I just did my first water change on my 125. The tank has been established for about 2-3 months now. I did a 10% water change with no present nitrate in the tank. I did the water change this morning and just decided to check my levels. All of my levels were doing great execpt for my nitrate. It was reading at 5.0. Now I know it is still kind of low, but I would rather it read 0. I have read that using tap water would raise the nitrate level, and that is what I used for the water change. But what I dont get is that the whole tank is filled up with tap water and wouldnt the nitrate level gone up before. I know I should be using RO water, but I just could not afford 125 gallons of it. But my question is, will the nitrate level just work its way down over night? Or should I do another 10% water change tomorrow to get the level back down?

Thanks

I probably wouldn't panick too much. I've run into some problems myself the last few weeks with my 100. My current levels are at 40 ppm and I don't really like it, but my corals and bubble tip seem to be holding up. I think I over feed my animals and didn't have a proper cleaning crew. Also, I just purchased the whole set up that had been established for two years. I think it caused my levels to spike. It was really bad last Friday when I noticed something wrong with my new rose tip bubble that I just dropped $90 on. I checked the levels and my nitrates had spiked to 100 ppm. That's when you need to worry. My fish and cleaning crew seemed fine, but my corals and anenomes were starting to stress. Anyways, I did a 30% water change and two days later did a 10% water change. I stirred up all of the sand at the bottom and used the power head to blow all of the crap on the live rock off, then did the water changes. After that I rinsed out my sock in the sump and it dropped my nitrates from 100 to 40 ppm. I will probably do another 10% water change in the next two days. Anyways, I wouldn't worry too much about 5 ppm. You could use R/O water to see if that will drop your nitrates down to 0, but I don't think you have much of a problem. Good luck.

you don't want to remove all the filter pad at once as it has your benifiecial bactieras in it.................as far as RO water .....yes start rotateing it in with your water changes - - -i started with tap as well ................if you have a wal-mart around you they should have a culigan water dispenser somewhere in it ....it's RO water and our wally world is 33 cents a gallon so it's really not that bad

your spike is probably you cycle..............some tanks cycle in a few weeks some others in months so....................like newbie said , don't panic, do 10% water changes weekly until the levels are stable and then go to every other week ....my opinion would be to do a water change one weekend and filter maint the next...thats how i run mine and it seems to not stress the system as much as doing everything all at one time.....................but thats me


Boss

The nitrate levels may rise a little over the next few weeks, but as long as you follow snowboss's instructions you shouldn't have a problem. Just look at your animals and if they look a little stressed, then do a little 10% water change. However, you don't want to change out too much water or change out the filters because your tank is still cycling and you need a lot of the beneficial bacteria. Trust me it's definitely scary when you see your nitrates spike, but my tank is finally settling down after a few weeks of panic. These guys give good advice. One thing that may help is to buff up your cleaning crew. I never had a problem with my 12 gallon because I had 6 hermits, 2 snails and a cleaner shrimp. When I got the 100 it came with maybe 8 hermits, 2 turbo snails, and a cleaner shrimp. My nitrates went throught the roof. Since I bought another 30 blue leg hermits, 6 Scarletts, large electric blue, fire shrimp, brittle star, 5 sand sifter snails, 4 peppermint shrimp and 10 more astrea snails, my nitrates have been dropping naturally. Those little guys clean up a lot of the waste that causes the nitrate levels to spike. It's not cheap though. I probably spent around $200 the last two weeks adding those guys in, but I think it's worth it having them clean my tank 24/7. Hopefully, they'll help me keep the rest of my tank up and running. Good luck.

This is my first time messing with a sump, so I really dont know too much about them. How would I make it into a refugium?