Help lowering nitrates and phophates

[Ryannewell1]

40g cube salt 10-15g sump underneath
Last measurements where
Ph 8.14
Salinty 1.025
Nitrate 29.4
Phosphate .88
Alk 7.58
Ca 446
Mag 1336
Fish
Yellow tang, about 3-4 inches
6 line wrasse, about 4 inches
Tiger Watchman goby, 2-3 inches
Grey goby 2-3 inchs
2 Firefish 1-2 inches
Fire shrimp
I have live rock finished a cycle about 1 1/2 month ago. Have some green hair algae on rocks. Lots of CUC in tank. I change 5g salt every sunday. And up until this week i would throw in a 15g salt change midweek to try and lower nitrates and Phosphates. I am running polypads in a cup in sump, and chemiblue elite in sump. I run a protein skimmer 24/7 and a uv light. Also growing chaeto. I clean my filters weekly aswell. If i missed anything important just ask!

 

[vetteguy53081]

Keep it simple- add a pouch of chemipure blue or elite. Will lower, keep it in check and polish your water

 

[Ryannewell1]

Alrdy am!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

There are loads of ways to deal with nitrate and phosphate:

Phosphate In The Reef Aquarium
https://www.reef2reef.com/blog/?p=3184

Nitrate in the Reef Aquarium - REEFEDITION

 

[G Santana]

My $30 DIY scrubber ate all my nitrates fast, phosphates started to drop as well.

 

[reddevilant]

I was in the same boat a few months ago. A few weeks of dosing brightwell's microbacter7 worked wonders for me. You did miss something important though in your list of inhabitants......you didn't list Groot! Lol

 

[FindingCoral]

I currently have a 40ppm Nitrate Reading and cannot seem to get it down. I hear water changes are best but I do 20% water changes every 2 weeks. Still no help. Perhaps bigger qty changes?

 

[Gedxin]

What's your feeding regiment?

 

[FindingCoral]

What's your feeding regiment?

2 times a day.

 

[Zhubbell]

I’m not an expert, but been going through the same thing. Been getting close to where I want to be, so I’ll share some things that I’ve come up with that have helped me:
Feeding: over feeding frozen foods tends to raise nitrates, feeding dry foods (reef roids, coral frenzy, Flakes, pellets), raises phosphate. Right now both are high in your tank, but this I found helpful while I was making my way to better nutrient levels, and I’ve have high nitrates but low phosphates for example, and I didn’t want to under feed my fish too much, so I went heavy on Flake for a few days.
I also would say that starting to dose microbacter7 and Marine biofuel together made a huge difference for me - but you run a Uz sterilizer, which I’ve never done. Will you uv just kill the microbacter? Doesn’t it kill phyto too? I dno - but my personal feeling is they kill way more good then than prevent bad (UV Sterilizer), but I’m also way more into coral than I am fish, lol.
Watch the brs video on these chems and how they work, very interesting stuff.
I also am not familiar with those pads you’re using, but I’m guessing that’s essentially Carbon & gfo? If not those are important: seems to me Carbon primarily reduces nitrates, and GFO Primarily Phosphates.
Another surprisingly helpful thing I did was, I took a sample of my RO water directly from the outlet tubing of the RO, one sample of freshly mixed salt water that had been sitting in my reservoir for at least a day or Two, and my tank water, all at once.
In my case found that my ro out water was a touch high, so I knew I had to replace media, but the fresh mix was super high - which was remedied by a deep clean of my reservoir bucket.
The phosphates and ammonia (eventually nitrates) are getting in somewhere, so either the water or it something in the tank.
The last big thing that has been helping in my tank is “vacuuming”
My tanks a couple years old or at least a lot of sand and rock was.
I had a major crash a few months back when my son pulled a thermometer probe and I lost a bunch of fish and coral, pair of Hawaiian flame wrasses, gold torch, .. anyway, what I also realized was - there is a lot of detritus build up in the tank underneath the sand bed and the dead zones of rock work. So every week I deep clean like 10% of the tank and work my way through.
The amount of nitrates became so much more manageable as I’ve started addressing the source that is leaching them.

 

[jesspal]

Have you tested your ro water or freshly mixed salt water for nitrates and phosphates?

My current tank has had high phosphates but I’ve not had any issues dealing with algae. However I have run into cyano outbreak and unhappy corals as I chase the numbers. The tank looks decent in this pic and the phosphates are 0.6 or so.

 

[Zhubbell]

Also - that is very Little Rock - which means far far less surface area for bacteria to cultivate.
Which can be done, but, I’d be putting some BioBlocks by Brightwells or something similar in the sump.
Was it dead rock? From a supplier or from fb? Maybe there was a bunch of nutrients leached into the rock that are slowly leaching out.

 

[FindingCoral]

Have you tested your ro water or freshly mixed salt water for nitrates and phosphates?

My current tank has had high phosphates but I’ve not had any issues dealing with algae. However I have run into cyano outbreak and unhappy corals as I chase the numbers. The tank looks decent in this pic and the phosphates are 0.6 or so.

I have not tested my water source yet. I’ll probably do that today.