Nitrates through the roof.. water change frequency

[TomToro]

Happy with my refugium

That tank is HUGE! Never realized just how small mine was. Tank envy they call it.

I had trouble for a long time with nitrates and tried all sorts of stuff to bring it down. I had a small breakthrough with my hang on the back refugium. It reduced the nitrates by 10ppm. Not much, but it showed me I needed a larger refugium and that it worked. I put in a sump/refugium 50% the size of the display tank. I think with it running, it only holds around 40% or so. After a couple of weeks it made all the difference. Nitrates are almost 0.

I made mine myself and the guys on the boards advised me through the whole process. They know what they're talking about. I'm sure you can have a huge one made for you with bulkheads and the whole ball of wax. If you do, How about posting the pics? I'd like to see the size of a refugium for that tank!

Here's hoping my son hits it big and buys me one that size for my retirement.

Cool tank.
Tom

 

[mikelush78]

Not if your keeing an eye on all your levels... If you PH, Alk, Calcium are ok after water change then you can do a water change every day to fix a current problem in the aquarium... I have done it and people all over have recomended it...

But wow that tank is huge lol... Water Changes must cost a bit lol wow...

 

[BadRoma1]

go for 300 gallons of water change at once. just find out more about the water that the store will sell you. where it comes from, what the reading are. you don't want to buy the water that's made by the "Red Sea" because it's poluted with organics. start feeding your fish normaly, like every day, or twice a day, with different foods, add vitamins or some garlic into the food. i suspect that your fish has parasites, possibly flucks, because only fish is diying. you want to boost the fishes immune system, so they can resist to what's going on around them better. if you want to add more stuff, something i love to do, start adding marine vitamin C on daily bases untill fish stops dieing, also "Coral Vital" - The reef life energizer by Mark Weiss has been known to keep ich away from the fish and breaks down nitrates and makes them safer. in midtime, also watch your fish at feeding, see who eats and who just watches other fish eating, check the fishes bodies in different angels of the light and see if you can spot anything, check their breathing and behavior in overall. :joe: