Nitrates are such a problem

[ga_angel_us]

Hi I am seriously needing some great help in learning to control nitrates. I have 0 ammonia 0 nitites and a ph of 8.2. I have had my tank for about a year and a half now. I have been through so many fish and inverts some last several months and others just a few days. But nothing changes except my disappointment with the hobby and a lot of lost money. My tank is 55 gallon. My filter is a wet/dry filter. I added a protein skimmer that a pet store in our area said I needed for my size tank. I have read about water changes and done those. I have even given up on my own water mixing and got r/o water from the pet store. None of this helped. At this time I have a neon velvet damsel 2 snails and 2 stone crabs living in my tank. I have no problem getting the caulerpa to live, problem is I definately have no problem getting the brown algae to live either. The green algae you are supposed to see after a cycle never showed . Only brown, still. I have been reading a lot and I see that I need better lights and more live rock. But some of the terms are like a foreign language to me and obviously the pet stores here only want to keep selling me junk not help to get this tank going. How much live rock will it take for this size tank and how many powerheads? At this time I only have one. And please as you tell me what to do tell me which way to go from the most important to the least because money is becoming an issue thanks to all the bad advice I already listened to. If I can just get some clown fish to live in there with live plants and live rock I will be happy. Oh by the way the sand bed is supposed to be live but I don't know about that either. Not to interested in running my hand in there to see if the worms are still alive . Thanks for any help that you can give

[tendar]

Welcome to REEFLAND

First you need around 10x water turnover per hour or you should be running around 500+ gallons perhour through power heads. So I would add at least 1 more decent power head. Maxi jets are the most popular and reliable.
Next you need alot more clean up crew. I would add like 15-20 astrea or turbo snails and 10-20 scarlet hermit crabs and 20 nassarius snails. you can also add emerald crabs and serpant stars to help clean tank. Some people dont really like hermits but they do help keep the tank and rock clean. Just make sure to get scarlet hermits they are more expensive but dont eat you snails and stay smaller and get rid of the stone crabs they are destructive.
I sand bed of at 3" made up of fine grade sand will help lower nitrates. Do a search on "deep sand beds" and you can get a lot of info on these.
Lights really dont matter that much for a FOWLR (Fish Only With Live Rock)
Speaking of live rock I would go with around 50 lbs but this can be add slowly and any you add needs to be made sure it is cured since your tank is allready established.

Look at some of the sponsors here on the web site and you can find almost anything you need and save a fair amount of money by mail order and most will give good customer service and awnser your questions happly.

Oh forgot
On your wet dry I take it you have bio balls in it. I would start slowly removing some every week or so once you start adding more live rock.
Wet dry filters with bio balls tend to build up nitrates.

[Reefland]

Welcome to Reefland!

It sounds like you are expriencing what a lot of people do, bad experience from the pet store turning your tank into a bad experience. The good thing is, you've come to the right place and with some patience and hard work, we can get you back on track with a healthy tank.

You say that you have lost a lot of fish and I find it hard to believe that this is due to high nitrates in all cases. Fish can typically stand higher levels of nitrates than corals and other inverts. Have you got all of these fish you lost from the same store? There's a good chance they may not be healthy enough to survive to begin with, but that's another story.

What is your nitrate reading?
What is your temperature?
What is the salinity?
Does the wet/dry filter you are running have any type of media in it such as bio balls?
Do you have ANY live rock in the tank now and if so, how much?
What kind of sand do you use as your substrate?
Is it coarse or very fine sized sand particles?
Why do you believe the sand bed to be live?
What kind of protein skimmer did they sell you?
Does this protein skimmer appear to work, pulling out skimmate?

If you are running just a fish only tank (no corals), lighting isn't as important only to bring out the vibrant colors of the fish and to please your eye. Since you have other problems, I wouldn't even look at lights right now, however a pair of VHO tubes would look very nice when you get to that point.

