Can't seem to keep nitrates down

[drawman]

Sounds like a good plan to me.
I just tested my nitrates this morning.... 4ppm!

That's awesome Jason! Hopefully I can mirror that soon.

I feel your pain...can be very frustrating. I initially started with bio-pellets and ceramic media blocks (I'm not convinced these blocks work for nitrate reduction...but I am convinced they aid in the battle against ammonia and nitrite.) I became discouraged with the bio-pellets and after stopping them, I switched over to NoPox and had awesome results.

However, I am also a fanatic about the cleanliness of my tank and with any carbon dosing you will start to see bacterial growth after a while and that drove me nuts. My Nitrates went to Zero, which was awesome. I have now stopped dosing and have an elevation at 4 PPM. I also run carbon/gfo and I also think additional CUC that consists of sand sifting snails (Nassarius) and a diamond watchman goby to help keep bed clean helps as well.

Another point of interest is Rod's food...I like it as well and still use it occasionally but when I did a comparative analysis of Rod's vs LRS, I noticed that the LRS was much cleaner...just some food for thought

Lately, I have been looking at the addition of Algae Turf Scrubbers but haven't pulled the trigger yet. My goal is to try to get away from any chemical additives if possible.

I'm curious what kind of comparative analysis did you do of Rod's vs LRS? Rod's is the only thing I've found locally in Minnesota unfortunately but it's good to know. I think being a fanatic about cleanliness is definitely a great thing! I'm leaving algae/ATS as a last resort with this tank. I know they're effective but I would like to do it another way in this setup first.

In my very very humble opinion, 11ml-12ml is way to conservative. Try 24ml, just for today.

Haha read at the end I accidentally followed your advice.

Sorry was out for the weekend just responding now. I'm at 18ml a day for 50 gallons total water volume. I hit 33ml and wouldnt drop. Went to 40ml for a week and hit zero and then I backed off to 30 for a week then 22 and now 18.

Oh wow that's quite a bit. My goal will be to get to a maintenance dose and I can drop levels with big water changes. I don't want to ride the system too hard. Detectible nitrates at 2-5ppm would be great for me.

Any chance it is a problem with your test kit?

No as I do water changes I can pretty much calculate what I would expect the nitrate to be at and the Salifert kit is spot on. I haven't tested it with another kit to compare but I am pretty confident with the results. Also, algae growth is pretty much in line with the test kit values: when nitrates are down there is not much growth, when they're up things grow pretty quickly.

Oh yea, be sure to shake the **** out of those API nitrate tests

I'm using Salifert which I love.

I also use NOPOX in a smaller tank. It's the only thing that seems to work for me.

I think I just need to ramp up the -NP Pro some. Same idea it's just a long sugar I believe. I'm liking Aquaforest products and will stick with them for now.

I reduced my nitrates by building a homemade nitrate reactor, I used two spaghetti containers, I drilled a hole at the bottom and the top of both containers and used epoxy to secure the plastic fittings in the tube with silicone on the outside part of the fitting. I then purchased a small £5 adjustable pump with a max flow of 200lph. I connected this to the bottom of one of the containers, then the top fitting was connected to the bottom fitting of the second container and the top fitting had a hose exiting near the baffle of the sump. I filled the containers with 3litres of seachem de-nitrate and my nitrates exiting the reactor is 0ppm. each spaghetti container can hold 1.7l. my tank is 150g.

This is the spaghetti container I used, minus the spaghetti;

Seachem De-Nitrate does not need to be replaced, it just needs rinsing with salt water every now and then, but its important to have flow less than 200lph, I had to reduce mine down to 125lph, I could experiment and start rising but I'm happy where its at.

That's pretty awesome!

You skimmer is on the small side. I my 60 gallon I had a vertex omega 200i. The smallest I would run on your tank is the 150

Yeah if I could go back in time I would've gotten the 150 but as it's modded right now it's pulling some really good gunk. If my first round of measures don't get things into balance then I think I will be going Deltec.

I to was have an issue with nitrates 50+, I was dosing NP pro with very little results, by its self. Setup a reactor with a 1/4 dose of bio pellets at a slow tumble and in two weeks when the bactria kick in my nitrates dropped to 4 ppm red sea test. Last week I started to dose Pro bio S along with NP pro after learn both are supposed to be used together to reduce nutrients. I do have a sand bed and vacuum the sand periodically with water changes this also help export the nutrients. There is a new product coming out Life Bio Fil that might be the answer to exporting nutrients.

