Buying a used tank with 50ppm nitrate

[Greenjim]

Hello everyone,

My experience is nearly a year with a nano tank. Got mainly soft corals, manage to save a torch and a duncan after brown jelly killed the rest. Now fighting with dinos for 2 month. I love all those chanllenge and i love to learn.

So, i found this red sea reefer 350 with gear and livestock for a good price (2000$ canadian pesos) and the seller is helping me on saturday to move it and set it up at my place.

I took a sample of his water, alk is at 7.5 and nitrate are 50.4ppm. Tested with hannah and the seller was not suprised.

I will throw some of his water away to reduce those nitrate, but i dont want to stress the livestock. My mains focus is to please the anemones.

Should i do a 100% water change?

I was thinking of getting the nitrate down to 15-20, then setting up a working refugium with chaeto to get them down slowly arround 5-10.

I will aclimate the livestock to the new water too.

I have no interest in SPS and i will transfer my duncan and torch when i trust this new tank.


What do you guys think?

 

[Brymac1]

I wouldn’t worry about 50 ppm nitrate too much if the animals are happy. My tank runs at around 40 ppm nitrate, and things look good (to me at least).

 

[Greenjim]

I wouldn’t worry about 50 ppm nitrate too much if the animals are happy. My tank runs at around 40 ppm nitrate, and things look good (to me at least).

Your tank is beauthiful, thank you for the answer!

 

[Sold4jc7]

I would transfer the tank and do weekly water changes to reduce the levels slowly. I would have a good amount of fresh saltwater on hand. I've always used more fresh saltwater than I expected on tank transfers.

 

[Idech]

50 ppm nitrates wouldn't worry me either. The tank has probably been neglected since he’s selling it and I’m sure it will go down at least a bit. We see many successful tanks with high nitrates on this forum.

 

[mfinn]

I wouldn't do a 100% water change all at once.
I would do several large water changes over a week or so.

 

[Big Smelly fish]

From my experience back when I did aquarium maintenance, I moved a lot of tanks for customers. I would only take enough water from the tank to hold fish during the move and the rest was fresh saltwater. So at most I maybe saved 25%. Another thing was I never reused sand. The sand replacement was because most of the tanks were set up for years and the sand was filthy.

 

[Subsea]

I don’t test nitrates anymore and in addition to heavy feeding, I add ammonia. 75G display at 25 years mature,

 

[JCOLE]

Those Nitrates could be coming from the old sand. I would take everything but toss the old sand. Start with fresh new sand and add a cup or two of sand from your existing tank to help seed it.