Nitrate problems despite everything I've tried.

VLSARK

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My aquarium nitrates increase despite everything I am doing. I have a 20 gallon tank with a 20 gallon sump filled with biomedia, 5 gallon bucket filled with pumice with water going through at 50 Gph, 200ml purigen, carbon, 15 oz. Cobalt total nitrate, fluidized sand bed filter v2 bio600f, skimmer eheim hang on back for 100g+ tank, biopellet reactor, deep sand bed with sifting starfish, fluval 306, aquaclear 30, plus overflow/filter box from fluval 32 gallon glued inside 20. I add 100ml instant ocean nitrate reducer weekly, and yesterday added 7.5oz cobalt total nitrate resin. I fed about 20g tilapia yesterday after doing 7g water change with nitrate at 40ppm. Now they are at 60ppm. Despite 7g changes every other day I cannot keep nitrate under control at all. Nothing is eating and I'm surprised stuff hasn't died long ago. Can anyone see what I am doing wrong. The more I try the worse it gets. It's been running for 8+ months and never been this bad.

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VLSARK

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Sometimes simpler is better. Good suggestions were to feed less and simplify filtration and you are going option C and adding fluidized sand bed and a sulfur reactor.

Those things may marginally help, but realistically unless they are massively oversized i doubt any benefit would be noticeable if you keep pouring buckets of food in.
I have time lapse images of 1 of my urchins eating a 2 inch fish within 30 minutes, idk how I can feed less without losing all my star polyp again.
 
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VLSARK

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I would just give em back to the store if they cannot be sustained in your tank, i mean you work there so it shouldnt be an issue. Your feeding way too much and also probably want to take out the cannister filters. I get liking filtration and I built my own too but its good to simplify things. imo take out the 5 gallon bucket, fluidized sand, the two cannister filters, aquaclear filter and hob filter and just run a sump, protein skimmer and biopellets
6 green damsels, 2 Mollies, and I forgot, 1x 6 line wrasse. I use ro/di. The bucket is just an extension of the sump since I cannot fit in all the bio media. The aquaclear and canister are really just to pass water through the phosguard, purigen, carbon, and nitrate removal resins. If i get rid of the filters should i just throw the stuff in them into the sump, do you think?
 
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VLSARK

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Well, I know what I am doing wrong. I guess I should have been more specific and said does anyone see what I'm doing wrong in terms of nitrate removal, not the tank in general. Does anyone have ideas on how to increase nitrate removal? Without increasing filtration size too much? I'm already ticking people off by having 36 tanks, so I'm trying to make this pretty compact.
 
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dedragon

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yes media can be put into the sump as long as flow is ok. sump water level looks extremely high though. I use a 20 gallon sump on an 80 gallon tank with a 7-8" water height. Best to have 1 tank that looks amazing than to run multiple tanks. If they are doing fine i do suggest downsizing a bit and taking the inhabitants of this tank and putting them in the others, 36 tanks might be a bit much.
 
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Brady4000

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Ok I finished reading through all post.

Cons
1-Your unwilling to lower stock.
2-Your unwilling to feed less.
3-Large amount of Bio Media

= Extremely high nitrates.

Your whole setup kinda reminds me of a wet dry sump with that much bio media. ($150 worth). You should do some research on how it just increases nitrates. Aka “nitrate factory” lol.

Pros
1-50lb of live rock in 40g of water
2-Since you don’t have ammonia your LR is keeping up
3-Large Skimmer
4-20g Sump

If it was me. I would simplify the sump. (Like other post have said)

1-Slowly remove the bio media (check for ammonia when doing this)
2- Build a large refugium in your 20g, let it grow till you see nitrates drop. Start off with ALOT, 5-10 cups chaeto. If your scared of introducing pest. I have successfully dipped 5cups of chaeto in Coral RX for 20 mins, then tossed it in fresh RO water for 20 mins, then rinsed it out with saltwater. That was after it spent 3 days in the mail. Stuff is hardy.
3-keep skimmer
4-Add filter socks to the intake of the sump. 4 would be nice, get the ones you can wash. Bleach only in the washer machine.
5- Use brightwell chaeto gro, this will help the chaeto drop nitrates by growing.
6- keep you carbon, I like chemi pure blue.

Hope this helps.

 
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vetteguy53081

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Well, I know what I am doing wrong. I guess I should have been more specific and said does anyone see what I'm doing wrong in terms of nitrate removal, not the tank in general. Does anyone have ideas on how to increase nitrate removal? Without increasing filtration size too much? I'm already ticking people off by having 36 tanks, so I'm trying to make this pretty compact.
you can add chemipure elite to reduce the nitrate however it seems all the equipment are alternatives and not solutions to what is transpiring. the nicest way to say it is, that this tank is built on impulse and I cant believe your very boss is not guiding you and saying" Hey, not yet".
Acclimation and and cycling is a waiting process and must be excercised. In many cases, the longer you wait, is the more successful your system become)
Heck, one of my tanks is a 660g and I put something new in maybe every 2-3 months.
 
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TexanCanuck

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At the risk of piling on here, I don't think all that equipment is doing you any favors.

As a few folks have needed here, I think a "back to basics" approach might be a good start. Removing all of the equipment other than your filter socks, a skimmer and perhaps a single reactor for charcoal will make your life a lot easier. Stop the carbon dosing or any of the other additives. I too would suction out a large portion of the deep sand bed to remove trapped detritus.

However, I also think you should increase the flow rate through your sump - 50gph for a 20g display seems low. I would target at least 100gph.

