Using off the shelf products to reduce Nitrate

[pgsasi]

What should I know before I blindly buy products like De-Nitrate (SeaChem) for my aquarium to reduce Nitrate ?? Please advise.

Cheers / Sashi

[TimH07]

make sure you're using ro/di water and do some water changes, thats the best fight you can have against nitrate

otherwise you're putting a bandaid on cancer

[kronos5]

I agree with Tim

[reefhead728]

Tim has it right the only way i would use anything like that is in case of extremely high nitrate and had to change large quantaties of water in a short amount of time

[pgsasi]

hmmm, I feed my wish with frozen brine once every day and thrice with pellets (very small quantities). Does this contribute towards nitrate increase ?

[Parrothead]

If you are not maintaining the water properly, yes it will,

Just how high is your nitrate?
When was your last water change?
And tank size please?

Tanks,
Robert

[reefhead728]

whats your bioload, Is your tank overstocked?

[Ninong]

Sashi,

Don't buy anything "off the shelf" to reduce nitrates. Your tank has been running for years. What you need to do instead is figure out what's causing the nitrates. I don't think you are overfeeding, so I suspect some other cause.

If you want everyone to come up with clues, you will need to post more information on your setup. Size of tank, how long it has been running, depth of sand bed, composition of sand bed (exactly what is it made up of), how much live rock (weight), what type of filtration do you have (in detail, such as do you have a protein skimmer, do you have any sort of canister filter, etc.). If you're running a canister filter, what's in it and how often is it cleaned out? Protein skimmers are better than canister filters.

If you have live rock, a nice sand bed of aragonite sand and a decent protein skimmer, then that's all you need for proper filtration to keep your nitrates in check.

By the way, what are your nitrates right now that you are worried about???