emergency help please
- Thread starter Weyou
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Have you tried stopping your bacteria dosing? That product also has a carbon source, which can feed denitrifying bacteria. When denitrification is occurring, some of the NO3 gets bounced back to NO2. I would also expect this to decline naturally, but perhaps stopping the additive could help you see a difference. Or maybe it interferes with the tests for all I know.
If you're adding some sort of planktonic bacterium with this supplement, and a carbon source, but then sending your water through a UV it will likely kill much of the planktonic bacteria, allowing the carbon to be used by denitrifiers in the substrate or other anoxic zones. Still, I'd expect to see some nitrate reduction. The UV itself would not cause an increase in nitrite though.
Personally, I think it would be helpful to do a larger water change. After a 30% change you should see a 30% reduction in these ions. If you do not, then the test kits (or combined with the additive) may be the issue. If you do see it drop, then it would be helpful to see how quickly it rises back up. Then we can look into your nitrogen inputs in the system. It primarily comes from the feed and sometimes from additives. It doesn't come from equipment.
If you're adding some sort of planktonic bacterium with this supplement, and a carbon source, but then sending your water through a UV it will likely kill much of the planktonic bacteria, allowing the carbon to be used by denitrifiers in the substrate or other anoxic zones. Still, I'd expect to see some nitrate reduction. The UV itself would not cause an increase in nitrite though.
Personally, I think it would be helpful to do a larger water change. After a 30% change you should see a 30% reduction in these ions. If you do not, then the test kits (or combined with the additive) may be the issue. If you do see it drop, then it would be helpful to see how quickly it rises back up. Then we can look into your nitrogen inputs in the system. It primarily comes from the feed and sometimes from additives. It doesn't come from equipment.
Weyou
Active Member
exhausted from all you say,
it's not heavy feeding; my only fish is a blenny
I got all the good equipment ( skimmer, wavemaker, etc...)
my taste kits are completely new by tropic Marin
the only change was to dose this and add an 18 watt UV system.
i never used carbon in my tank.
After No2 showing, I am also starting to dose bacteria.
i used tropic Marin salt, bacteria, test kits, and dosing.
it's not heavy feeding; my only fish is a blenny
I got all the good equipment ( skimmer, wavemaker, etc...)
my taste kits are completely new by tropic Marin
the only change was to dose this and add an 18 watt UV system.
i never used carbon in my tank.
After No2 showing, I am also starting to dose bacteria.
i used tropic Marin salt, bacteria, test kits, and dosing.
Weyou
Active Member
Sorry, i am not polite because i hate very my tank right now. Water change is completely garbage for this tank; it's never helped the tank. The tank is unique for me but got zero results yet.
No worries! I completely understand your frustration. Trust me - I have been there. I merely meant that a larger change, which should show a larger reduction, would be good as a diagnostic tool. Perhaps more, or larger water changes would help long-term too. 10% reduction per week won't do much for nitrate if you're adding that much nitrogen to the tank per week. In these cases, larger water changes (even if less frequent) might help. I do a water change on my main coral tank (20%) every 2-3 months. Other tanks that are newer, or have issues, I have to do more to restore balance though. I don't recommend you follow my schedule on my main tank. It is 90 gallons and has 6 fish. The biggest is an ocellaris clown.
You said you did not dose carbon, but the Tropic Marin product says it is a carbon source. It's just a thought, but I used many denitrification reactors (at the same time) for years at a large fish farm and I have witnessed them behave. They produce more nitrite, and take out more nitrate when more carbon is added. Most of the nitrate processed gasses off as nitrogen gas though. I once suggested it during someone's dissertation to explain their unknown source of nitrite (and loss of nitrate), and they were like "huh?". Even their professor backed them up, but I stopped myself from mentioning she was an author on a paper that said it. There are many papers on it, but I wasn't going to challenge the student during their dissertation. I think it was a Ph.D brain fart.
Yes. 1 bigger water change (~20-30%) could tell us more about what the problem is. Let us see what happens to your NO2 and NO3 after, and see how fast it goes up after.
Some kinds of carbon (element C) can be eaten by bacteria that also eat NO3. The Topic Marin you are using has carbon like this. This kind of carbon can remove NO3 as N2, but some NO2 is made too. More carbon, more NO2 made. If you stop the Tropic Marin product, it might lower the NO2. I am not certain though.
jccaclimber
Active Member
Echoing the above.
1. Perhaps you are mixing up dosing carbon (as an organic for bacteria to consume) and the use of activated carbon as a filtration material. Any time you add an organic (including food) you are dosing carbon in some way. Vinegar, alcohol (vodka) and things in bacterial supplements are common ways of doing this.
2. A large water change tells us a lot more than the small ones. I would go 50% because it is a small tank, but 30% would work too.
3. I would also stop dosing the bacterial supplement for now.
1. Perhaps you are mixing up dosing carbon (as an organic for bacteria to consume) and the use of activated carbon as a filtration material. Any time you add an organic (including food) you are dosing carbon in some way. Vinegar, alcohol (vodka) and things in bacterial supplements are common ways of doing this.
2. A large water change tells us a lot more than the small ones. I would go 50% because it is a small tank, but 30% would work too.
3. I would also stop dosing the bacterial supplement for now.
TriggersAmuck
Well-Known Member
I would add one other observation that I hope will put you a bit more at ease. Even though you are concerned that NO2 is rising up out of nowhere, it is not a high concentration and won't affect any of your livestock at that level. Also, since you don't have any invertebrates or corals, you don't need to immediately worry about the high level of NO3's as they won't affect your fish (at least not over the short term). So you have some time to try a few things to see how the tank responds, you don't need to rush and panic or make sudden adjustments which could be bad. Regards effectiveness of water changes, if you start with 100ppm of NO3 and do a 10% water change weekly, and you assume that you have 1ppm input into the tank weekly then you will have the weekly dilution ratio shown here (with the resulting NO3 in the middle column). You can see it would take months to take it down and you still wouldn't be anywhere near good coral parameters. Then look at the same series if you up the change to 50%, and you can see that the level converges on the 1ppm input in about 4 months. Up it further to 80% (if you prepare the water carefully) and your level converges on something very safe for corals within a matter of 4 or 5 weeks. If your weekly input is more than 1ppm, then of course these levels of convergence will be higher, with 50% changes leading to a final result very close to that weekly amount. So if it is 10ppm in weekly that will be where the final level converges. If you do 80% changes with 10ppm weekly input it will converge at 2.5ppm, very acceptable.
Randy Holmes-Farley
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If you have 2 ppm of nitrite, the nitrate reading is not accurate and should be ingored.
With many kits, 2 ppm of nitrite can read falsely as 200 ppm of nitrate.
Randy Holmes-Farley
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Think those names are messed up.
If the first is supposed to be ammonia (NH4) and the other two are correctly labeled, then nitrate is not reliable. The 1 ppm nitrite can read falsely as 100 ppm nitrate.
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