretty good rate. About 1200gph. if it was turned all the way up. And as far as a nitrate factory. I beleive that is exactly what it is. And I'm open for business. Do you want some nitrate's. I have plenty to spare.
kraig m.
 
Cleaning the mechanical filter media more often might help. That's likely where the wastes are getting trapped, and building up over time.
 
high nitrate levels

thanks I'll try changing my filters more often. And on the matter of feeding my puffer. Are you talking about feeding live mussels? That might seem like a stupid question, but I don't know where to find any live mussels where I live at. And I'v been feeding him freeze dried krill for months now. If I did get something like that to feed him would he eat it, not being use to it anymore. Because I have a few snails and a couple of crabs in there now and he doesn't bother them at all. At first yea almost every murex snail I had he ate, all but one. Other than that I do appreciate all your input.
kraig m.
 
I had very high nitrates for a couple of months and got excellent results using Kent's nitrate sponge (and regular water changes). It took a few weeks, but it got them down to 0.
 
high nitrate levels

I also tried the kent nitrate sponge for a couple of weeks with water changes and I had no drop at all with the nitrate's. I still have half a bottle of the nitrate sponge left. I don't know maybe I wasn't putting enough of it in at a time for it to work. I can try it again. How much of it should I use at a time? All the container says is put it in a 800 micron bag on to of wet/dry filter or canister filter. I doesn't say for how many gallons that works for.
 
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