Glad you're having the success! I'm hoping the mix of Seachem matrix, Pro Bio S, and -NP Pro will be enough to do it in this tank.

Thanks for all the replies everyone. I feel much better about my plan going forward I think I was just getting too tentative with my changes.

Progress Update:
Yesterday I removed over half of my sand while doing a 20 gallon water change and I still pulled some pretty good junk along with it. It wasn't a terrible detritus trap as I had been vacuuming it quite heavily for some time. I think I will remove the rest next weekend with a water change. Now here is where my stupidity kicked in. I did the water change when the -NP Pro dosing pump was supposed to be going so I thought I'll shut it off and manually turn it on to compensate for the missed dose. I did that, while doing other things, and forgot to shut it off. Instead of dosing for about 5 1/2 minutes I dosed for a solid 32 minutes when I realized I had forgotten to shut it off. I figured that's a triple dose of what I would do in a day. So I got another 20 gallon water change in afterward just to be on the safe side. Idiot move that I'll never do again!

I'll try to get another nitrate test in soon so I can track parameters.

 

[SaleenCB]

Hi drawman...What I did was an experiment consisting of a 2 month time span of each product. I have a pretty standard husbandry and feeding routine that is fairly consistent, so I knew I would be able to control those factors...on days when I work, my wife was able to take care of the feedings while I still maintained husbandry tasks to prevent any skewing of results. For a 1 month time frame, I fed Rod's alone and compared results to another month when I fed LRS alone. During this time frame, you can physically observe increased clarity of the water column with LRS as opposed to Rod's and I did see a nitrate spike with the Rod's as well. Now is it possible that there could be other factors involved...of course it's saltwater (this could include anything ranging to the most minuscule factor such as there being something that Rod's changed when they mixed or how they mixed or froze their food for that lot number), but as I mentioned I was able to copy my normal routines and the only difference was the food.

 

[jlanger]

That's awesome Jason! Hopefully I can mirror that soon.

Good luck with your sand bed exchange!
I hope you also have positive results.

I'm curious what kind of comparative analysis did you do of Rod's vs LRS? Rod's is the only thing I've found locally in Minnesota unfortunately but it's good to know. I think being a fanatic about cleanliness is definitely a great thing!

More importantly, there are some resources for the LRS Frenzy foods in The Cities.
You can find it at AWOF (Richfield) and New Wave Aquaria (Plymouth). I've been making the long trek to NWA for quite a while now as LRS has by far the best frozen food blends available.
Last weekend, I convinced Stephen at AcanLord (Hudson) to start carrying the foods. He spoke to Larry last week and should have his first order coming in this week.

 

[drawman]

Good luck with your sand bed exchange!
I hope you also have positive results.



More importantly, there are some resources for the LRS Frenzy foods in The Cities.
You can find it at AWOF (Richfield) and New Wave Aquaria (Plymouth). I've been making the long trek to NWA for quite a while now as LRS has by far the best frozen food blends available.
Last weekend, I convinced Stephen at AcanLord (Hudson) to start carrying the foods. He spoke to Larry last week and should have his first order coming in this week.

I did not know that thanks Jason! It would be fun to give LRS a try. I generally go to SWE because of location but maybe it will give me the excuse to make the journey to NWA every once in a while.

 

[Alfrareef]

Man!!! You are my hero as WCs matters. Gallons after gallons...
Now for real, I would test it with other test kit or at my LFS and clean very well every container (sump, filters and hoses included) used for water.

Just out of curiosity how are the tank PO4 values?

Rgds and good luck.

 

[drawman]

Man!!! You are my hero as WCs matters. Gallons after gallons...
Now for real, I would test it with other test kit or at my LFS and clean very well every container (sump, filters and hoses included) used for water.

Just out of curiosity how are the tank PO4 values?

Rgds and good luck.

Ha yes I've done wayyyy more gallons than I care too it's definitely not a good long term solution.

I haven't been testing phosphate regularly unfortunately. Mostly because I'm not a huge fan of the Hanna low range Checker and haven't forked out the money for the kit I want, the Elos Professional PO4. One of these days I will get around to it. I do not run GFO or have any other means of PO4 removal other than the giant water changes I'm doing.

I actually have it planned to clean out the little bit of detritus that has accumulated in my overflow with the next change this weekend. Other than that I do a pretty good job of keeping detritus out of the sump.

Progress Update:
I tested my nitrates today and it was somewhere between 5 and 10ppm (I will say 8ppm) so I feel that will be a great baseline for me to measure against.

