High Nitrate 66 normal phosphate .05

[ya_boii]

I would think that you might have an overstock problem. With a mature and properly stocked tank, nitrates should be a lot more manageable. Also, over feeding can cause an excess of nitrates without you being necessarily overstocked. Try cutting back feeding while you're dealing with the immediate problem, then play around with feeding less than you do now and see how that impacts your nitrogen levels.

 

[N11morales]

I would not assume denitrification blocks will do anything beneficial.

what about biopellets?

 

[N11morales]

I would think that you might have an overstock problem. With a mature and properly stocked tank, nitrates should be a lot more manageable. Also, over feeding can cause an excess of nitrates without you being necessarily overstocked. Try cutting back feeding while you're dealing with the immediate problem, then play around with feeding less than you do now and see how that impacts your nitrogen levels.

I have reduced feeding for 4 months now. Feed every other day a lot less frozen, and nori only 3 times a week.

Maybe overstocked I guess since I don't have many coral to uptake nitrate. I just know similar systems with WAY more fish and less filtration. I'll list my fish here. It's mainly small fish and 6 tangs roughly 3-5 inches each one.

7 Lyretail anthias
6 tangs: Gem, Purple, Desjardini, Maculiceps, Powder Blue, Orange Shoulder
2 yellow coris
three spot wrasse
adorned wrasse
cleaner wrasse
mccosker flasher wrasse
diamond goby
royal gramma
2 clownfish
midas blenny
longnose hawkfish

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

what about biopellets?

Those are effectively dosing organic carbon to drive bacterial growth and can work.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I have reduced feeding for 4 months now. Feed every other day a lot less frozen, and nori only 3 times a week.

Maybe overstocked I guess since I don't have many coral to uptake nitrate. I just know similar systems with WAY more fish and less filtration. I'll list my fish here. It's mainly small fish and 6 tangs roughly 3-5 inches each one.

7 Lyretail anthias
6 tangs: Gem, Purple, Desjardini, Maculiceps, Powder Blue, Orange Shoulder
2 yellow coris
three spot wrasse
adorned wrasse
cleaner wrasse
mccosker flasher wrasse
diamond goby
royal gramma
2 clownfish
midas blenny
longnose hawkfish

I don’t think reducing feeding of fish is a good plan from the fish perspective.

 

[N11morales]

I don’t think reducing feeding of fish is a good plan from the fish perspective.

i agree i haven't seen a huge improvement by reducing feeding. I started feeding more nori least 1 sheet a day. The tangs were starting to get aggressive with each other and looking skinnier. I am feeding very small amounts of mysis just making sure the anthias get at least something to eat.

 

[N11morales]

Those are effectively dosing organic carbon to drive bacterial growth and can work.

Biopellets need a special reactor? Could I put it in my media reactor? I have the BRS media reactor

 

[ya_boii]

I would think that you might have an overstock problem. With a mature and properly stocked tank, nitrates should be a lot more manageable. Also, over feeding can cause an excess of nitrates without you being necessarily overstocked. Try cutting back feeding while you're dealing with the immediate problem, then play around with feeding less than you do now and see how that impacts your nitrogen levels.

I have reduced feeding for 4 months now. Feed every other day a lot less frozen, and nori only 3 times a week.

Maybe overstocked I guess since I don't have many coral to uptake nitrate. I just know similar systems with WAY more fish and less filtration. I'll list my fish here. It's mainly small fish and 6 tangs roughly 3-5 inches each one.

7 Lyretail anthias
6 tangs: Gem, Purple, Desjardini, Maculiceps, Powder Blue, Orange Shoulder
2 yellow coris
three spot wrasse
adorned wrasse
cleaner wrasse
mccosker flasher wrasse
diamond goby
royal gramma
2 clownfish
midas blenny
longnose hawkfish

For a big ol' tank, that doesn't seem bad at all. I guess I'm just confused at what could be causing that much nitrogen to enter your tank in a week. To raise 7 ppm of nitrates in a week, you'd have to have added 1 ppm ammonia to start with. In a huge system (iirc yours was well over 200 gallons), thats a lot of ammonia or even nitrate. There's no way that your biological load is that heavy. I'm just trying to wrack my brain thinking about things that could cause that. You're using RO/DI water, yeah?

 

[N11morales]

For a big ol' tank, that doesn't seem bad at all. I guess I'm just confused at what could be causing that much nitrogen to enter your tank in a week. To raise 7 ppm of nitrates in a week, you'd have to have added 1 ppm ammonia to start with. In a huge system (iirc yours was well over 200 gallons), thats a lot of ammonia or even nitrate. There's no way that your biological load is that heavy. I'm just trying to wrack my brain thinking about things that could cause that. You're using RO/DI water, yeah?

