At my wits end

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Reefer_madness78

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I have a 65g tank with about 57g of water, a 1.5 - 2 inch sandbed. 2 clowns and 1 midas blenny. 3 blue leg hermits 1 emerald crab 1 conch 2 trochus 5 nassarius 5 cerith. I have 7 coral frags. I started the tank April of last year so just over a year ago. I run a canister filter and that isn't going to change. My problem is nitrates. I was doing 10g wc a week with saltwater from fish store. I have tested their water a few times and it's never even been 5ppm nitrate. My nitrates got up to at least 50 ( that's the highest my red sea test goes) so I started doing 20g weekly wc for about 3 months to get it down to about 5. I also added 1.5 bottles of matrix to canister filter (that's 3x what the bottle says for my tank) I also removed all mechanical filters except a 1/4 inch thick piece of filter ( I buy it at Walmart it's quilt batting) I change it out every other day. I have always cleaned canister out every week including propeller and I clean hoses about once a month. I don't over feed. I only feed every other day and nothing reaches the sandbed. I have tried blowing off rock a section every wc. Once the nitrates were a 5ppm I went back to 10g wc a week and of course the nitrates started going back up and within a month maybe less the nitrates back to 50ppm. I don't know what else to do. I can't keep doing 20g wc weekly. I don't want to get any more fish because that is just going to make it worse. Someone please help.
 
Nutramar Foods
Why not stop testing for nitrates for eighty days, and concern over keeping whole particle waste out of your tank instead


its possible to have a multi decade reefing career having never tested for nitrate, consider the opposite of the current direction. After eighty days of sleepless nights and concern, triple test :) but during the test break, focus on target feeding better than you do now, continued water changes, and permitting no clouding from waste building up in your sand and rocks, ergo 1/3 of your current nitrate.
 
Chewy.com
IMHO you need to add nitrate consumers like macro algae to consume the nitrates. Even just a simple egg crate partition in the display tank so have a macro area between the glass and eggcrate will do the trick. With some lighting to keep the macros thriving.

my .02
 
I was able to significantly reduce my nitrates and phosphates by adding a refugium with chaeto. You can get an algae reactor instead of the refugium. I started with a used Tunze Micro Algae Reactor. Highly recommended and got rid of my high nitrates..
 
beaslbob said:
IMHO you need to add nitrate consumers like macro algae to consume the nitrates. Even just a simple egg crate partition in the display tank so have a macro area between the glass and eggcrate will do the trick. With some lighting to keep the macros thriving.

my .02
Click to expand...

Nah, he loves his canister filter. That’s not changing he said... why even ask for help?
 
Tidal Gardens
Reefer_madness78 said:
I have a 65g tank with about 57g of water, a 1.5 - 2 inch sandbed. 2 clowns and 1 midas blenny. 3 blue leg hermits 1 emerald crab 1 conch 2 trochus 5 nassarius 5 cerith. I have 7 coral frags. I started the tank April of last year so just over a year ago. I run a canister filter and that isn't going to change. My problem is nitrates. I was doing 10g wc a week with saltwater from fish store. I have tested their water a few times and it's never even been 5ppm nitrate. My nitrates got up to at least 50 ( that's the highest my red sea test goes) so I started doing 20g weekly wc for about 3 months to get it down to about 5. I also added 1.5 bottles of matrix to canister filter (that's 3x what the bottle says for my tank) I also removed all mechanical filters except a 1/4 inch thick piece of filter ( I buy it at Walmart it's quilt batting) I change it out every other day. I have always cleaned canister out every week including propeller and I clean hoses about once a month. I don't over feed. I only feed every other day and nothing reaches the sandbed. I have tried blowing off rock a section every wc. Once the nitrates were a 5ppm I went back to 10g wc a week and of course the nitrates started going back up and within a month maybe less the nitrates back to 50ppm. I don't know what else to do. I can't keep doing 20g wc weekly. I don't want to get any more fish because that is just going to make it worse. Someone please help.
Click to expand...
Did you test after you were blowing everything around?
 
Deltec
brandon429 said:
Why not stop testing for nitrates for eighty days, and concern over keeping whole particle waste out of your tank instead


its possible to have a multi decade reefing career having never tested for nitrate, consider the opposite of the current direction. After eighty days of sleepless nights and concern, triple test :) but during the test break, focus on target feeding better than you do now, continued water changes, and permitting no clouding from waste building up in your sand and rocks, ergo 1/3 of your current nitrate.
Click to expand...
How do I target feed better? I already just drop a tiny pinch ( about 10 pellets) and they eat it while it's still floating then I drop more and they eat that.
 
