High Nitrates wont go down

[Killerdrgn]

This guy has some fairly large fish, 5 inch hippo tank, 5 inch foxface, 4 inch angel, adult clown, 7 inch batfish. 50 lbs is probably not enough to even take care of the ammonia if he took out the bioballs, unless he has some extremely porous LR which then will still leave him with the same problem of not having enough anerobic areas.

 

[jackson6745]

This guy has some fairly large fish, 5 inch hippo tank, 5 inch foxface, 4 inch angel, adult clown, 7 inch batfish. 50 lbs is probably not enough to even take care of the ammonia if he took out the bioballs, unless he has some extremely porous LR which then will still leave him with the same problem of not having enough anerobic areas.

In agreement. So add more rock and toss the balls :birthday:

 

[regal]

If you are going to use bioballs you need to clean them regularly. With every water change take your bioballs out and give them a good swirl in your old tank water to get all the detrius that has become stuck in them out. Then put them back in your wet/dry filter. Try to keep them in water as much as you can, this will help to keep your nitrates and nitrites down and prevent your bioballs from becoming little death traps.

Your nitrate problem is poor nutrient export. The purpose of wet-dry filter with bioballs is to create an oxygen rich environment for the nitrifying bacteria. (The so call "dry" is not really dry but outside the water to expose the aerobic bacteria to more oxygen.) The result is to convert ammonia to nitrite, both of which are toxic to aquarium animals, then to nitrate which is not. One of several ways to get rid of nitrate is to create an anaerobic environment by the use of live sand and live rock which host the anaerobic bacteria to convert nitrate to nitrogen gas. Rinsing the bioballs does help to get rid of detritus before they get converted to nitrate. But once you have nitrate in the tank, they do nothing to break it down. My question to you is do you have a protein skimmer to get rid of the nutrients before they even get a chance to be broken down by the bacteria? You said your nitrate level is off the chart so you don't really have a good estimate as of what your nitrate level really is. I suggest you dilute your tank water with either tap water (assuming tap water has no nitrate which I don't really know if that's true) or RO water let say 1ml of tank water to 4ml of RO water and use the amount of water that your kit call for to retest. Hopefully, the reading is more within scale of your test kit. Then multiple the result by 5 and you will get the actual level. May be your level is so high even after a 50% water change, it is till above the range of your test kit.

 

[fripclaksid]

Thank you for your very very good points guys. The protein skimmer is broken I will fix it ASAP(I think this will help a lot). Secondly adding more live rock is the last thing I would like to do so I will try the other methods first. I will remove the Bio Balls and replace them with a good amount of rubbled live rock. Also I have bought 2 NitraLock? (for 100 gallon each). Lets pray this brings it down. I will keep you guys updated. THANKS!!!