nitrate help please!

[callahans4]

info:155 gal bow front
1 fluval g6 with nanos
1 fluval 404 with nanos

live rock, crabs, gobes, clowns, tangs, idols, soft and hard corals

now the rest of the story. tanks has been real good but all of a sudden i cant get my nitrates in order. i have done multiple water changes upto 40%. with nitrates comming back high the next day. i need help. what am i missing here? thanks for all your help in advance

[Leetch]

I'm sure you will be asked the following questions in order to help:

What were the nitrates before and what are they now?
What are the other water parameters?
How long has the tank been established?
Has anything been added/changed/modified recently?

Will the Jets win the Super Bowl this year.... well probably not this question but the others to start.

I'm sure there will be more questions but these will help the smart ones here to help...I'm not one of them, I'm just trying to help get you a head start on what will be asked

[callahans4]

wow thanks, let me try.
starting nitrates @50
after water change down to 10
4 days later up to 30
ph 8.4
amonia 0.0
nitrites 0.0
temp 78.4
tank is approx 6 months old
nothing modified or changed in the tank.
was overfeeding i think. mostly different brine shrimps and some flake, also using b-ionics and dts
as for the super bowl, well if i told you that you wouldn't watch the season and all those poor teams owners would go broke.

[tedlepplin]

Hi callahans,

I'll start by saying im still new to this, but for my own learning and to try to help if i can in a small way!

you mentioned you use two fluvals, filters can end up being a nitrate factory. they pull alot of dirt thats suspended in the water and most of it ends up in the filter floss and some much smaller amounts end up in any crushed coral, or ceramic discs designed for bacterial growth. as the detrius ages and breaks down, bacteria in the filter will convert the byproducts of rotting, into nitrate, so as water from the tank passes through a dirty filter, nitrate will be added to the tank by the returnng water from the filter.

if you run filters, and I'm sure you are but just to mention it, for the above mentioned reason, you need to make sure any floss is changed on a regular basis, maybe 1x or 2x a week and you also rinse out the ceramic crushed coral monthly with the old tank water from the w/c's.

Do you run a skimer? this wil help remove proteans from the water before they break down.

Also check your water sourse, if you use tap then maybe buy an r/o unit, if you get water from the shop check its prams before you put it in and see..

just to add also if your using frozen foods, defrost them in r/o then pour the water through a net, and only putting in the shrimp and not allthe dissolved juices from the frozen block. fish wont eat the juice and althought there could be an argument in faviour of adding juces for filter feeders its prob best not to, and tarket feed those guys directly..

let me know if any of this is helpfull, and hopefully you will find the source of the problem soon.

1 fluval g6 with nanos
1 fluval 404 with nanos

ps re the above just for my learning what are nanos?

[twisted]

good job leetch and ted! these guys pretty much covered it! overfeeding is a regular cause of high trates. im dealing with some of that myself. i like to see my fish eat and am dealing with the ramifications of doing so...high trates...
rinse your food well, cut back on feeding
im not familiar with the filter you have but think it may be part of the problem. do you have a sump or refugium? these will often help with the problem. the proper amount of live rock and a sump with a protien skimmer is all you need to run a tank. many filters, as ted mentioned, can cause a build of of junk and bring trates way up. if you havent checked out the sticky's in the first page of the forum, do so. it will help you become more familiar with whats going on in your tank. Good luck!

[Parrothead]

dump the media from the fluvals, do this slowly so your live rock can catch up, and get a skimmer on the tank immed......

[callahans4]

woke up this morning to dead moorsih idol that looked fine last night. he was beautiful and fun.
wow, what a great response. i thank all of you. so heres the plan,
1:start taking the 404 which has all the media in it out of the tank
2:buying a skimmer today
will a hob skimmer do the job?
3:cant do a sump.
4:spent 4 hours last night reading stickys.
lfs
5:mixing water today, i get my water from an ro/di machine in town, i never use tap water, looking into putting one in my house as 60 gals is getting hard to transport.
i refuse to give up as i am hooked on this hobby.
this started as my wifes project and i got sucked in and just love it. hate to see my fish and corals suffer, just want to get it right.

[callahans4]

ted,
i call then nanos, they are they ceramics in the filter. i thought they were for the biological system.
yes i am new at this and listened to alot of lfs that said this was easy, guess not. been doing water changes wrong too, after much reading last night. was mixing and dumping. wont do that again.

[Flyboy450r]

Check out a aqua c hob skimmer i think they have one rated at 120 which i believe may be ok for your tank with a light bio load. But I know for a fact octopus makes a skimmer rated to 150 which would be awesome for your tank. Its 400 bucks though so i dunno if thats in your budget. Either way good luck.

[Parrothead]

Check out a aqua c hob skimmer i think they have one rated at 120 which i believe may be ok for your tank with a light bio load. But I know for a fact octopus makes a skimmer rated to 150 which would be awesome for your tank. Its 400 bucks though so i dunno if thats in your budget. Either way good luck.

if you go with the aqua C, make sure you get the pro with the mag 3 pump, I'd do a little research and see what else is available, I am a big fan of the remora series, but I don't think the pro will do the job, even on a lightly stocked tank.........

[Ninong]

Hi callahans4,

woke up this morning to dead moorsih idol that looked fine last night.

Sorry to hear about the Moorish idol but that answers what would have been my first question. I was going to ask you how long you have had your "idols?" Was that the only one? How long did you have it? What were you feeding it? Was it eating, as far as you could tell?

Moorish idols are extremely difficult to keep in captivity by average hobbyists. A few very experienced reefkeepers have succeeded in keeping them in very large reef aquariums (500+ gallons) but they are the exception. Probably more than 97% of the people who attempt to keep Moorish idols fail in their attempt. It is very difficult to get them to eat and very difficult to figure out a good, balanced diet for them.

I know of one hobbyist who successfully kept a few of them in a 750-gal reef tank for more than three or four years but he was the exception. Very few hobbyists can keep them alive for more than a year. You will frequently see them in public aquaria but you have no way of knowing how long they were in there. Many public aquaria add new fish to replace the fish that died on a regular basis.

1:start taking the 404 which has all the media in it out of the tank
2:buying a skimmer today
will a hob skimmer do the job?
3:cant do a sump.

Yes, there are a few very good hang-on skimmers that would work for a 155-gallon reef aquarium but obviously a sump with a skimmer either in it or adjacent to it would be much, much better. It is really difficult to manage a 155-gallon reef aquarium without a sump but it can be done, so don't lose hope.

Hang-on filters do not take the place of a good skimmer. In fact, hang-on filters can be part of the problem if they are not properly maintained.

5:mixing water today, i get my water from an ro/di machine in town, i never use tap water, looking into putting one in my house as 60 gals is getting hard to transport.

The advantage of having your own R.O./D.I. system is that you have the water right there whenever you need it. You will have to use something to store it. Most people use Rubbermaid Brute containers in either gray, yellow or white. I preferred the white ones. None of the other colors are USDA/FDA approved for food storage. Containers that meet USDA and FDA specs for food storage are MUCH better for storing R.O./D.I. water than any containers that do not meet such specs. The other containers will almost certainly leech harmful chemical compounds into the water.

R.O./D.I. water can very easily draw out harmful chemicals. We established this fact about then years ago right here on Reefland when one of our members measured his R.O./D.I. water directly from the R.O./D.I. tap as zero TDS but when he measured it in his new green Brute container a week later it measured more than 100 TDS. This information was confirmed in conversations with the Rubbermaid factory. So be careful in your selection of a water-storage container. Obviously there are some very expensive choices that are safe but most people opt for the inexpensive Rubbermaid Brute containers.

I purchased two white 20-gal Rubbermaid Brute containers from U.S. Plastic. I already had a grey 32-gal Brute that I had purchased locally at Lowe's but I didn't like it nearly as much as the smaller white ones.

Here is what you forgot to mention in your posts so far:

How much live rock do you have? Can you describe your live rock? In other words, where did you buy it? Was it fully cured when you purchased it or did you have to cure it yourself? I'm trying to figure out the quality of your live rock and I need to know how many pounds of live rock you have in your 155-gallon aquarium.

Do you have a sand bed or not? If so, please describe it: how deep is it and what is its composition? Is it fine particle aragonite sand or crushed coral? This is a very important bit of information needed to answer your questions about your nitrate problem. It is obvious that your system is converting the ammonia into nitrite and the nitrite into nitrate but it is stopping there. Your live rock and sand bed should be capable of denitrification: turning the nitrate into harmless nitrogen gas (N2). Something in your system is acting as a nitrate factory. Is it the hang-on filters? Is it your substrate, especially if it's crushed coral???

Hang-on filters are not necessary as part of the biological filtration process, although they can come in handy for running carbon and/or phosphate sponge media. The biological filtration is handled by your live rock, your sand bed and your protein skimmer.

Good luck!

[Leetch]

Sorry to hear about the loss. I will swear by the AquaC skimmers. You would need the pro series but I'm not 100% sure it's rated for a 155 gal tank. Check it out though. I was having major problems until my remora skimmer finally "broke in" (it took about a week) and now my water is fantastic.

Watch the feeding - I'm prone to doing it myself but it's not good for the tank and you don't want to have to put your fish on a Jenny Craig diet.

Recently I scrapped my Fluval because it was a Nitrate factory. I replaced with an aquaclear HoB filter and doubled the carbon filtration. It has made a huge difference along with the skimmer.

I wish you the best.

[callahans4]

Ninong,
we bought the tank used, and it came with 150# live rock, with a1" crushed coral bed. i have taken out the fluval 404 with all the media. i still have the fluval g6 running with only a fine mesh screen and the ceramic's. i was able to get a protein skimmer at lfs. its a coralife 220. i know there are better ones out there but this is what was available. ive got it on now and it seems to be work, lots of nasty stuff in the cup. but what now, water still looks aweful, guess i need to be patient and let the skimmer work for a while. im wondering if i can should put some carbon in the fluval? i just hope that my rock starts working.

[callahans4]

also other water note, the g6 gives me the conductivity reading, i am at 48 right now.

[Parrothead]

Carbon won't hurt anything, just change it out about every 14 days or so

[Ninong]

also other water note, the g6 gives me the conductivity reading, i am at 48 right now.

A conductivity reading of 48 equals salinity of 31.3 ppt. That's a little low for a reef aquarium. The standard, based on natural tropical coral reef seawater, is 53 mS/cm (35 ppt salinity, 1.0264 specific gravity). I would recommend gradually raising your salinity until you get it up around 35 ppt (53 mS/cm or 1.0264 SG). You can do this by using saltwater for evaporation replacement instead of freshwater until you get it up to natural seawater salinity. I wouldn't go any lower than 52 mS/cm (34.2 ppt salinity). Those conductivity measurements are based on surface pressure and a water temperature of 25 C/ 77 F, which is the standard used by the USGS and NOAA.

(P.S. -- Okay, just to be anal, I went back and checked your water temperature and I see that it is 78.4 F (25.777 C). So I recalculated your salinity based on 48 mS/cm at a temperature of 78.4 F (25.777 C) and it's 30.7 ppt instead of 31.3 ppt, which would have been your salinity at 48 mS/cm if your water temperature were exactly 77 F (25 C). Both conductivity and specific gravity are indirect ways of measuring salinity and both are temperature dependent. Also, presure dependent but that's not a problem in a home aquarium.)

You cannot maintain any of your other water parameters in balance if your salinity is unnaturally low. This has a major effect on your calcium, magnesium and all of the other dissolved elements. Is it any wonder that so many reefkeepers complain that their salt mix is low in calcium when what they are doing is measuring calcium at a ridiculously low salinity. Of course it's going to be low. Anyway, end of preaching.

I would strongly urge you to remove all of the crushed coral substrate as soon as possible and discard it. Replace it with aragonite sand, preferably sugar-sized or smaller. I would suggest a depth of 3" but 2.5" would work. In truth I would prefer 3.5" but that's up to you. The most important thing is that you get rid of that crushed coral if you ever want to get your nitrate problem under control.

To remove the crushed coral, you will have to remove all of your live rock and all of your livestock to temporary holding containers just long enough for you to accomplish this very important task. Make sure to have a lot of saltwater on hand a day or two in advance.

Do you know if this tank was previously used as a reef aquarium with corals or was it used as a fish-only aquarium with live rock? This would help determine the next questions.

