Can't get rid of Nitrates!

LoveJC03

LoveJC03

Reef Enthusiast
Can't remove nitrates!! :frustrat:

We started noticing Nitrates for the past week or so, started at 20ppm and now staying at 10-15ppm. Fish, inverts, cuc & LPS all seem fine, except our Frogspawn is slightly smaller. Montiporas are not happy. We have a Red Monti Cap, Green Monti Cap, Pink/Red Monti Cap, Purple Monti Cap, Pokerstar Monti & a Monti Confusa. The Red and Confusa are the best looking of all of them. Our Green looks the worst, it's not even green anymore, but it is not bleached. Our Purple looks pretty bad too but still shows purple. We also have a Green Acro that has some bleaching. We lost a Super Blue Acro before we noticed nitrates present. We just pulled out a bleached Staghorn Acro. Our 2 Birdsnests, Stylophora, Babydoll Acro all look great.

We were letting our chaeto grow and it was pretty much overflowing our fuge, then about 75% of it died. We're thinking the chaeto dying because we were not harvesting it, put all the nitrates into the tank. We also never cleaned out our sump.. had lotsof detritus all on the bottom of our fuge under all the rock rubble. We cleaned out our sump a couple days ago, got almost all the dead chaeto out and pulled alot of the rock out, sucked out all the detritus and it's all clean and nice down there now. Our chaeto is now about cantaloupe size since it started dying, it was about a 14"x14" cube. Once it starts growing again we will be pulling it out every week.

Before cleaning the fuge, we have done several 10gal water changes. We have added new carbon. We do not overfeed. We test weekly and change 10gal of water weekly. We just cannot seem to get rid of the nitrates and don't want to lose anymore coral. Not sure if the nitrates came from just the chaeto dying and releasing them back into the tank...but leaning towards that. How long til these nitrates go away?


Tank Stats: 1 year old, swapped from 55gal
We test weekly, feed 1/2 block mysis & 1/2 block brine, change 10gal water weekly, change filter sock everyday, lights run 10.5 hours a day, fuge light runs when lights are off, dose magnesium, use Seachem Reef Salt & use RODI water (always have)
- 90 gallon with 20 gallon sump
- 5 bulb Aquactinics T5HO fixture with ATI bulbs (new as of Feb)
- Reef Octopus Diablo XS 160 Skimmer
- BRS 4 stage
- Mag 9.5 pump
- Koralia 550, Koralia 425 & Maxijet 600
- About 75lbs of live rock, 70lbs of sand

Fish / Inverts
- 5 Blue Green Chromis
- 2 Ocellaris Clowns
- Diamond Watchman Goby
- Six Line Wrasse
- Longnose Hawkfish
- Magnificent Foxface
- Spotted Mandarin
- Peppermint Shrimp
- Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
- Tiger Conch, several hermits & snails

Coral (about 50)
- Several zoas & palys
- Frogspawn, Octospawn, 2 Torchs, 2 Hammers
- Several Mushrooms including 2 Ricordea
- SPS: 6 Montis, Sour Apple Birdsnest, Brown/Green Hystrix Birdsnest, Purple Stylophora, Babydoll Acro
- Brain Coral, Toadstool, Aussie Fungia, baby plate, Duncan, Feather Duster

Sunday Params
SG: 1.025 / Temp: 79.4° / PH: 7.9 (up to 8.2 now) / Alk: 8.4 / Ammo: 0 / Nitrite: 0 / Nitrate: 10-15 (still same) / Phos: 0 / Calcium: around 1300
**checking Mag, Calc, PH & Nitrate right now, will update when my bf is done**
 
Last edited:
Water change yesterday

Just tested:
Calc: 475 / Mag: 1280 / Alk: 10.6 / PH: 8.0 / Nitrate: still 15

Been bringing up PH & Alk this past week
 
My guess it was the cheato dying. But now also you dont jave as much and stiring.up tje fuge made them stay up a bit. This happened to me back when i cleaned my fuge. After that i just made sure i had a small clean up crew down there. I recently sold a bit to much cheato and notice a little spike in jitrayes but not huge. Do you run any reactors?? I run biopellets also and ineed to change them out also since its already ben about 5 months on those. But yeah just do an extra water change and let the fuge get back to working for you and not against you and you will be fine. In a bit of time. Bigest thing for the mean time is those water changes to keep it in check
 
Civicdemon said:
My guess it was the cheato dying. But now also you dont jave as much and stiring.up tje fuge made them stay up a bit. This happened to me back when i cleaned my fuge. After that i just made sure i had a small clean up crew down there. I recently sold a bit to much cheato and notice a little spike in jitrayes but not huge. Do you run any reactors?? I run biopellets also and ineed to change them out also since its already ben about 5 months on those. But yeah just do an extra water change and let the fuge get back to working for you and not against you and you will be fine. In a bit of time. Bigest thing for the mean time is those water changes to keep it in check
Click to expand...

Yeah that's our guess too..only thing we can come up with. Our tank is so clean and tests have always been spot on. We don't have any reactors. We dose mag and use carbon in a small mesh filter sock. Sure hope they go away!
 