Circulation in the tank is important, I would get a couple of more power heads and place 1 at each end and one in the center of the tank. In some cases, an increase in circulation will decrease the amount of algea growing in the tank, especially cyanobacteria. I would suggest the Maxi Jet brand power heads, they are really reliable and very quiet. What kind of pump are you using in your wet/dry filter?

Water changes are both reactive and proactive so I suggest keep doing them. Changing about 5 gallons per week is a good routine to follow. Make sure when doing water changes that you use RO water and the temp and salinity of the new water matches your tank water. An old saying is "the solution to pollution is dillution" (did I spell all those correctly?); water changes will benefit you.

Regards,

[bluespotben]

Im having exactly the same problem! the tank is about 10 months old and i never really held a full collection for longer than 3 months. i have a 55 gallon tank with an ehiem professional filter on and a red sea prism protien skimmer. i also have a 15w uv. i have 4 lights on the tank. i was advised not not have a dsb as this could harbour harmful bacteria so ive only gat a small amount of substrate at the bottom of the tank. i have about 10kg of living rock in the tank. I have a yellow tang powder blue and brown tang, 4 small clowns 2 green cromis and 2 small damsels an anenome is also present. i have just lost a chalk goby and my urchin is readily loosing its spines! i have had this collection of fish for about 2 months! ammonia is 0 nitrite 0 but nitrate is v high at 110! i also get alot of problems with brown algae. i normally do a 10% water change once every 2 weeks and top up evaporated water with RO evry other day! what am i doing wrong and how can i save my fish? thanks to any one that can help!

[ga_angel_us]

My nitrate reading is and has always been over 200 since the tank cycled. The temperature is 75. The salinity is 1.023. My wet dry filter has bioballs which I did remove at one point to reduce nitrates however that did not help at all so to stop the noise I put them back in. Also in the filter media I have filter cartridge that contains carcoal and a nitrate reducer. That doesn't work either. I have about 25 pounds of live rock. The sand is supposed to be live sand purchased from saltwaterfish.com with some decorative green sand mixed in with it. The green was on the bottom but the powerhead mixed it all up. there is at least 2 inches of this sand. I purchased the sand bed activator and the detrivore kit from indo pacific sea farms several months back that contained the bristle worms and the amphipods etc. the protein skimmer is a sea clone for 60 gallon tanks. It has a small tornado moving pretty good inside of the glass tube and the sponge on the inside of my tank is getting very dirty either from what it it supposed to be doing or from the algae. But I think it is working though. I am not sure if it is large enough for my tank. But I was told not to get them to large as they strip the water of good minerals too. As for the clean up crew I don't know what to add considering high nitrates will kill the inverts. At this time there are two snails in there but I don't know where they came from because I thought everything was dead but then all of a sudden two babies appeared. They are growing rapidly. I am surprised they have made it this long. As for the two stone crabs I would have to destroy all of the rocks to find them again and get them out and I am not 100% sure they are alive but I did have 13 fish now I have only one and there were only two bodies found so I am guessing they are there somewhere. Kind of seems ashamed to kill the only thing that has been in there since day one though. Anyway thanks so much for responding and for all of your help

[tendar]

ga_angle_us and bluespot ben

Sounds like your both over loading your systems with fish.
16 fish is way to many for a 55 gallon tank and bluespot 3 tangs in a 55 is 2 2 many plus all the other fish. The more fish you add the more pollution you add to the tank and the harder it is to maintian a healthy tank.
When you add fish only add 2 at time and spread out adding fish by al least 2 weeks so you biologial can catch up.

200 nitrates is awfully high. What kind of test kit are you using. You may want to consider getting a salifert kit and retest yours might be bad.

[Reefland]

tendar is correct, that is too many fish for 55 gallon tanks. I know it is difficult to not want to put in a bunch of fish, especially when we are talking about these beauties however consider the health of the fish you have. I would limit the tank to around 5 fish, 1 or 2 big ones and the rest smaller in size. This could be the biggest cause of the problems you guys are experiencing.

