My Nitrate battle... Help

[Marvollo]

Dealing with a nitrate battle in my 125 mixed reef.

Current parameters
Salinity 1.025
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 50-100 on my new salifert kit. Have an api kit on the way as a reference
Alk 7
Ph 7.8
Temp 78
Phosphate 0.60

100+ lbs of man made and live rock mix
System has been running for about 2 years
About 2-3 inches of sand- no sand sifters
2 - 30 gallon sumps connected. 1 refugium the other for my curve 7 skimmer, heater, and return. I try and only do water changes once a month at 25%

flow with 2 jebao scp 150 crossflow pumps

Live stock-
3 large tangs
Large foxface
4 chromis
1 clown
1 six line wrasse
1 cleaner wrasse
1 anthias

Free Cleaning crew
Asterina star fish and bristleworms

Feeding:
One 5”x5” nori sheet daily
Light formula one and 2 flake feedings daily
Frozen food once every 3 days

My fish are all fat and happy. Would like to keep the feeding the same as a goal.


Long story short had a few fish disappear and lost most of my corals about 9 months ago. Possible due to high phosphate and nitrate spike. Also a major flatworm invasion that I treated 3x to finally get under control.

Completed larger water changes as I noticed sps die off. Added bio pellet reactor about 3 months ago with a heavy dose of dr Tim’s nitrifying bacteria. Started dosing vibrant bi-weekly at the same time. Seems to make no difference with nitrates. Killed my 6 large zebra snails and wiped out most of my macro algae- caulerpa. This actually made my nitrates worse after losing the macro algae.


Maybe my vibrant dose is too low? Dosing at level for 125 gallons as a guess of live rock and sand water displacement.

Have used phosphate rx with 2 doses over the past 30 days at a 50% dose. It definitely stressed out my fish each time.

I don’t run filter socks. Maybe I should at drain for organic control?

Considering
N03 bricks in sump
Silver denitrator
Heavier vibrant dosing
Just move to vodka dosing

I am open to other ideas.

 

[HuduVudu]

What do you do for calcium and alkalinity?

 

[nereefpat]

Does Vibrant do anything for lowering nitrates? I was thinking it was just for killing algae.

I would try vodka dosing. It's really easy to do, and lots of folks have success with it. That, and your rock and sand eventually maturing, should get you closer to the <20 ppm nitrate range. If that doesn't work, then going with drastic measures like a sulfur denitrator or a remote deep sand bed will certainly work.

 

[Ippyroy]

If you don't have an algae issue in your tank, I wouldn't worry yet. I have a fuge with chaeto and it lowered my NO3 and is holding it steady.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

The vibrant may be killing off pest algae causing the nutrients. Also, I would think your fish died from toxins from a mass influx of dead coral maybe? I can't imagine your nutrients being so high it killed your fish.

 

[Marvollo]

What do you do for calcium and alkalinity?

As of now, nothing. Only corals left are zoanthids, and some leathers. Calcium stays steady at 420, alk has dropped a bit after the phos rx.

 

[Marvollo]

Does Vibrant do anything for lowering nitrates? I was thinking it was just for killing algae.

I would try vodka dosing. It's really easy to do, and lots of folks have success with it. That, and your rock and sand eventually maturing, should get you closer to the <20 ppm nitrate range. If that doesn't work, then going with drastic measures like a sulfur denitrator or a remote deep sand bed will certainly work.

vibrant is cultured bacteria and vinegar- so it’s a form of carbon dosing. I was hoping between the 2 it would build bacteria to lower nitrates.

 

[Marvollo]

The vibrant may be killing off pest algae causing the nutrients. Also, I would think your fish died from toxins from a mass influx of dead coral maybe? I can't imagine your nutrients being so high it killed your fish.

maybe it killed my pest and macro causing the die off and spike. Now that I lost my macro, my tank bacteria is probably struggling to break down the nitrates.

 

[HuduVudu]

As of now, nothing. Only corals left are zoanthids, and some leathers. Calcium stays steady at 420, alk has dropped a bit after the phos rx.

What did you do before all of this?

