i have always had high nitrates in my tank (20 ppm) but today i found my candy cane coral and my hammer coral not having its sweeper tentacles out which i found that weird because they always come out at night. i tested my water parameters and my nitrate are 40ppm, ph 8.0, nitrite and ammonia at 0. my calcium has been really high for the past month at 560 and my dkh has been really high too at 17. i use a di system for my water changes and top off. i have done so many water changes to lower my nitrate levels and nothing seems to bring it down. we have cut off the feeding because maybe we were over feeding and nothing. what can i do to lower my nitrate? i know my ph is low too. i put it some ph buffer to get my ph back up
high nitrates
- Thread starter jenniferroman
- Start date
How deep is your sand bed and are you using bioballs or rock rubble in your filer? If you have a skimmer you can use reef biofuel or azno3 to help reduce nitrates. and lastly what fish are in there and what size is the tank.
It also sounds like your magnesium might be off too, also recheck your DI to see if the filters are old
It also sounds like your magnesium might be off too, also recheck your DI to see if the filters are old
Stop what your doing. Do not put anything in the tank other than clean saltwater. No buffers!!!! Your Alk is DEADLY at 17 (Although I highly question that reading, usually above 14 and things start to go south real quick). Also, as above stated, I bet your Magnesium is way low if both your Alk/CA are that high. The only way to get CA/Alk that high is by throwing things in the tank without testing first. Simply doing waterchanges will not get your Alk/CA that high on its own, even with no corals consuming it.
This is what I would do to solve the problem is just a couple days. Every day blow out the rocks and stir up the sand real good, then right after do as close to a 100% waterchange with good freshly mixed saltwater. Repeat/test daily untill your levels are back down to normal. Stiring the sand and blowing out the rocks should lower the nitrates as well (as long as your not running old Bio-Balls that are known to leach Nitrates back into the tank). Still, rocks on their own leach nitrates back into the tank, so that is why you have to do back to back.. to back to back sometimes.. waterchanges to get them down. Had to do it on someone elses 135G tank than had nitrates in the 200's! 5 days straight of 95% waterchanges.. lots of water, but it got his nitrates down from 200 to below 5.
This is what I would do to solve the problem is just a couple days. Every day blow out the rocks and stir up the sand real good, then right after do as close to a 100% waterchange with good freshly mixed saltwater. Repeat/test daily untill your levels are back down to normal. Stiring the sand and blowing out the rocks should lower the nitrates as well (as long as your not running old Bio-Balls that are known to leach Nitrates back into the tank). Still, rocks on their own leach nitrates back into the tank, so that is why you have to do back to back.. to back to back sometimes.. waterchanges to get them down. Had to do it on someone elses 135G tank than had nitrates in the 200's! 5 days straight of 95% waterchanges.. lots of water, but it got his nitrates down from 200 to below 5.
You definitely have other issues that you need to resolve before worrying about 20 ppm of nitrates! When you sort out the Ca+ and Alk issues if nitrates are still a problem buy your tank a drink! http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php
With a 3" sand bed that is borderline DSB and I wouldn't recommend stirring one that deep. 1-2" is fine to stir, but 3" I would only do the top 1/2", just stick your fingers in the sand and bury your fingernails and rake the sand if it is deep. As long as your doing a giant waterchange immediatly after stiring/blowing rocks you shouldn't have a problem. Stirring the sand and just letting it resettle will most likely cause problems though so only stir when you are ready for the big one.
arakkis my sand bed is 2 inches thick and i am not using either bioballs or rock rubble in my filter. i have a hob filter. my tank is 14 gallon with a yellow watchman goby and a clownfish. my cartridge filter doesn't need to be replaced yet
ace25 one thing i use to do that i found out i was doing wrong is testing my ph at night. i use to test it at night and i use to get a low reading so i would put ph buffer in but i found out that at night it is normal for your ph to be lower. so i think that is how my alk got so high by putting the ph buffer when my tank didn't need it. i heard to not stir up your sand bed too because that brings up your phosphate. well i did a 5 gallon water change and my corals seem to be doing a lot better
Well.. good lesson to learn early. I didn't know that one for many years myself. Now I have a controller so I can see the pH all the time, but I understand those are way later down the line of things to buy for most people. My pH is usually 8.11 in the morning and right now the MH light just turned off and it is 8.33, which is perfect IMO. My 29G tank on the otherhand isn't as "fancy", just like you, HOB filter and the pH at night is around 7.8-7.9 and right before lights out it is around 8.2.