How does your live rock look to you? Does it look like normal live rock with lots of coralline algae? In other words, does it look healthy? If it doesn't look healthy, then we have to determine what the previous owner did to it. This is going to be important if the answer is that it is not covered in coralline algae.

Besides testing for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, you will need to test for calcium, alkalinity and magnesium. If your calcium, alkalinity and magnesium are in balance, then your pH will take care of itself. Obviously you need to monitor salinity and temperature on a regular basis, too.

P.S. -- You won't need heaters in your holding containers where you live; just turned the A/C up to around 78 on the day that you switch out your substrate. Unless you wait until December to do this. By the way, I lived in Tracy for 5-1/2 years from 1993 to 1998. I think that's very close to where you live.

Suggested reading:

Reef Aquarium Water Parameters
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.htm

What is seawater
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-11/rhf/index.php

Both articles are by Dr. Randy Holmes-Farley.

[callahans4]

latest update:
took out fluval 404 out of system, lots of faom pads in it.
added skimmer been running for over 24 hours, cleaned it twice.
latest water check, nitrates 0.0, ph 8.4, nitrites 0.0, amonia 0.0
in process of slowly briging up salinity to 53
thanks to all that have helped with this.

[Ninong]

in process of slowly briging up salinity to 53

This could confuse some people. What you mean is that you are in the process of slowing bringing your salinity up to 35 ppt (S=35) and you are using conductivity to measure it, so you want the conductivity to read 53 milliSiemens/centimeter (53 mS/cm). (The conductivity of drinking water is usually less than 100 microSiemens/centimeter, so the conductivity of seawater is 530 times that of drinking water.)

Unfortunately many, if not most, people in this hobby still use specific gravity when describing their salinity. This is a throughback to ancient times when LFS sold little plastic swing-arm hydrometers to measure specific gravity as an indirect way of estimating salinity. Those things are notoriously inaccurate. Most people who are serious about the hobby use either a refractometer or a conductivity probe. For one thing, if someone says their specific gravity is 1.025 or 1.026, you have no way of knowing what their salinity is unless you know their water temperature. There is a substantial difference in salinity if the water temperature is 83 F compared to 75 F.

S=35 is a dimensionless unit that is arrived at by an extremely complex mathmatical equation that is much longer than I care to deal with. Suffice it to say that 35 ppt is almost the same as S=35. Another way of expressing S=35 is 35 PSU (practical salinity units).

For those people who prefer to continue to use specific gravity (SG) to describe their salinity, 1.0264 SG is the same as S=35 at exactly 25 C/ 77 F and at surface water pressure (actually 1 meter below the surface). We do not have to deal with making adjustments for pressure below 1 meter beneath the surface because very few none of us has an aquarium deep enough for pressure to come into play. However, we do have to make adjustments for temperature if we insist on using specific gravity to describe salinity.

Most of the cheapy swing-arm hydrometers are designed to use the 77 F/25 C standard, with 1.0264 SG equalling S=35 salinity. Some scientific floating hydrometers use the 60 F standard, and using that standard, S=35 equals 1.0269 SG. Using the 20 C (68 F) standard, S=35 equals 1.0266 SG and using the 77 F (25 C) standard, S=35 would be 1.0264 SG. That's because specific gravity is temperature dependent. The warmer the water, the lower the specific gravity because warmer water doesn't hold has much 'stuff' as colder water.

You will usually find that it is the 77 F (25 C) standard that is used most often in the reefkeeping hobby. At that temperature S=35 is equal to 1.0264 SG and 53 mS/cm.

People who use refractometers don't have to worry about temperature because virtually all refractometers used in the hobby now are ATC (automatic temperature compensating). They just have to adjust for the fact that virtually all hobby refractometers are brine refractometers and not seawater refractometers, so that have to adjust for that. DelTec recently introduced the first seawater refractometer in Europe. I don't know when it will be available in the U.S. The scale on that one is calibrated to reflect seawater salinity and not NaCl salinity, so you don't have to do any mental adjustments in your head.

[callahans4]

well, i now have the salt level upto 52 on the conductivity, all readings still good with the water, skimmer working great, water very clear.
you asked about the rock, i am a newbie, what should the rock look like if its healthty?

[callahans4]

just a basic photo