Solid Method of Nitrate Reduction
- Thread starter Drew1600
- Start date
- Tagged users None
The "solid method" is natural uptake by growing coral, or by denitrification inside of liverock. People using this method often have to dose nitrate & phosphate to keep their tanks happy.Greetings all,
"Keep your nitrates low" is the center of many posts and articles across the web, but few of these actually explain how..
I run 2 tanks, a 13.5 gallon mixed reef and a 6 gallon mixed reef. My nitrates are consistently 20-30 in the 13.5 gallon and 20-40 in the 6 gallon. Even after multiple water changes I am unable to bring the nitrates below 20. The 6 gallon has a single clown goby, sand, live rock, 2 mangroves, and some macro. Filtered by an AquaClear 50. The 13.5 has a Cascade 500 canister filter, a pair of clownfish, and a blue damsel. Live rock and sand also.
I would be happy to keep both tanks in the 15-20 range but lower would be preferable. I have tried Seachems denitrate with no luck and api nitrazorb with little luck so far. My phosphates test 0-0.25 via api test.
I wc the 13.5 weekly and the 6 gallon twice a week as of lately.
My question is, does anyone have a solid method of nitrate reduction? And if its carbon dosing, do you use a specific product? Thank you!!
The likely source of your nitrates is fish food. Cut back. Most people feed their fish 3 Tanksgiving Feasts each day. Cut the feasts into 3 parts and feed them 1 part/day and your fishes will thrive.
Uncle99
7500 Club Member
I don’t subscribe to the UL nutrients theme, rather, I keep them as low as the system will let me, but more than 1ppm.Greetings all,
"Keep your nitrates low" is the center of many posts and articles across the web, but few of these actually explain how..
I run 2 tanks, a 13.5 gallon mixed reef and a 6 gallon mixed reef. My nitrates are consistently 20-30 in the 13.5 gallon and 20-40 in the 6 gallon. Even after multiple water changes I am unable to bring the nitrates below 20. The 6 gallon has a single clown goby, sand, live rock, 2 mangroves, and some macro. Filtered by an AquaClear 50. The 13.5 has a Cascade 500 canister filter, a pair of clownfish, and a blue damsel. Live rock and sand also.
I would be happy to keep both tanks in the 15-20 range but lower would be preferable. I have tried Seachems denitrate with no luck and api nitrazorb with little luck so far. My phosphates test 0-0.25 via api test.
I wc the 13.5 weekly and the 6 gallon twice a week as of lately.
My question is, does anyone have a solid method of nitrate reduction? And if its carbon dosing, do you use a specific product? Thank you!!
It doesn’t make sense that water changes would not reduce nitrates, unless there’s nitrates in your change water.
If I have 20ppm nitrate and if I do a 50% water change, my nitrates drop by half. Simple as that.
I reduced nitrates from 50ppm to 5ppm and have kept them there for 4+ years now by:
-a weekly 10% water change.
-addition of hard surface area, I used marine pure block, to provide a “home” for those good bacteria that you increase by, daily carbon dose, I use Nopox.
It took about two months to go from 50ppm to 5ppm.
It doesn’t make sense that water changes would not reduce nitrates, unless there’s nitrates in your change water.
If I have 20ppm nitrate and if I do a 50% water change, my nitrates drop by half. Simple as that.
I reduced nitrates from 50ppm to 5ppm and have kept them there for 4+ years now by:
-a weekly 10% water change.
-addition of hard surface area, I used marine pure block, to provide a “home” for those good bacteria that you increase by, daily carbon dose, I use Nopox.
It took about two months to go from 50ppm to 5ppm.
would you say the addition of more surface area such as media blocks has a limit to its nitrate reduction ability? Once you reach the cap additional surface area will not reduce nitrates further?
Brew12
Electrical Gru
I wish I could keep my nitrates in the 15-25ppm range.Greetings all,
"Keep your nitrates low" is the center of many posts and articles across the web, but few of these actually explain how..
I run 2 tanks, a 13.5 gallon mixed reef and a 6 gallon mixed reef. My nitrates are consistently 20-30 in the 13.5 gallon and 20-40 in the 6 gallon. Even after multiple water changes I am unable to bring the nitrates below 20. The 6 gallon has a single clown goby, sand, live rock, 2 mangroves, and some macro. Filtered by an AquaClear 50. The 13.5 has a Cascade 500 canister filter, a pair of clownfish, and a blue damsel. Live rock and sand also.
I would be happy to keep both tanks in the 15-20 range but lower would be preferable. I have tried Seachems denitrate with no luck and api nitrazorb with little luck so far. My phosphates test 0-0.25 via api test.
I wc the 13.5 weekly and the 6 gallon twice a week as of lately.
My question is, does anyone have a solid method of nitrate reduction? And if its carbon dosing, do you use a specific product? Thank you!!
If you aren't cleaning your filters every 3 or 4 days I suspect that is the source of your nitrates. Unless you want the mechanical filtration you can probably take them offline and your nitrate won't climb as fast between water changes.