How often are you changing your filter socks? You might want to increase the frequency (perhaps every 3 days) for a few weeks.

Then I would float some Chaeto in the sump and give it a light.

Then perform a series of small water changes every few days until you bring your nitrates down, and then switch to weekly 10% water changes.

Together with reducing your feed you should get back under control pretty quickly.

In summary, there are three steps to follow:

1) Don't add nitrates to your tank ... that means (A) using RODI to make sure you're not adding them through your water changes and ATO, (B) not over-feeding your tank with foods that are high in nitrates

2) Remove waste before it can break down into nitrates ... that means (A) changing your filter socks frequently, (B) running your protein skimmer properly tuned, and (C) occasional use of activated charcoal

3) Export the remaining nitrate ... that means (A) biological export through macroalgae, (B) water changes, and/or (C) de-nitrifying bacteria

In my limited experience, that last part - relying on de-nitrifying bacteria to control nitrates - is the least reliable method of them all.

Hope this helps.
 
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TexanCanuck

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OP - one more thing ... don't give up.

I applaud you for caring enough to want to provide the best possible home for your pets, and wanting to feed them as much as they want clearly shows how attached you are for them. That says a lot about you.

There's a lot of people here that can help.
 
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Rmckoy

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Essentially .
you have 40 gal of water minus the rocks , livestock etc .
changing 7 gal is less than 20%

so if you were to use water known to have 0 ppm nitrates , the best you will get is 20% less nitrates
That does not include the livestock or feedings that increase nutrients .

increase the volume or frequency of water changed
 
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Rmckoy

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You're tank doesn't sound grossly overpopulated. If I'm counting right you have 3ish fish, a few starfish and some urchins.

Honestly your responses indicate you really like having a massive, elaborate, but completely ineffective filtration system and you're unwilling to reduce feeding because you're convinced that your grazing algae eaters need massive amounts of tilapia.

So your current plan is to dose vodka? Good luck.
Algae grazing on tilapia ?

tilapia is a cloned of genetically modified fish that has never seen a ocean ?
 
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Rmckoy

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Kiss comes to mind .
you have way too much happening for what should be a simple setup .

everything is working against you
Sand bucket ( similar to a swimming pool filter )
Uses sand to trap detritus ( debris ) which is eventually causing everything to decompose ( ammonia )

canister filter if not cleaned well frequently can also do the exact same by trapping ammonia from decomposition which in turn changed to nitrates .
To simplify everything I’d run a filter cloth in the sump , skimmer and return pump , that’s it
Larger water changes , and test weekly
 
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Kris 2020

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Tilapia is cheaper than seaweed and since I work at a company with less than 10 employees, my boss is allowed to pay me 2 levels under the minimum wage places like McDonald's have to, which he does, I haven't been able to get 40 hours since COVID, and I've been saving for over a year to get a vehicle after my last one was totaled, so price does have a big impact on me. So for now tilapia it is. Filtration works great for everything except anaerobic biological filtration. All these organisms are crammed into about 15 gallons of space and I am trying to cope the best I can. I also have doubts about the vodka, but I'll try most anything at this point.
If you can afford to dose vodka, you can afford decent food and ditch the tilapia. I don’t even eat tilapia, it’s garbage fish.
 
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Rmckoy

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If you can afford to dose vodka, you can afford decent food and ditch the tilapia. I don’t even eat tilapia, it’s garbage fish.
It’s not even real fish !!!

before carbon dosing , I’d recommend purchasing a decent skimmer , getting rid of the sand bucket and not feed tilapia .
what algae eating species will eat meat is beyond me .
 
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CycloneStar

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I think you're feeding too much. 20 grams of tilapia contains about 5 grams of protein, which is about 14% by weight nitrogen. This corresponds to about 730 mg of ammonia that will generate about 2700 mg of nitrate (nitrate weighs 3.7x that of ammonia). Your tank and sump are about 30 gallons or 111 Liters (I subtracted 10 gallons because of your deep sand bed and ceramics and reactors). The tilapia will raise your nitrate levels by 2700 mg/111 L = 24 mg/L = 24 ppm. This is very close to your observed 20 ppm increase.

I would dramatically decrease feeding. I don't think the cobalt total nitrate resin is doing anything either as anion exchange resins cannot work in the presence of high chloride concentrations. These resins are useful in freshwater, but not saltwater despite the manufacturer claims.
What he said. Lol
 
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tamanning

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A deep sand bed in a 20g system.... I run a deep sand bed but my display is 75g . How old is your sand bed? Is your clean up crew taking care of it? if not your sand bed may be your problem. As stated by many of the others you have some serious overkill going on. It seems like you are trying to complete the nitrogen cycle but you may have gone to far on one side and it's causing you problems on the other.
 
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tamanning

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It is grossly overpopulated. Green damsels, green serpent star, 3 inch molly, banded serpent star, 2x maxi mini, 3x rock flower, 2x astropyga radiata(exotic reef exports was supposed to send asthenosoma varium but dont know their urchins), 1x 6c green carpet anemone, live rock, sand sifting starfish, star polyp, zoanthids of some sort, 1x red mushroom, 5x ball anemones(I know not anemones, but I like anyway), purple pincushion urchin.
Holy crap!! you have all of that in a 20 gallon? You really need a bigger tank or reduce your population. That sounds like having 40 relatives move in to a small apartment.
 
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Brady4000

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@Dragonsreef
Kinda think this thread is dead. Was following along to hopefully see the outcome. But the OP @VLSARK has not made a post anywhere since March 6th.

Hopefully I am wrong, and a full update is coming soon lol.
 
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