Reefer_madness78 said:
Canister filter isn't the problem. I also don't have room for a sump underneath or behind for a hob. The height of the Canister filter barely fits.
Click to expand...
Agree. It's not the canister filter. Consuming the nitrates with plant life is the answer canister filter or no.

If you got room for a canister could you fit in another container beside it about the same size or larger? So get some container add a light and pump the water through that. Just a thought.

worth at most .02
 
DO you have a sandbed? When was the last time you vacuumed it?

Instead of blowing off a section of your rock at every watwr change, blow off the entire rockwork and vacuum your sandbed at every WC. It will help immensely.

FWIW, pellets are the most dense food to feed, and will contribute to nitrates and phosphates significantly.
 
was meaning just for coral health, the fish are ok on the current standard. its ok to cease testing for nitrate for a while and focus on the big picture aspects of the tank, if you're using a kit that isn't digital to assess nitrate, there's nearly a certainty than any other test ran on the same sample would report a massive difference. on several comparison kit threads the spread was fifty ppm difference between common kits. its so variable of a param we often are way off base in our measures
 
Tidal Gardens
homer1475 said:
DO you have a sandbed? When was the last time you vacuumed it?

Instead of blowing off a section of your rock at every watwr change, blow off the entire rockwork and vacuum your sandbed at every WC. It will help immensely.

FWIW, pellets are the most dense food to feed, and will contribute to nitrates and phosphates significantly.
Click to expand...
My sandbed is about 1.5 to 2 inches. Only tried vacuuming a couple times. Phosphates are 0 fwiw
 
brandon429 said:
was meaning just for coral health, the fish are ok on the current standard. its ok to cease testing for nitrate for a while and focus on the big picture aspects of the tank, if you're using a kit that isn't digital to assess nitrate, there's nearly a certainty than any other test ran on the same sample would report a massive difference. on several comparison kit threads the spread was fifty ppm difference between common kits. its so variable of a param we often are way off base in our measures
Click to expand...
I don't feed coral if that's what you mean. I have had lfs test water with a different kit and it was the same
 
its a big tank to be filtered with just a canister filter. You have so much time and money invested already, why not buy a protein skimmer to help out. The weekly water changes is not enough so you might need more filtration.
 
The reason the nitrates get so high is because you don't have a way to get them out of your tank.

Your filtration is making the nitrates. It's not malfunctioning by doing that; that is what it's supposed to do. Your filtration takes the ammonia that your inhabitants produce, processes it into nitrites, and then processes the nitrites into nitrates.

In most reef tanks, there are a number of other things that then take the nitrates and convert them out. A protein skimmer will take those nitrates and convert them into skimmate, which you then empty out. A macroalgae refugium or algae scrubber will take those nitrates and convert them into algae, which you then harvest and toss. In very mature tanks with the right kind of anaerobic bacteria, they take those nitrates and convert them into nitrogen. And corals will take a small amount of nitrates and turn them into coral tissue. And water changes lower them by simply removing the water with 50 PPM of nitrates and replacing it with water with 0 PPM nitrates.

From what you've said, the only mechanisms you have for nitrate export are water changes and coral growth. Corals do not use much in the way of nitrates - 5-10 PPM is plenty for corals - so basically the only way you have to get rid of nitrates is to do a water change.

By comparison, in my tank (a 75 gallon tank w/ a 20 gallon sump, so about 40% more water, net, than you have), I have eight fish. I feed five times every day, and I feed quite heavily. I do a weekly 10% water change. After my tank stabilized, I have never had nitrates above 5 ppm (phosphates are another story entirely, my tank is not perfect by any means). But the difference is, I have a protein skimmer and a very productive chaeto refugium that I harvest weekly, usually a full softball-sized slug of dense, rich, green chaeto.

This isn't about your canister filter; you don't have to go out and replace it with a sump. I've had to deal with size restrictions myself, so I understand if your space doesn't permit it. But if you can find a way to add a protein skimmer, refugium or algae scrubber, you should be able to get your nitrates down.

To sum up: Your problem isn't nitrate production. You probably produce about as much nitrate as you should. Your problem is nitrate export - you don't have a solid, reliable mechanism to get the nitrates out of your water other than changing the water.
 
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