 

[drawman]

Progress Update:
Tested nitrates just now and I'm at a solid 10ppm. It looks like the weekly nitrate increase is reduced which is awesome! I plan to do another WC this weekend and will try to remove more of the sandbed as well as some detritus from the overflow.

If I have time I may look into picking up some LRS food this weekend just to see the difference.

Currently I'm at 13mL/day of -NP Pro and will likely increase to 14mL/day at some point this weekend.

On another note I've thought about going with Tropic Eden Reefflakes for sand. The grain size is quite a bit larger and I think one 30lb bag would be more than enough. I don't want to go BB too long as light is now leaking down into my sump and I see a few aiptasia taking hold there :mad:

 

[bif24701]

I like larger grain size sand, doesn't blow around as easily

 

[drawman]

Progress Update:
Tested my nitrates again today and I'm somewhere between 10 and 25ppm so I've had a little bit of a jump. I can always see the increase in algae growth with that jump above 10ppm but things are obviously a lot better than they used to be. I'm still doing 20 gallon water changes every weekend. At some point I would love to get down to 10 gallon weekly water changes once things stabilize...

I just increased my -NP Pro dose to 16mL/day today.

 

[Scott.h]

I don't like to heavily carbon dose. It tends to leave a nasty residue. I dose 2 ml a day in 85 gal of volume, and none in the other tanks. This manages less then 10, so with my 2 bucket weekly water change it ends up around 5. I have a good sized eel which is why I have the need.

I'm not sure if you can scrap the sump for a fuge, but having gone through this, this is what I did. Started hand feeding my fish to stop the waste and make sure everyone ate. I moved some rock and heavily vacuumed. After the sand was cleaned weekly I started agitating the sand daily with a stick. I made sure I had spacing my in rocks and adjusted powerheads to flow better through the rocks. I custom built a fuge out of a 50 aquarium. Live sand in the fuge, 3 different types of macro algae. I bought a BRS 2 stage reactor with pump and started to use gfo. I started washing my sock filters at least once a week. I added a marine pure block in with the algae. Which I have to say was well worth the money. I used all my old bio beads from my original wet dry but submersed them in the first sump chamber. And lastly I started carbon dosing small amounts 2x a day. This happened over several months and took months to get the results but combined, works awesome. I still hand feed and rarely vacuum now.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I don't like to heavily carbon dose. It tends to leave a nasty residue. I dose 2 ml a day in 85 gal of volume, and none in the other tanks. This manages less then 10, so with my 2 bucket weekly water change it ends up around 5. I have a good sized eel which is why I have the need.
.

Residue? You mean bacteria that you can see?

 

[Myka]

A few thoughts...

In the spring when "everyone" on this side of the pond started using Aquaforest there was a whole whack of people getting 50 ppm NO3 readings from Salifert test kits in tanks that certainly didn't look like they contained 50 ppm NO3. "We" were wondering if there was some sort of interference with the test kits. I never saw this happen in my tank using Aquaforest, but I didn't really use NP Pro, and maybe that's where the issue was. I'm not sure if there was ever a real conclusion to this 50 ppm NO3 reading.

A second thought, did you start with dry rock? I've seen a lot of tanks started with dry rock struggle with NO3 for the first 12-18 months. Not every tank, but certainly a good portion. I assume this is probably because it takes time for dry rock to develop anaerobic bacteria populations for denitrification. It seems like many products on the market that use anaerobic bacteria for N and P reduction can develop these anaerobic populations quite quickly, though maybe this is because of media size - biopellets for carbon dosing, and products like Siporax are certainly much smaller than a chunk of dry rock. Maybe adding some Siporax to the sump (particularly in a low flow reactor to encourage an anaerobic zone) would help reduce N and P until the dry rock can catch up.

Lastly, are you using GFO or some other phosphate reducing media? If you bottom out PO4 to absolute zero, then NO3 will have a tendency to rise since the anaerobic bacteria require NO3, PO4, and organic carbon in order to survive. So if you are missing any one of these 3 ingredients, the other 2 may rise. So a lack of PO4 could cause NO3 to rise, just as a lack of NO3 could cause PO4 to rise. You can do all the organic carbon dosing your little heart desires, and if there is no PO4 you won't see significant NO3 reduction. This is why manufacturers don't recommend using GFO with carbon dosing. It's easier to "not recommend" it, than to explain this.

 

[Scott.h]

Residue? You mean bacteria that you can see?

Yes exactly. It's that white-ish color slimy residue. I dose it at the exit chamber of the fuge before the return pump chamber. It is what it is.. I understand why, I'm just a little ocd with keeping stuff clean, even my fuge/sump, so I do everything I can before I get to carbon dosing.

