NITRATES Question?

[tah532]

Ok my blue hippo tang has been hiding out for a few days now
and doesnt look well. Yesterday i chased a maroon clown around the tank for like two hours finally catching him. I checked my levels today and my nitrates are very high. Did the disturbing the tank bed and live rock release so many nitrates? I also placed some new live rock in the tank over a week ago that had been in a LFS tank but with no lights, could the live rock be causing the uped levels? I only have LR and aquac remora pro skimmer as filtration, yet my skimmer hasnt been producing much since i put the skimmer overflow box on it. Any ideas much appreciated! I will do a partial water change as well.

 

[Anonymous]

both the live rock and the disturbing the sand bed could have increased your nitrates. Plant life will bring them back.

If you already have a heavy thriving plant life then the nitrate spike could be a good sign. It may mean the plant life is consuming the additional ammonia instead of the nitrates. Therefore preventing a nitrogen cycle. As thing settle down the plant life will conwume the nitrates.

Water changes will lower the nitrates but not bring then down to 0.0

 

[Anonymous]

Do some 10-20% water changes over the next week (I suggest 2 or 3)...that should bring nitrates down. Btw, what is the nitrate reading?

 

[tah532]

it was 5.0ppm

 

[Anonymous]

5 ppm isn't too bad. Are you sure you don't mean 50 ppm?

 

[tah532]

yes i am sorry, read wrong chart, it is between 80-160ppm

 

[Anonymous]

If it were me, I would do a 20-25% water change as soon as I could, and then another 24 hours later. Keep us posted!

 

[tah532]

Thanks! By the way Chris, what do u think caused it, and do you think that is why the blue hippo is sick?

 

[Anonymous]

yes i am sorry, read wrong chart, it is between 80-160ppm

Yep you need more plant life in there.

 

[Anonymous]

My guess is the new LR caused it, and yes, I think those nitrate levels are making your hippo wish he were anywhere else but there. Please do a w/c and let us know how it goes!

 

[tah532]

Plant life? I am not too up on the use of plant life, could you give me a quick rundown on how to use it and what kinds

 

[kdejour]

If it were me, I would do a 20-25% water change as soon as I could, and then another 24 hours later. Keep us posted!

I recently had the same problem. I did the water changes and got the nitrates down and added some plant life. Do you use tap water? If so test that before you put it in your tank. I had nitrates in my tap water and I got an ro unit. I wish you all the luck with yours. I know how you feel :x . These guys here give good advice. Macro-algea there are many different kinds I'm sure the guys can tell you the best types. Do you have a refugium?

 

[Anonymous]

Plant life? I am not too up on the use of plant life, could you give me a quick rundown on how to use it and what kinds

Most plant life for saltwater aquariums is macro algaes, corraline algaes, and the hair algaes on glass and live rocks. The most popular added plant life especially for refugiums is chaetomorphia (sp) or brillo pad macro algae. The caulerpas are "plant like" and fast growing also. Profilera does especially well under lower lighting, the grape and others IME seem to need higher lighting. For high calcium and high light reef tanks halimedia (sp) (money plant) is an excellent choice.

Not only will added plant life bring down nitrates to 0.0 but that reduction is just a sign of the many many benificial affects of the plant life. IME plant life is the single most important thing to the health and well being of the tank and its inhabitants.

 

[Len]

Do some large water changes. The spike in nitrates could be from sandbed distrubance or something dying/decaying in the tank you haven't noticed (crustaceans, worms, sponges, tunicates, algae, etc.). Macroalgae (not true plants, btw) will not be reactive enough to deal with sudden spikes like this, and often cause more issues then they solve when used in the main tank.

 

[danmhippo]

As a macro algae lover, I am still sick of Beaslbob's "you need more plant life" crap. Len is right, no macro algae will be able to cope with NO3 like that.

Disturbing sand bed will cause NO3 level to rise, but there are something else that's even worse then NO3, hydrogen sulfide, aka, the rotten egg smell.

Depending on how deep is your sand bed, hydrogen sulfide exist in the anaerobic zone of the sand bed where little oxygen gets through.

I also suggest a series of 25% water change to correct the nitrate level. Nitrate is very difficult to be picked up by skimmer. WC is the fastest and most effective remedy I know.

 

[tah532]

Good stuff, thankyou for all your opinions, i will start with the water changes as soon as possible!

 

[Anonymous]

Tah: be careful. As I stated before water changes will never bring nithrates down to 0.0 even if the replacement water has 0.0 nitrates. And the larger the water change the larger the shock to the system.

Dan and Len have different experiences than I do and therefore different ideas. I have had nitrates go from 120-160ppm to 0.0 in three weeks with no water changes, a light bioload, no filtration but after adding macros. My 55g display took months but finally hit 0.0 with a very heavy bioload, after I finally got the macros thriving. In both cases the fish were doing fine as the nitrates lowered but the corals did better after the nitrates reached 0.0.

I routinely stir up the sand in my 55g resulting in the rotten egg smell as I bait and try to trap/ harvest bristle worms. Ammonia and nitrItes have never bumped up but nitrates do go to 10-20ppm for a week or so. I bait the worms with 1/2 to a full raw shrimp in the 55g.

If you timidly toss in a couple of strands of macros then you will probably have similiar experiences to Dan and Len. But if you add at least a pound of macro for every 50g of water, protect that macro, and provide good lighting, to get it rapidily growing (doubling each week), then your nitrates will drop very very rapidily. And ammonia from shocks will be consumed in a matter of minutes/hours. The you will have a system that basically is mature, stable, and does not require the constant maintenance of say water changes.

Just my experience.

Bob

 

[Len]

NSW does not have 0.0 ppm, and frankly I've had "dutch systems" (macroalgae-based that went out of favor decades ago) before. They don't work to keep nitrates at zero, but they do lower the nitrate levels signifcantly. However, as most found out, such systems weren't very good at keeping corals. I invite anyone with a Dutch system to show me a thriving reef tank (photos please). Macroalgae is not a cure-all and usually presents more problems then the solutions it offers.

The goal isn't zero nitrates. Just bring it down to about 50ppm and you should be fine. Fact is, nitrate has a low toxicity, so if you aren't getting nasty algae blooms, it would be one of my lesser concerns.

 

[Bucktronix]

len when you say dutch do you mean without live rock?

ive had an eco system running (offline now) for years with only live rock and macro and the tank always looked great. i can post pictures if you want but im sure you have seen plenty of eco systems run nicely.

 

[Len]

Dutch systems was the coined term for systems that relied on macroalgae. These were popular right before the advent of wet/drys (and well before skimmers became popular). The problem was no one could keep stoney corals thriving in these systems. These systems usually had live rock.

Ecosystem's method is a bit different then just macroalgae. A lot of it depends on their "miracle mud." Leng's system was awesome while it was thriving. Then it crashed suddenly.