Nitrates have gone up Help !!!

[Civicdemon]

Ok so it seems that since about 3 weeks back, my nitrates have gone up a bit, between 5 and 100 PPm from 0,

Only a couple things have happened since then that could have caused this.

1: i cleaned out my Refugium, because it looked ugly on the bottom and i read in other placed that you should not touch your refugium. I cleaned the bottom and removed a bunch of strands o chaeto that where loose on the fuge bottom.

2: I got about 30 tonga snails and i think atleast 20 of them died in my tank, i got about 10 to 15 out but i think some my have died in the sand bed and i dont want to stir it up to find them. I still see about 8 to 10 of them come out at ngiht to eat and all my other snails are fine so i think it was a bad batch from my LFS.

3: i added a Blue Jaw Trigger. i dont really think he is the reasson but im just putting it in here since i know its a new fish and it will add to the bio load.

So now i replaced all my carbon i added a couple sacks of chemi pure elite and i finally got a reactor running GFO.

Did one water change this sat at 30 gl, and im actually thinking of doing anothe r15 to 20 on tue. what do you guys think ???

 

[texreefer]

I would just stay on the water changes , stirring up the fuge along with the dead snails are going to be your source of the nitrates. Keep testing and keep the water changes coming and you should recover quickly.

 

[Civicdemon]

Yeah hopefully that helps to bring it back into check, i cant go back to doing weekly water changes all that time that brakes me in salt cost lol. But I can do it a couple times to get back into check and hopefully let the fuge mature a bit again. and then i can go back to my 2 week water changes.

 

[texreefer]

what about one large one to get things back in check ?

 

[Civicdemon]

Well if i do to large of a water change then i might start a mini cycle. I dont want that to happen. i already did 30 gallons on sat. im planning on doing another 15 to 20 gl on tue. and then another 30gl on sunday. hopefully that should start getting me back on track.

 

[texreefer]

I do 30g changes on my 50g system all of the time and never cause a mini cycle. I just make sure not to stir the sand up when putting the water back in and everything is fine. on my pico systems I have always done 100% weekly changes with no ill effects , so its up to you. If you aren't comfortable with it I totally understand , just wanted to share my experiences.


By large , I meant like 50-60g . That shouldn't hurt a 125+g system.

 

[Civicdemon]

Well its not like im totally of the scale with the nitrates any ways, there still at ok levels, i might just try what i had planned first then go from there. If it still stays the same then i might try a couple bigger water changes.

 

[texreefer]

sounds good

 

[Bifferwine]

Your nitrates are between 5 and 100? What are they really at? That's a huge variance.

 

[Civicdemon]

Ohh lol sorry that was a type o 5 and 10

 

[d2mini]

i was about to say the same thing. lol
Mine have yet to come below 10. Well, they might have finally hit 8... hard to tell. But like you say, those number are not bad. You've taken great steps. Keep up with the water changes and you should be golden.

 

[Bifferwine]

If they are between 5 and 10, then that's still good. Nothing to worry about! Very few people are able to get their nitrates to zero and keep them at zero.

 

[Civicdemon]

Yeah i know its safe but ever since they have risen im getting light brown film on my sand again and a couple tiny spot of red algea. Hopefully the gfo reactor gets rid of it. I still think i need another power head to create more randome flow.

 

[FishyReef]

Yeah, I feel like you can't have too much flow in this hobby - unless you have seahorses!

 

[Civicdemon]

Well did 20 gallons today in the morning and i tested about 1 hour aga and my nitrates are at about ppm hopefully now that i changed carbon out and added the gfo and chemi pure stuff will start going back down.

On another note : Now that im driping kalk my PH and KH are going up a bit, my PH is now around 8.0 maybe 8.1 and my KH is at 9.5. this has ben a slow and stedy rise for the last week and a half or so. so ones i get to where i want to be im going to slow the drip down to where i only use half a gallon in a 24 hour period. and then the rest will be RO/DI for my evap. Right now im doing 1 gl of the mix durring the 24hr, about 1 teaspoon of mix 1/2 in each.