The brine and mysis could also be adding to the nitrates, those food sources are known to be high in nitrates for a frozen food. I personally would suggest mixing it up some more, it will be a bit more nutrious too
 
little_fish said:
The brine and mysis could also be adding to the nitrates, those food sources are known to be high in nitrates for a frozen food. I personally would suggest mixing it up some more, it will be a bit more nutrious too
Click to expand...

Not meaning to hijack this thread, but what type of food would be low in nitrates?
 
I feed rods food which a blend of everything and it seems to have a small impact on nitrates and I usually have quite a bit that goes uneaten. But there are quite a few different frozen foods, like emerald entree and others I can't remember the name of at the moment. You can also make your own food with shrimp, scallops, squid, fish and other sea food. Remember, variety is the spice of life and the key to good nutrition.
 
Do you rinse your food before feeding ??? I usually will let the cubes or anything I feed defrost in RO/DI water and then run it thru the fish net then I put it back into the cup I use for feeding with some saltwater. If its still looks milky I do it again but usually ones is plenty.
 
can't really tell whats ailing your monti's. can you post a pic? is it lack of coloration/tissue lost - can't tell from your descriptions. Monti's are generally not that affected by nitrates (under 40ppm) except you may not get great coloration and growth; i.e. they won't die from nitrates.

Acro's is a different story, but usually they brown out instead of bleaching. Are your acros actually bleaching or its is RTN/STN? Bleaching often is improper light acclimation; tissue loss (necrosis) is a whole different thing (you coral still turns white but no tissue). Were you getting polyp extension?

Your Calcium levels (if that is the correct reading) is off the rails. check it with another test kit but you should start lowering it (400-500 is ideal). I really don't know what the effect that level of calcium has on the corals. Check your mg levels too.

Turn your chaeto over every week - that way you ensure it all gets light.
 
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little_fish We also use Marine Cuisine, just recently bought some more. :) We've always used a mix of Mysis, Brine & Marine Cuisine. Our Foxface gets 2/3 of an algae sheet per day too. We haven't ever had a problem since we started with this tank, kinda sucks because Nitrates aren't easy to just remove and be done with it :-/
 
Last edited:
Civicdemon said:
Do you rinse your food before feeding ??? I usually will let the cubes or anything I feed defrost in RO/DI water and then run it thru the fish net then I put it back into the cup I use for feeding with some saltwater. If its still looks milky I do it again but usually ones is plenty.
Click to expand...

We put 1/2 a cube in a little cup, add a turkey baster syringe full of tank water and let it thaw out then we squirt it in the tank. We haven't ever strained it out, might need to try that.. but I don't think that's the problem. Thanks for the tip though ;)
 
noy said:
can't really tell whats ailing your monti's. can you post a pic? is it lack of coloration/tissue lost - can't tell from your descriptions. Monti's are generally not that affected by nitrates (under 40ppm) except you may not get great coloration and growth; i.e. they won't die from nitrates.

Acro's is a different story, but usually they brown out instead of bleaching. Are your acros actually bleaching or its is RTN/STN? Bleaching often is improper light acclimation; tissue loss (necrosis) is a whole different thing (you coral still turns white but no tissue). Were you getting polyp extension?

Your Calcium levels (if that is the correct reading) is off the rails. check it with another test kit but you should start lowering it (400-500 is ideal). I really don't know what the effect that level of calcium has on the corals. Check your mg levels too.

Turn your chaeto over every week - that way you ensure it all gets light.
Click to expand...

Our green has completely lost its green color (no polyp extension), purple is pretty much faded and has brown algae on it now (no polyps). Pokerstar started coming back but most of it is brown. Red looks the best, and small red/pink is faded. Monti Confusa still looks great.

Only test that is coming up bad is Nitrates, hopefully our chaeto starts working again and pulling the nitrates out and we will definitely pull some out every week! Also, our fuge will be staying clean too lol :frustrat:

Yeah, I just noticed the error LOL our calcium stays at 475-485 with the salt we are using. Our mag was at 1400 the other day, but we keep it between 1250-1350. With all the water changes we have to keep dosing mag to maintain it. We did our weekly water change Friday and we changed it again last night.
 
Thanks everyone for all your help. We just added 10 more lbs of LR. We have a new Nitrate kit being shipped right now, it's a Red Sea kit. Currently, we are using API for PH, Ammo, Nitrite, Nitrate & Phos. We use Red Sea for Calc, Mag & Alk.

I have been doing some reading and alot of forums people are saying it could be a potassium issue with the Montis, just not sure. We don't have a kit to test for that.

Fingers crossed that they drop soon!
 
Ordered from Bulk Reef Supply:
- Red Sea Algae Control Multi Test Kit (NO3/PO4)
- BR-110 Reef Octopus Biopellet Reactor (combo pack).

Test kit will be here tomorrow & reactor will be here Thurs.

Now hopefully we'll get better readings on those 2 tests and we'll be able to better control these nitrates with the bio-pellets! :D
 
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