nitrate at 10 to 20 ppm

[Northstar24]

Brad- Let me get this straight... You tested the water before adding it to your tank and it was 5ppm? Then you added it to your tank and it was 120 ppm? Did I read that right?

little_fish- I think my quarantining is an old habit from when I was into freshwater planted aquariums. A forum I was on then supported quarantining fish and they would give grief to people who didn't do it. After your comments I did further research and discovered a lot of people don't quarantine their fish before adding them when reef keeping. I think I'll give that a shot next time I'm finding a lot of things don't translate so well between freshwater and reef aquariums. Thank you for the insight on that btw. :)

There are plenty of people that advocate a QT system for saltwater tanks. That being said, if you have fish in your tank currently that were not quarantined, chances are you already have ick in the system so QT'ing beyond that point is pointless from an ich prevention standpoint, its still useful for getting finicky fish used to eating prepared foods, or for treating fish prone to parasites or flukes such as leopard wrasses

 

[fastrd400]

yes that is right i mixed up salt water at 1.024 and tested it it was at 5ppm then after putting it all in the tank after an hour the tank went up to 120ppm

How are you adding your clean water back into the tank? If you are dumping it into the tank directly, and stirring up the sand bed in the process, I can see the numbers going sky high like that.

 

[snyderju]

How are you adding your clean water back into the tank? If you are dumping it into the tank directly, and stirring up the sand bed in the process, I can see the numbers going sky high like that.

That is a great point that I never really thought of.

 

[Bifferwine]

Also, are you still using the paper test strips? Or did you buy a liquid droplet test kit?