High nitrates

pookie · Dec 11, 2024

Tldr: been fighting high nitrates for awhile now always been above 30ppm+ and want them to come down as coral don't look the greatest(specifically anemones). I have a 90 gallon display and a 20 gallon display both connected to a 40gal sump with a reefmat refugium and classic octo skimmer. For the life of me I can't get them to go down. I do 15% wc weekly and dose nopox very high. More explanation in the comments and some photos. Icp test from a week ago is also in pictures.

2nd part of this that isn't that important but may be linked. For my 20 gallon I have it so I have a strainer for the output for the sump. I'm guessing this is a bad design idea and maybe leading to lesser filtration than possible how would you go about fixing it to be proper? I don't want to buy a external box as they are expensive. Would putting a weir box on there fix the problem or no? Also whenever my pump stops when I turn it back on there is a chance it will not siphon.

pookie · Dec 11, 2024

Dosing: 35ml of fusion 1 and 2 (CA & ALK) 11ml of nopox and used to dose 20ml of chaetogro daily (has been reduced to 6ml) was having a hard time growing macroalage (using sea lettuce as My refugium)

Feeding: i feed about a cube between the 2 tanks some times a little more as I have 6 tanks total and feed everyone the same food. Half sheets of green and purple nori for the 20 and 90 gal. I hand feed my copperband a mussel everyday as he refused to eat anything else. I sit there 10 mins each day and try to get him to eat as much as possible then drop them and they get eaten by the other fish.

If you have any ideas or solutions please let me know!!! Thanks.

Mr. Mojo Rising · Dec 11, 2024

Can you advise what kind of filtration you have? You mentioned a refugium, what else? How many fish do you have?

pookie · Dec 11, 2024

Total is a lot, 4 clowns varying sizes, 1 anthias,1mandarin, sailfin (getting rid of soon), scopas tang, yellow tang, cleaner wrasse, copperband, 6 line wrasse, longnose hawkfish, 2 bangaii cards.

Filtration I have a reefmat 500, a classic octo skimmer (cant remember exactly what model) and refugium running sea lettuce (couldn't get chaeto to grow for the life of me!)

Also simmer always is acting weird and needs constant adjustment.

I also dose coral snow about every other day (vermitid) reef roids once a week and ab+ once a week

wickedxreef · Dec 11, 2024

I've read about numerous issues where NoPox is dropping phosphates to nothing, but Nitrates aren't dropping as much. What I've seen folks doing is dosing phosphates (food for Nitrates) and then slowly allows for Nitrates to drop while keeping N/P in balance. Right now your nitrates are out of balance. Coupled with adding chaeto/sea lettuce, you're starving out the corals at this point. I've seen my tank do the best when nitrates are 10-20ppm with phosphates .1-.15.

pookie · Dec 11, 2024

wickedxreef said:
I've read about numerous issues where NoPox is dropping phosphates to nothing, but Nitrates aren't dropping as much. What I've seen folks doing is dosing phosphates (food for Nitrates) and then slowly allows for Nitrates to drop while keeping N/P in balance. Right now your nitrates are out of balance. Coupled with adding chaeto/sea lettuce, you're starving out the corals at this point. I've seen my tank do the best when nitrates are 10-20ppm with phosphates .1-.15.

Here are my nitrates and phosphates trends i don't really bottom out on phosphates that much.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Dec 11, 2024

The high zinc may be more of an issue than the nitrate.

pookie · Dec 11, 2024

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
The high zinc may be more of an issue than the nitrate.

One issue at a time! Also notice my iron is sky high will be hopefully solving both of these soon. Anyway to remove zinc? Additive or something? Not too scared of thr zinc I've seen higher before. But still something I still want to solve!

Randy Holmes-Farley · Dec 11, 2024

pookie said:
One issue at a time! Also notice my iron is sky high will be hopefully solving both of these soon. Anyway to remove zinc? Additive or something? Not too scared of thr zinc I've seen higher before. But still something I still want to solve!

Iron isn’t hurting anything at that level. Water changes or a metal binder can reduce zinc.

saltyfins · Dec 11, 2024

I dose my tank daily with iron and zinc.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Dec 11, 2024

saltyfins said:
I dose my tank daily with iron and zinc.

So do many reefers, but his zinc is unusually high.

Science/G · Dec 11, 2024

This is supposed to remove excess metals. Julian Sprung's company FWIW

pookie · Dec 11, 2024

Well I don't want to remove all metals just the zinc if needed, I'll just stick to the water changes for now, although still not quite sure about the nitrates but my coral are looking a little stressed and anemones are losing color... randy! On a scale of dont worry about it at... to i need to do something about this second... would you say? And anything else you see that could be worrisome?