Nitrates Stuck around 15

Sawdonkey

Sawdonkey

Premium member
I cannot seem to get my nitrates lower than 15, no matter what I do. I got them down to around 5 for a while, but they tend to hover around 15. I need some recommendations on what to do next to alleviate this problem. I've added some SPS to my tank in the last month or two, and my non-reef-safe fish seem to be leaving it alone. All of the corals look good, but I want provide an environment where they thrive and grow. Nitrates at 15 is not that environment.

Total water volume is probably around 270 gal (220 DT). I have a big skimmer, a decent amount of LR in the DT, about 4 inches (60 lb bag) of the big chunky crushed coral in my sump, a big ball of chaeto, GFO reactor, carbon reactor. I've done away with filter socks. I do about a 50 gal water change every 3 weeks, if not more often. RODI

I have some large-ish fish, but my tank is surely not overstocked. (Picasso Trigger, Niger Trigger, Lemon Peel Angel, Smallish Tusk, Emperor Angel, two anthias, Powder Blue, Naso Tang). I feed almost exclusively pellets and nori, sometimes a frozen treat here and there.

What do I do from here? I could add a K1 chamber to my sump pretty easily. I could add a biopellet reactor but this scares me. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
I would get rid of the crushed coral in the sump. I recently took out some LR I had in my sump and shook it out in a bucket of saltwater and man the crud that came off it was insane. Any rock in the sump has the potential to be a nitrate factory due to lower flow. Besides that I would just check your test kits, ro/di water, saltwater and see where they stand in regards to nitrates. 15 isn't a terrible number and as long as your corals are looking good I wouldn't stress over it too much. You could always try carbon dosing, but make sure you start out slow. Biopellets scare me too. If it was me, my first step would be to get rid of that CC in the sump and see if that helps and then go from there trying something else.
 
k1 wont do anything for it, biopellets might, but you need to ditch gfo and phos and it can take 8 weeks to show results. Try to lower your feedings
 
I bet that crushed coral is the problem. The sump and fuge is one of the filthiest places in our systems because most people don't or can't clean them like we do out tank. It's a nitrate factory with crushed coral.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys.

Why wont' K1 help? I thought it is specifically for the purpose of generating more beneficial bacteria to lower nitrates?

I already dose some vinegar when I mix up my Kalk, just to increase the absorption. I add about 10 ml per 5 gal of top-off. Maybe I should start dosing directly ?

My crushed coral in the sump is the really chunky stuff. The pieces are all about 1". Next time I do a water change, I'll vacuum it out really well. I'd like to keep this here for more surface area. I don't' want a DT full of live rock. I have quite a bit of flow going over this, about 1300 gal per hour. If I re-worked my return piping, I could probably get this stuff to tumble gently and keep it clean.
 
k1 is for nitrifying bacteria.. it wont lower nitrate, it adds biofilter. If you are dosing carbon and have gfo and chaeto you are probably phosphate limited... so it wont work as well, for bacterial nitrate removal it needs phosphate. you will know its working when your chaeto starts to die.
 
I agree that the crushed coral is the culprit. All the crap gets stuck deep down between all those large pieces of cc and rot away. As long as you have it, you'll always have problems from it. Maybe you should consider swapping it out with sand instead.
 
Perfect. I'll keep the gravel for now, but I'll make a habit of using a large power head to vacuum it out when I do water changes. I imagine i can get it pretty clean. If nothing changes, I'll scrap it.
 
So I used a powerhead to stir up the gravel and suck the detritus out of my sump. I can't use vacuum because I can't get a siphon going at floor level. Anyway, I put two filter socks on the pvc piping that goes from my refugium chamber into my skimmer chamber. I left the main pump on so flow was going through the chamber the whole time. The idea was that anything I stir up and wasn't exported by the powerhead would get caught by the filter socks. After about an hour, I took these dirty filter socks off and put clean ones on. I'll remove them tomorrow when everything in the refugium settles back down. I don't think much if any detritus got in the DT. BUT.......

When I did this, I sucked out five gallons of water and ran my return chamber really low. My pump sucked a bunch of air and put tons...I mean tons...of bubbles in the DT. I had my head down in the sump so I really didn't notice. When I looked up, my scrips acro was dumping slime. Tons of slime. It was flying all over the tank until the returns took it away. About two hours later, it looks great, with more PE than I've ever seen it with, maybe better than it has ever looked in my tank (I've only had it for about a month). So is this slime caused by the air bubbles or any detritus I might have sent to the dt? I assume it is not a good response? Anything to be done other than monitoring my parameters?
 
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