nitrate spike

by **littlej2455** » Sat Nov 22, 2008 3:03 pm

My tank has been established for about 8 months. My nitrate level before has been around 20. Then I left to go to college and my parents took over my tank. They have been doing a great job with keeping up for me. I am very lucky that they will do this for me, even though they did not want to. But any way, I just got home for Thanksgiving and I checked my nitrate level, and it was around 40-50. I know that the nitrate level goes up as the tank is established, but is this the reason why I had a raise? My parents do a 10% water change every week. I am also thinking about switching over to RO water too which will also lower the nitrates, will that also do the trick? What do y'all think? I know that having a nitrate level at 40-50 isnt too bad but I would like to have it around 20-30. Thanks.

by **newbie916** » Sat Nov 22, 2008 4:30 pm

I've also had my tank up and running for about 8 months and had some nitrate issues for a while. What kind of filtration system are you using. I noticed you don't have any LR in your pics. Do you have a protein skimmer? Are you planning to keep corals? What kind of cleaning crew do you have? I actually had to increase my live rock and currently have about 150lbs in my 100 gallon and I've been growing macro algae and Xenia's in my 30 gallon refugium to assist with the filtration. It could also be that your parents could be over feeding the fish, which could cause the nitrates to increase. My nitrates used to spike to 40 ppm and now I keep them around 10 ppm. I'm waiting for my Xenia and Macro to grow in my fuge and hopefully I could decrease them down to 0. However, from my understanding certain animals such as clams require some nitrates in the water to survive.

I would first start off by finding out if your fish are being overfeed and start using RO/DI water. Also, give us some more info on your current setup. I would definitely get more advice from Boss and Schigara helped me out a lot.

Good luck,
newbie

by **FRMNUTN2SUMTN4672** » Sat Nov 22, 2008 5:56 pm

Have your parents or you swished the bio balls around in tank water? Not sure this will work or if it is the issue, but maybe nitrates are coming from your wet/dry.

by **fihsboy** » Sat Nov 22, 2008 6:47 pm

....how much do they feed your fish? That might be the issue.

by **littlej2455** » Sat Nov 22, 2008 9:01 pm

yeah I have a protein skimmer and I have a UV sterilizer. I am not planing on adding any live rock or any live corals, just because it would be more for my parents to take care of. My parents say that they feed them probably about 2 silver sides, 2 cubes of mysis shrimp and a half a spoon full of veggie pellets. right now I have a marbled cat shark, blue tang, yellow shoulder tang, foxface lo, niger trigger, and porcupine puffer. As of right now I do not have a cleaning crew because the shark would eat them. I am about to get a chocolate chip starfish, which should help a little. But I think I will just cut back on the feeding a little and see how that goes. Any other ideas? Will changing to RO help?

by **newbie916** » Sun Nov 23, 2008 5:56 am

You could definitely cut back on the feeding and R/O will definitely help.

by **puffedupseagull** » Sun Nov 23, 2008 9:28 am

Missing fish ??? check for ammonia spike, will eventually result in NITRATE SPIKE

by **littlej2455** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 3:13 am

ammonia level is at 0. Nope all of my fish are there, I just wanted a way to get it down, but I think I will start to mix in some R/O water. Thank

by **schigara** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 4:39 am

First of all, wayyy to much food, if that diet is per day..

Second, bio ball filtration will never keep up with the load. You don't have to get a bunch of $8/lb live rock. Base rock will suffice. For a 125, just put in about 50-75lbs of of lightweight base rock and maybe a few pounds of nice live rock to seed it and then add more base rock or rubble over time.

The utilization of live rock was a major turning point for salt tanks.

If your tapwater has zero or very low nitrates, ro/di water won't help this situation.

You have some big eaters, as far as fish go.

You have a tank that is destined for disaster or at the very least being very difficult to manage.

1. Small tank with a shark.(any shark in a 125 is a very small tank, by itself)

2. 3 other fish that are large and dirty.

3. Bio balls for primary denitrification(fail)

4. Overfeeding

5. no clean up crew

6. get rid of the fuckin shark!

If you want to keep a shark, build the tank around the shark. With a 125, you shouldn't have a shark.!!

Come on man! be responsible. You owe it to the inhabitants of your tank to at least try to give them a decent environment to live in.

Even with 50% water changes per week, I doubt you would keep nitrates in check with no live rock and no form of nutrient export. A skimmer is good but you would need a monster skimmer to keep up right now.

To sum up. RO or RO/Di will not help much, if at all. 50-75lbs base rock and about 10lbs live rock will help after about 3-6 months when it gets seeded(example). 125-200lbs of cured live rock will help a ton right now as well as a refugium with some sort of nutrient export.

I'm sorry if I come off as harsh. I don't mince words and suck with diplomacy.

by **fihsboy** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 1:23 pm

Dude thats all my fish eat a week.......I used to feed a TON but my lfs feeds there show tanks once a week maybe twice and damn........talk about care free and great looking water. The tank at the store is a 125 with a yellow tang a maroon clown a sixline wrasse two gobies two royal grammas and a few dart fish. I think thats what they are called. He feeds his tank a table spoon twice a week or one tablespoon once a week. depending on the algae growth. His tang takes care of all the algae when he doesnt feed as much. Sharks are hard to keep......thats for sure. If you feed them once a week.....its like a fish dying in your tank every week. thats a big bio load.

nitrate spike

18 posts • Page 1 of 2

nitrate spike

nitrate spike

18 posts • Page 1 of 2