NEED HELP CHANGED CC TO SAND NITRATES OFF THE CHART

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fishcrazy101

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Oct 11, 2008
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I switched tanks from a 150 gallon to 180 gallon and our old tank had crushed coral and instead of using it we bought Aragonite sugar grade sand. Well my nitrates are off the chart and never had problem before. Also our large sebae anemone has shriveled up to half his size. I did a 50% water change and still reading off the charts. I think where I made a mistake is I just read that I should of put crushed coral in nylon and put in sand but now it is too late for that. I have 200 lbs live rock, corals, clown tang, yellow tang, purple firefish, clown goby, 2 nemos, two fire shrimp, and clean up crew. Nothing else seems to be affected. Is there anything else I can do? Or buy to get the sand through the process faster? Please help!!!!:confused:
 
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fish guru

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Nov 12, 2007
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well if its nitrates then the only cure that I am aware of would b water changes..... however, I have heard of anaerobic bacteria getting rid of nitrates.... Im not sure.. try googling anaerobic bacteria in the marine aquarium and Im pretty sure things would come up.
 
park83

park83

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Dec 2, 2006
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You probably had the anaerobic bacteria built up pretty well in your CC substrate, and you just took it out, reducing your capacity to remove nitrates.
 
fsn77

fsn77

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Feb 22, 2006
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Anaerobic bacteria will take months to really develop in a deep sand bed. I'm not aware of a readily available product in the hobby to jump start the anaerobic bacteria population. But, that doesn't mean there isn't one... I certainly can't claim to know about or have seen every product companies flood our hobby with these days.

How long has your 180g been running?
How deep is your sand bed?

If your reading is off the chart, I'm guessing that means it's over 200 ppm (mg/L)??? The nitrate kit I have is for fw and sw and goes that high, but that doesn't mean your test kit does. If your nitrates really are 100+ ppm, you will most likely lose nearly all (or all) of the invertebrates in your system (including your anemone).

Is it possible that your test kit isn't reading properly? (old, expired, etc.)
Can you confirm your high reading with a different kit from a friend or the LFS?
 
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fishcrazy101

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Oct 11, 2008
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Well, 24 hours after the water change I added something called cycle that the lfs recommended and is now reading at 40 ppm. It was reading 160 ppm which is what the api reef master test kit that I have. Haven't tested yet this morning but getting ready to. I have had this test kit for awhile so I am going to take it in to the lfs and see what there reading is. Anemone is doing much better today. It is so easy to get attached to these little guys some even eat right from my hand and would be very upset if lost any of them. I have one other question, since this changeover I have developed some green algae on the rocks and on top of it is little air bubbles, do you know what this is or why there is little air bubbles? Before all the rock pink and purple shades and now it is green, purple, and pink.
 
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fishcrazy101

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Oct 11, 2008
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Also to answer your questions we had a 150 gallon we bought from someone that was established for about 7 years. We decided to switch to a 180 gallon and instead of bringing the crushed coral over to the other tank, we bought new aragonite sugar grade sand. The sand bed is at 2 1/2 inches thick
 
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