 

[Marvollo]

What did you do before all of this?

refugium was growing caulerpa super fast, everything was balanced. Lost a few fish, nitrate spiked, tried vibrant with spiked nitrates and Minor algae bloom.

 

[92Miata]

Vibrant is a substantial part of your problem now. I'd stop dosing it. Vibrant is great for those situations where nutrients are under control but algae is still hanging around.

Algae is a sign of nutrient imbalance - hair algae grows and absorbs that excess nutrient and puts things back into balance. When you kill the hair algae in the tank - you just dump a whole bunch of nitrate and phosphate back in the tank. Treat hair algae like macro - physically remove it - that way the nutrients it absorbed are gone from the tank.

Get that fuge up and running again -if it wasn't keeping up before (it sounds that way ) - upgrade the lighting on it. Skim wet. Do some big water changes. You need higher nutrient export until you get back to having a lot of corals and those corals can consume ammonia and phosphates.

 

[1ByLand2BySea]

Dealing with a nitrate battle in my 125 mixed reef.

Current parameters
Salinity 1.025
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 50-100 on my new salifert kit. Have an api kit on the way as a reference
Alk 7
Ph 7.8
Temp 78
Phosphate 0.60

100+ lbs of man made and live rock mix
System has been running for about 2 years
About 2-3 inches of sand- no sand sifters
2 - 30 gallon sumps connected. 1 refugium the other for my curve 7 skimmer, heater, and return. I try and only do water changes once a month at 25%

flow with 2 jebao scp 150 crossflow pumps

Live stock-
3 large tangs
Large foxface
4 chromis
1 clown
1 six line wrasse
1 cleaner wrasse
1 anthias

Free Cleaning crew
Asterina star fish and bristleworms

Feeding:
One 5”x5” nori sheet daily
Light formula one and 2 flake feedings daily
Frozen food once every 3 days

My fish are all fat and happy. Would like to keep the feeding the same as a goal.


Long story short had a few fish disappear and lost most of my corals about 9 months ago. Possible due to high phosphate and nitrate spike. Also a major flatworm invasion that I treated 3x to finally get under control.

Completed larger water changes as I noticed sps die off. Added bio pellet reactor about 3 months ago with a heavy dose of dr Tim’s nitrifying bacteria. Started dosing vibrant bi-weekly at the same time. Seems to make no difference with nitrates. Killed my 6 large zebra snails and wiped out most of my macro algae- caulerpa. This actually made my nitrates worse after losing the macro algae.


Maybe my vibrant dose is too low? Dosing at level for 125 gallons as a guess of live rock and sand water displacement.

Have used phosphate rx with 2 doses over the past 30 days at a 50% dose. It definitely stressed out my fish each time.

I don’t run filter socks. Maybe I should at drain for organic control?

Considering
N03 bricks in sump
Silver denitrator
Heavier vibrant dosing
Just move to vodka dosing

I am open to other ideas.

How old is your system?
What the is the maintenance schedule for your tank and what do you do for it?

 

[HuduVudu]

refugium was growing caulerpa super fast, everything was balanced. Lost a few fish, nitrate spiked, tried vibrant with spiked nitrates and Minor algae bloom.

Did you dose for calcium and alkalinity before?

 

[Marvollo]

Updates
Dosed microbacter7 for 3 weeks as directions showed
Added 2 ceramic bio blocks

Have been vodka dosing for 3 weeks now. Currently at 2.7 ml daily. Upping by .5 weekly
Added a ball of chaeto about 3 weeks ago with new acke growth light. Chaeto is dark green and slowly growing. My caulerpa is slowly recovering. I have tons of feather worms in their too. Unfortunately flatworms are coming back but I will get them later.
Feeding has been cut back to one 5x5 piece of nori daily for the tangs, and a few pinches of flakes for the smaller fish.


nitrates are still at 50+ according to two new test kits.

I have noticed some red slime Algae that is thicker than any cyano I have seen on my return heads.

I am guessing next steps should be a few large water changes over the next 2 weeks. That’s the one thing I was hoping to avoid as it doesn’t seem like a great way to control nitrates.