Regards,

[evangeline]

I'm certainly no expert, but I agree with the diagnosis of toooo many fish. Especially with all those decaying bodies back there, the nitrates will definitely be high.
But don't give up on the hobby, it's awesome when things go right. Start again slowly. I recommend John Tullock's book, Natural Reef Aquaruims. It was the first reef book I ever got, helped me alot, and every time I so glance through it again I learn something new.
Good luck!

[hcp28]

I think ga_angel_us said she only had 1 fish left in her tank. First things I would do is try to find those crabs and get rid of them. Take out your rocks and start looking it's fun really! Also I think you may want to start raising your temperature to something more like 80-83 or so. I think 75 may be too low. The hermits are good as long as you keep plenty of shells for them to change into but I would stick with snails, they don't kill each other and some will spawn in your tank. Have you thought about adding a refugium? this is a cheaper way to help lower nitrates and rebuild your sand bed as well. HTH

Henry

[ga_angel_us]

Thanks so much Henry. I will read up on the refugium and try one of those. And thanks for the other responses as well. Trust me though this tank has been like this for a year and a half. There are definately no overloads because the fish that are going in. Disappear one by one at night. No bodies except two we found only one of those bodies appeared to be a weak fish when I put him in. The other body was bit in half. As for the others didn't even last 2 weeks. Something made them disappear. I am assuming the stone crabs are still there somewhere. They have to be getting pretty big by now. They have been there since I put in the very first live rock. But as far as the snails and hermit crabs and such. How do I protect them enough from the nitrates so that they live to do any good? Is there something that can be added to maybe detoxify the nitrates? How much water can be removed and changed without throwing this tank back into another cycle? Thanks for everyones help. At least I have some good places to start now.

[Steve]

With a wet/dry you need to rinse the bio balls. When you do a water change rinse the bio balls with the water you are getting rid of. You need to make sure you use the exact same water that runs through the bio balls so it doesn't kill the bacteria. That means you can not rinse with fresh water or anything else other then the water from the tank. Just wanted to make that clear so you don't kill the bacteria off.

[evangeline]

You can run polyfilters, and maybe carbon to take some of that stuff out. but that would be more of a patch than a long term solution. How much do you feed your fish?

[the_blue_tuna]

I think you may have a whole bunch of small problems all going on at the same time and thats why you are not having good results with trying to just fix one thing . First off I would verify the accuracy of the nitrate test kit. If it is accurate , I would start doing 15% water changes every week. I dont usually like to change that much water that fast , but you do need to lower the nitrates if they in fact are that high. As has been previously stated , rinse the bioballs in the old water to clean off the heavy matter before throwing it out. I would also invest in a phosphate test kit. The circulation in your tank needs to be upgraded , but a year and a half of brown algae sounds more like a PO4 problem to me.
I think if you correct these small problems slowly you will see a gradual increase in the quality of your tank . As the others have also stated you are going to have to keep populations down , regardless of the temptations I wish you the best of luck and dont get discouraged .

[almostdiva]

ga-angel and bluespotben,

Sounds like you both got started the same way I did -- with a store that wanted to sell you stuff and not help you maintain it. I forget which one of you mentioned sand bed depth. There are SEVERAL excellent resources for learning about deep sand beds (DSBs). Anthony Calfo's Book of Coral Propagation goes into great detail. There is also much info on Dr. Ron Shimek's site about what it is and how it works. Long story short -- the actual depth is important. Most literature will tell you 1.2 inch or less or 4 to 6 inches is what to aim for. The "in between" depths don't actually funtion and WILL contribute to high nitrates. Here's a url: It got me started and gives a really good overview.

http://rshimek.com/reef/sediment.htm


Re: your bioballs in the wet/dry -- I would suggest that you both pull them and fill that chamber with live rock. It's a much better biological filtration. It might be a little more noisy than with the bio balls, but not much. Do this in stages -- add fully cured live rock a little at a time and pull balls a little at a time over a 3 week period or so. You'll be really happy with the results. I did this about a year ago and my tank is now MUCH more stable. I basically had to start all over, from what I was orig. "told" I needed. Refugiums are also great, too.

GOOD LUCK!