Yeah I have a 7 stage ro/di filtration system. I use red sea blue bucket salt.

I did take out a huge foxface and rabbitfish. I thought it was bioload also. After removing them (been 5 months) I still have the exact same nitrate.

I redialed in my skimmer yesterday. Trying to make it produce more skim before it was taking 3 weeks or so to fill up. I think I got it dialed in correctly this time. Hoping this will help.

I wasn't having major issues with coral or anything until recently. I am starting to grow a lot of hair algae on my rockwork. Been manually trying to trim it down hoping my large cuc will take care of the rest. No luck so far.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Biopellets need a special reactor? Could I put it in my media reactor? I have the BRS media reactor

I have not tried to determine what sorts of settings work best, but I expect that can be used.

 

[N11morales]

Those are effectively dosing organic carbon to drive bacterial growth and can work.

Maybe I'll just try dosing Vodka or Vinegar instead. Should I just choose one and go with that or dose a mixture of both to reduce nitrate?

Does it just depend on individual systems? Maybe I start with Vodka dosing.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Maybe I'll just try dosing Vodka or Vinegar instead. Should I just choose one and go with that or dose a mixture of both to reduce nitrate?

Does it just depend on individual systems? Maybe I start with Vodka dosing.

I’d pick one, and if you have issues such as cyano,,you could switch to the other. I started with vodka, but switched to vinegar.

In my current tank I’m not using either as I actually dose N.

 

[BryanM]

yeah i just wasnt sure what inverts would eat the 1-2 inch strands of hair algae growing. Its not covering my full rocks. I did think phosphate was little low. How much phosphate should i add? It should be around .05-.08?

I would consider dosing phosphate while you're actively reducing nitrates.

While the standard seems to be .03-.06, there's definitely a growing group of us that like more. I'm in the .1-.3 camp myself, and my tank is .22 or so right now with everything very happy.

Considering the consequences of bottoming out either N or P, I tend to like a little more.

 

[N11morales]

I didn't think about this until now. Could high nitrate be caused by dead spots in my tank? I don't really see bad areas of dead spots, but I only have 2 nero 7's on my tank. They run about 20-35% speed on random mode. Could increasing the flow in my system towards the back of the tank make a difference?

 

[N11morales]

I don’t have a good picture to show where I have my pumps but here is this.
Green circles where I have my pumps now and the arrows is where I have small dead spots. If I turn up the pumps anymore I get sand blowing around.


This picture is like 11 months old. Just trying to show where I have the nero 7s

 

[N11morales]

Did another 15% water change this saturday. Nitrate went from 48.5 to 43.3. My friend had some nopox he had that he wasnt using. He got it a month ago. So been dosing that as recommended on bottle. Nitrates are now 33.5 as this morning.

Also dosed NeoPhosphate to try and raise my phosphates a little. Last I read was .03. I ran out of test kits so can't test daily. I only have 1 left. I have ordered more reagent should get here thursday.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I didn't think about this until now. Could high nitrate be caused by dead spots in my tank? I don't really see bad areas of dead spots, but I only have 2 nero 7's on my tank. They run about 20-35% speed on random mode. Could increasing the flow in my system towards the back of the tank make a difference?

I don't think low flow areas in a reef are a source of nitrate, except perhaps if particulates settle out that would otherwise be removed in some fashion.

 

[N11morales]

I don't think low flow areas in a reef are a source of nitrate, except perhaps if particulates settle out that would otherwise be removed in some fashion.

Yeah I do have a lot of scavengers in my system. I don't see like a build up on the sand from the small dead spots. I think they are controlling that well. I have hermits, brittle starfish, nassarius snails, and shrimps

I'm not sure I talked about it here, but I think i figured out one of my main big issues. I only had 1 reefmat 1200 hose. My tank has 2 drains though, So half my water or more was jsut going through my sump. Only being filtered by chaeto/skimmer.

I found an LFS that has extra reefmat hoses, so i was able to attach both drains onto my reefmat. So now all my water going into the drains is filtering through reefmat first.

It was rolling between 10-20" a day. Now its running 30-50" a day.

 

[N11morales]

I think this is going to solve my original problem. Plus I redialed in my skimmer. I think it’s too big for my system but it does pull more skim than it was before.

Nitrates are decreasing and raised phosphate a little. Ty everyone for the help. I’m gonna keep dosing nopox and keep up my water changes weekly. Would like to keep my nitrates between 15-20 if possible. That’s where my corals were the happiest.