I have been reading a ton of information due to what I perceive as having high nitrates in my tank. For maybe the last two years I ran 6 cups of GFO and 2 cups of carbon in my 380 gallon (water) system. My corals seemed pale and the chaeto was pale to the point I think it was starting to die. So every month I would add less and less GFO/carbon to the system because the system was too clean. Eventually I took the reactors offline and left it like that for a couple of months. Then, I started to dose nitrate and was shooting for somewhere around 2ppm nitrate. I kept dosing nitrate until I hit the 5ppm mark and stopped worrying about it for around 5 months. Around a month ago, I check for nitrates and was at the 50ppm mark. After a lot of reading I started dosing vinegar and I am up to about 90ml vinegar spread out every hour with a dosing pump.
One thing I noticed was if you read a lot of threads from around the 2005-2010 timeframe all the rage was to get nitrates down to 0. I would see you tube videos and read threads that would say something to the effect of my nitrates got up to 160, and through large water changes I was able to get it down to 10ppm. Unfortunately, doing this killed just about everything in my tank, but I am so glad I was able to get it down.
So after all of that here is my question. Is the amount of nitrates in a reef tank really something to be that concerned about assuming your not at the extremes?
Thanks
Randy
One thing I noticed was if you read a lot of threads from around the 2005-2010 timeframe all the rage was to get nitrates down to 0. I would see you tube videos and read threads that would say something to the effect of my nitrates got up to 160, and through large water changes I was able to get it down to 10ppm. Unfortunately, doing this killed just about everything in my tank, but I am so glad I was able to get it down.
So after all of that here is my question. Is the amount of nitrates in a reef tank really something to be that concerned about assuming your not at the extremes?
Thanks
Randy