Nitrate

[Mattl22]

My tank seems to go throughphases with nitrate! I have a 34 gal solana with 2 clowns a sm hippo tang and a watchmangobi and a bunch of coarl.
My nitrate will be 0 for weeks and I start to get real cocky like I finally figured this thing out. Then a week later after weeks of 0 nitrate it will jump to 20 I'll do water changes and get it down to around 5-10 it won't budge from there for a few weeks even with 2 wc a week 8 gal each wc. I usally maintain my tank by doing 8-10 gal wc 1 time a week! For this reason I really want to add a sump. I have about 32 lbs of lr run car Bon and puregan stock skimmer( starting to think this might be the problem)
Any advice
Can this solana 34 be drilled or use an over flow? To add a sump
Thanks



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[bruma bull]

nitrate

how often do you feed, what kinda skimmer if any, lights, you have nitrites befor you have nitrates, so start at the beging and work back

 

[Mattl22]

its the stock skimmer but i thing its broken ill set it so the bubbles pop at the top of the collection cup when i check it again its filled with mirky waqter not skimate i am waiting to hear from a mr member on a tunze nano skimmer im trying to buy asap.
nitrite 0
nitrate 10-15
amonia 0
salinty 1.025
temp stable 80 degrees
calcium 400
ph 8.2- 8.4
phosphate 0

 

[Mattl22]

i feed my fish once a day i havent feed for the last 2 days to try and bring down the nitrate.
i read about people who feed 3 times a day and then some guy at lfs says feed once every 3 days ????

 

[h2o]

Starving the fish is not the way to go. Feeding ones a day is good enough make sure the fish eat all the food u put in there a small clean up crew will pick up the left overs. upgrade the skimmer to something good dont go cheap or u will have the same problem all over again, how much live rock u got in your tank?, how deep is your sand bed ?

 

[Mattl22]

Sand bed is 3"
Got 7 hermit crAbs
3 nas Snails the ones that burrow
2 turbo snails and a sm in tank refugium with cheto
I think it's the skimmer I think it's broken but even with the skimmer I change water every week

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[E.intheC]

How much water do you change out each week? Also, how is your flow arranged? (That last question is really for you to think about, as you want it to essentially cover the whole tank, but have it return to your 'sump' area).

Also, a 3 inch sand bed is pretty deep. Usually you want about 1 inch or over 4-8 inches.

Oh, and to answer your question, yes you can drill this tank (from what I've read.. have never done it myself). You'd have to empty it though.

 

[Mattl22]

When nitrate is above 0 I do 2 water changes a week 10 gals
Normally I do 1 10 gal water change a week


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[seldin]

Do you use RO/DI water. When I tested my tap water, I found out it was high in nitrates, so garbage in, garbage out. If you don't havei a RO/DI unit, I highly recommend that you buy one ASAP. This made a huge improvement for my systems.

Some things for nitrates ( I have a Solana and my nitrates are 0 ).
- Make sure bio load is low.
- Don't over feed.
- Larger water changes.
- Vacuum sand bed of crud.
- Buy a phosban reactor and fill it with GFO and split it with Carbon, if you don't have some in your filter chamber.
- If you find that you reducing nitrates and they come back, then, you have to find the cause. Doing the things mentioned from your fellow reefers should help.
- Biggest thing I did to reduce nitrates and phospates is to have a low bio load. Then, you don't have to keep fighting this battle.

PS. I would get rid of the Hippo tang. He is a heavy cause of the bio load and does not belong in a small tank for reef. Mine, because aggressive and I got rid of him when I converted to reef.

Hope this helps.