HuduVudu
2500 Club Member
I am not sure exactly. I could make some educated guesses, but they would be just that guesses. What I do know is that maturity plays a large role and biological diversity plays a huge role. When I started the 20g it was dead rock. I waited for the live rock because I was struggling to find legit sources. When I found a source the tank had some ugliness going on. The live rock got some of it, but after about 6 months the algae calmed down. I still have all of the strains that I dealt with before, dinos, cyano, hair, brown etc ... Now they are in check and I only have them here and there, and usually only when I have a coral event. I have never been very good about testing for nitrates in later phases of tanks, so I don't know what the flucuations are. Mostly I am concerned with the algae and IME nitrate and algae are not correlated.
Sorry for conflating nitrate and algae. My assumption (maybe bad) is that most people are concerned with nitrates because of algae.
HuduVudu
2500 Club Member
This is true for the few moments after the water change happens. This is an issue that most people don't get. When you are testing for something you are only testing the place that you test and the moment that you test. This does give some indication but it doesn't give the whole picture. Often times there are pool of nutrients in other parts of the tank that will be freed up from the limitation that was placed on them from the higher nitrate in the face of the lower nitrate new nitrate wil come in to replace what was removed.
Think of it this way. Let's say you have a pump that is pumping water into a opaque jug. That jug has an output spigot that has a ball valve that controls how much water is coming out of the jug. When we test it is equivalent of us seeing the water line in our jug. This says nothing about how much water is flowing through the jug. It only says that water coming in and out are in equilibrium at that water level.
If we want to change the water line we need to restrict the input, which everyone tries to do, or open the ball valve to increase the output. Ultimately all this will do is just change the water line in the jug, but once again it says nothing about how much water is flowing through the jug. I know of no way to test for how many nitrates are flowing through a system.
For me the only thing that is important is that the output of the jug is so high that the water does not get a chance to pool in the jug. Then it doesn't matter what the input is, and it doesn't mater what the line in the jug is.
Dkmoo
Valuable Member
The effectiveness of wc is exactly the % you take out at that time. So a large wc, ie 50%, will take out 50% of the nitrate.. The issue here is threefold - 1) most reef tanks either cannot do such large changes due to size, or should not do such large changes bc of the sudden swing in water chemistry. This is especially true for a lot of salt mix that have elevated concentrations thats designed to replenish lost elements and to balance out the lower levels in the tank. 2) the nutrient pump thats dependent on existing levels, as @HuduVudu described. 3) most tanks that can only do smaller wcs try to compensate doing multiple consecutive frequent WCs runs diminishing returns due to the inverse multiplicative nature of such consecutive wcs that I outlined earlier in the thread.
Get some sulphur pellets. Bright yellow ones. Pour them into a 3" abs pipe the length of your choice. I chose 30" tall. Drill little holes smaller than pellets all around. Around 50 or so. Put an abs end cap in the bottom and top with two holes drilled in each end. Put it in your sump. Wait 2 months. Test no3. Should be zero or 5ppm. Mine went from 150ppm to 5 or less with this system.Greetings all,
"Keep your nitrates low" is the center of many posts and articles across the web, but few of these actually explain how..
I run 2 tanks, a 13.5 gallon mixed reef and a 6 gallon mixed reef. My nitrates are consistently 20-30 in the 13.5 gallon and 20-40 in the 6 gallon. Even after multiple water changes I am unable to bring the nitrates below 20. The 6 gallon has a single clown goby, sand, live rock, 2 mangroves, and some macro. Filtered by an AquaClear 50. The 13.5 has a Cascade 500 canister filter, a pair of clownfish, and a blue damsel. Live rock and sand also.
I would be happy to keep both tanks in the 15-20 range but lower would be preferable. I have tried Seachems denitrate with no luck and api nitrazorb with little luck so far. My phosphates test 0-0.25 via api test.
I wc the 13.5 weekly and the 6 gallon twice a week as of lately.
My question is, does anyone have a solid method of nitrate reduction? And if its carbon dosing, do you use a specific product? Thank you!!
I have not cleaned it since set up 2 or 3 months ago. I dont think it needs cleaning as the water flow is passive. The return pump in tbe tank probably forces some water through it though. You can even use a filter fleece sock style instead of an abs pipe. But i wanted something stronger.
howaboutme
Active Member
This post got no love? Get rid of your mechanical filtration.
howaboutme
Active Member
There's definitely different opinions and truly no one is wrong as this is a hobby. The objective is to have fun.
That said, rarely is a canister filter used in a saltwater tank. It is a detritus trap. I'm assuming (like the post previous from the other gentleman) is that you are not cleaning that often enough. The same can be said for filter socks, sponges, etc. They tend to need a lot of maintenance to get them working. At 13.5G, you can get away w/ doing regular water (2, 3, 4G's?) changes. Blow rocks, sand, etc to get the detritus suspended and then syphon away. If you want more flow, you can keep your Aquaclear for flow but leave it empty. If you want to put something in it, make sure you clean it/replace it, etc often. The key is asking yourself where detritus is building up? That's where you should be looking. Utilize the biological filtration provided by our rocks and sand and do water changes, you should be good.
Try to take your canister offline for a few days. Then check parameters.
Edit: if you don't like HOB skimmers, you can do a Tunze nano in the corner if you have room.
kenchilada
Palytoxin Abuser
Agree, ditch the mechanical filtration and save it for your QT tank. I’d ditch the sand too, feed heavily but clean out uneaten food. The reason you’re supposed to clean filter socks every couple days is to export unused junk before it becomes excess nitrate and phosphate.
Similar threads