 

[clownsrcool]

I'm also having issues with nitrates that won't go down at all. Tank has been set up for 6 months now. It was started with legit live rock shipped in water.

From day one I have had nitrate readings in excess of 50ppm. I would get different results with the 4 test kits I bought. API tested the highest and would read 80 regularly. Salifert was next and has read 50 since day one and hasn't changed. Now I just got Red Sea pro and am testing at 16.

What I have tried so far are large water changes. Vinegar dosing of 50ml per day. Started the Biodigiest bacteria program and did (2) major initial doses of 10x the recommended rates at first and then weekly maintenance dosing. I also ran through a large bottle of Dr Tims waste away.

Red Sea seems to just now be showing a slight drop in nitrates but salifert and others are holding level at 50+. I don't know which to beleive but the fact that it hasn't dropped at all makes me want to beleive the Red Sea results over salifert. I just can't see how it wouldn't have moved at all this whole time.

I have a 225g system, run GFO, chaeto, and only have (6) small fish so my bio load is very small.

 

[bif24701]

Yes exactly. It's that white-ish color slimy residue. I dose it at the exit chamber of the fuge before the return pump chamber. It is what it is.. I understand why, I'm just a little ocd with keeping stuff clean, even my fuge/sump, so I do everything I can before I get to carbon dosing.

With good skimming it should clear its self up in a day or two.

Overdosing carbon when nitrates are very high has extreme good benefits when I have done it. Everything seems to get a boost including the SPS.

 

[LandenB]

I was about to buy some Rods food and was told by the store that it is a pretty dirty food source. I don't know from experience but maybe try feeding something else?

 

[Scott.h]

With good skimming it should clear its self up in a day or two.

Overdosing carbon when nitrates are very high has extreme good benefits when I have done it. Everything seems to get a boost including the SPS.

It's was in my sump with somewhat stagnate water. None the less no issues now. 2ccs a day in 85 gal of water, a 2 bucket a week water change and nitrates about 5.. Just where I want them. Ninety nine problems and the fish ain't one.

 

[Scott.h]

I'm also having issues with nitrates that won't go down at all. Tank has been set up for 6 months now. It was started with legit live rock shipped in water.

From day one I have had nitrate readings in excess of 50ppm. I would get different results with the 4 test kits I bought. API tested the highest and would read 80 regularly. Salifert was next and has read 50 since day one and hasn't changed. Now I just got Red Sea pro and am testing at 16.

What I have tried so far are large water changes. Vinegar dosing of 50ml per day. Started the Biodigiest bacteria program and did (2) major initial doses of 10x the recommended rates at first and then weekly maintenance dosing. I also ran through a large bottle of Dr Tims waste away.

Red Sea seems to just now be showing a slight drop in nitrates but salifert and others are holding level at 50+. I don't know which to beleive but the fact that it hasn't dropped at all makes me want to beleive the Red Sea results over salifert. I just can't see how it wouldn't have moved at all this whole time.

I have a 225g system, run GFO, chaeto, and only have (6) small fish so my bio load is very small.

I know it's frustrating but there is a reasonable cause, and a cure. Just think about it practically and use process of elimination. And time. Also with the exception of being an eye sore with the algae, it's probably not hurting anything in the meantime. I know when I got mine to zero my corals started looking bad, so I reversed a bit

 

[Myka]

I'm also having issues with nitrates that won't go down at all. Tank has been set up for 6 months now. It was started with legit live rock shipped in water.

From day one I have had nitrate readings in excess of 50ppm. I would get different results with the 4 test kits I bought. API tested the highest and would read 80 regularly. Salifert was next and has read 50 since day one and hasn't changed. Now I just got Red Sea pro and am testing at 16.

What I have tried so far are large water changes. Vinegar dosing of 50ml per day. Started the Biodigiest bacteria program and did (2) major initial doses of 10x the recommended rates at first and then weekly maintenance dosing. I also ran through a large bottle of Dr Tims waste away.

Red Sea seems to just now be showing a slight drop in nitrates but salifert and others are holding level at 50+. I don't know which to beleive but the fact that it hasn't dropped at all makes me want to beleive the Red Sea results over salifert. I just can't see how it wouldn't have moved at all this whole time.

I have a 225g system, run GFO, chaeto, and only have (6) small fish so my bio load is very small.

Is there nuisance algae in the tank? What is PO4 at? Did you read my post above?

 

[clownsrcool]

Po4 is at .06 and there is diatoms in sand bed but no algae really at all.