Help with Nitrates

kevin310

kevin310

AC Members
Mar 15, 2007
38
0
0
Hell Everyone,
I need some help with Nitrates. My nitrates were around 80ppm. I just did a water change last Sunday. I tested my water today and they were back up to 80 ppm. What can I do to correct this problem? My tank has been up and running for 6 months. Thanks.
90g saltwater
80lbs live rock
1 foxface yellow rabbitfish
1 cinnanmon clown
1 purple tang
1 naso tang
1- green Chromis
1 coral beauty
1 starfish
1 diamond gobie
1 purple wrasse
2 snails
10 hermit crabs
2 fire shrimp
1 Fluval 404 filter
2 maxijet powerheads
1 coralife protein skimmer (125g)
 
What's your feeding schedule like?
How often / how much are your water changes?
How often do you clean your Fluval?

Reducing nitrates via water changes is not a one or two water change solution to the problem. To bring them down with water changes alone, you'll have to increase the frequency and amount of your water changes.
 
Marine flakes once a day
1 algae strip per day.
Frozen prime reef once every other day.
I clean the fluval once a month.(change carbon and ammonia filters)
Water changes were once a month.30g
 
What's your substrate? I had the same problem when I was using crushed coral. I changed it out to sand and my problem went away.
 
I am using a live sand bottom. Fish are fine, always hungry. Using saltwater master kit. Should I just keepdoing water changes?
 
nitrate-graph.gif



Doing 10% changes it will take over 25 water changes to get the Nitrates down to 0. And doing 50% changes is just plain crazy, unless you like stressing and killing fish. So I would do 10-20% changes until the problem is done with... it's not an easy or quick fix ... hope this helps.
 
why everybody says that water changes will help with nitrates? i mean, they will but very short term. if something is not changed or adjusted, the same nitrates are produced back into the water. to fight the nitrate problem does take a long time, even if you get it right, it will not show right away. i sujest refugium with chaeto algae. also find really good chemical media to help to remove some of the organics and other toxins out of the water, and nitrates. something like chemi-pure. there are low oxygen chambers for nitrate problem too, but i think the price is high. also do water cahnges more often than once a month.
 
i used to have problems with NitrAtes which I put down to overstocking and over feeding (which I don't do now!!) I brought one of these http://www.onlineaquariumstore.com/acatalog/Nitrate_Reactor.html (scroll down to second from last) and haven't had any problems with NitrAtes since. It only gets used when I get a reading which isn't that often.

Obviously you need to find out why you're getting nitrAtes but if an answer isn't found then I recommend a reductor.

HTH
 
I want to thank everbody for the help. I am going to try and reduce the feeding and increase the water changes to 15% every week.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom