Hello fellow reefers !!
I’m sending out the bat signal here for some advice.
It sounds like a common problem but I am having a battle trying to lower my nitrates in my 22 gallon tank.
It’s been running for 6 months and I haven’t been able to lower my nitrates to below 20ppm. Below are my parameters. In an attempt to lower the nitrates I have recently installed an algae reactor. It’s been on for 4 days. No obvious cheato growth yet and also no nitrate removal from a recent test I carried out. I am using the Red Sea Nitrate test kit. Maybe I should try a kit from a different brand to make sure - any recommendations? My corals are doing great (apart from a leather finger coral) and so are my fish. Below is a list of my live stock. Any suggestions on what I can do or test are welcome. Perhaps I just need to be patient with the algae reactor - I don’t know.
live stock:
Neon Green Cabbage
Finger coral white Polyp
Bam Bam Orange Zoanthids
Toxic green Ricordea florida
GSP
Superman Discosoma mushroom
True forest fire montipora digitata
parameters
Alk - 8.5
Ammonia - 0
Calcium - 480 (has been rising lately)
Nitrate - between 20 & 50
Nitrite - 0
Ph - 8.2
Phosphate - 0.2
Salinity - 1.026
Temp - 76
I’m sending out the bat signal here for some advice.
It sounds like a common problem but I am having a battle trying to lower my nitrates in my 22 gallon tank.
It’s been running for 6 months and I haven’t been able to lower my nitrates to below 20ppm. Below are my parameters. In an attempt to lower the nitrates I have recently installed an algae reactor. It’s been on for 4 days. No obvious cheato growth yet and also no nitrate removal from a recent test I carried out. I am using the Red Sea Nitrate test kit. Maybe I should try a kit from a different brand to make sure - any recommendations? My corals are doing great (apart from a leather finger coral) and so are my fish. Below is a list of my live stock. Any suggestions on what I can do or test are welcome. Perhaps I just need to be patient with the algae reactor - I don’t know.
live stock:
Neon Green Cabbage
Finger coral white Polyp
Bam Bam Orange Zoanthids
Toxic green Ricordea florida
GSP
Superman Discosoma mushroom
True forest fire montipora digitata
parameters
Alk - 8.5
Ammonia - 0
Calcium - 480 (has been rising lately)
Nitrate - between 20 & 50
Nitrite - 0
Ph - 8.2
Phosphate - 0.2
Salinity - 1.026
Temp - 76