Dropping nitrates

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Oceansize said:
The two most effective things I've done for nitrate export/control are buying a Diamond Goby and a Sulphur Denitrator, the Korallin s-1520.

The Diamond Goby is very efficient at stirring sand; once he made himself at home, stirring my sand bed myself now produces very little "fluff" or "snow." My sand is now always white instead of various shades of brown.

The sulphur denitrator is very good at keeping your nitrates wherever you want, including near-zero. It returns de-nitrated water back to your tank via a drip hose; you simply set the drip rate to maintain your preferred nitrate level. The negatives are it's a tad expensive ($300 I think?) and it can take about two months to get running at peak efficiency, so admittedly it does not meet your criteria for quick reduction of nitrates. It just means that you won't have this problem again. ;)
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Had diamond goby at one time. He did a great job with sand. One side effect was he would constantly bury corals.
After about a year he ended up starving to death. He would eat what I was feeding but very little because of the other fish. That is an expensive piece of equipment...may serve me down the road. Will see
 
Oscaror said:
Upgraded my skimmer to a reef octopus, built a refugium, ran carbon, I guess all of this at once must have shocked my system.
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That could do it. I plan on giving my system at least a month after I get nitrates down to where I want to see what happens. Then take necessary action if needed
 
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reefndude said:
That would be an easier way for me to do it...if it worked for. I believe in order for carbon dosing to work you need an efficient skimmer to pull excess bacteria. My skimmer is still on the thinking about it shelf.
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I do have a skimmer too. A vertex 150. Water changes help to a point,but one needs to export more nutrients than what comes in as well as dosing to get to our goal. Before dosing my lowest PO4 was .2ppm and now it is .07ppm . By the way I don't do regular water changes,so dosing helps as well as skimming together. note before I started dosing and skimming I just used a GFO/Carbon reactor. Now I use all 3 to arrive at .07 PO4 . YOU CAN SUCCEED :cool:
 
Just did another 25g water change. Mixed for about a hour and no change on red sea test kit. I think I'm done with water changes for a bit. A lot of work.
PO4 did drop for .11 to .08
I did add 25% more gfo. Other 75% been in use for 2 weeks or so.
Let it run for a little while and see what happens. If it continues to rise I'll order a skimmer and take it from there. Anyone want to point me in the right direction for a skimmer?
Water volume, estimating 140-150 gallons. Cost is a factor
 
Oscaror said:
Upgraded my skimmer to a reef octopus, built a refugium, ran carbon, I guess all of this at once must have shocked my system.
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Could have been light shock due to the water absorbing less blue and UV light.
 
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Reefing Madness said:
Start dosing 1ml vodka for 3 days, after 3 days jump it to 5mls. After 7 days jump it to 10mls a day, split up the dosing to 5mls in am and 5mls in the pm. Every 5 days jump it another 5mls. Split the dosing in half on every dose. Watch your Nitrate numbers, test once a week, the day of the next jump. When they have started to come down, then that daily dosage will be your maintenance dose until they come all the way down, at that point you won't jump it up anymore but maintain what your dosing. Once your numbers have come down to where you want them, then cut the dose in half, and that will be your daily dose to maintain that number.
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This seems like very large jumps in dosing. Is this how people do it? I have been battling high nitrates as well using vodka in my ato. I started at 1ml and bump up the dose by .5ml every week. I'm up to 3.5ml. I haven't seen a drop in nitrates yet but my skimmer has been producing like crazy.
 
Tested again this evening and the color is very close to the 1 ppm range.
This indicates 16 ppm for the high range test.

Salifert kit results are very close to 25 ppm range. Either case nitrates have dropped after 90 gallons of water changes in a 4 day period. Way to much work and time.

Dusting on glass has seemed to slow. All livestock looks to have taken all the water changes well. On top of that the little bit of chaeto i have left seems to have bulked up some too.
 
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thormx said:
This seems like very large jumps in dosing. Is this how people do it? I have been battling high nitrates as well using vodka in my ato. I started at 1ml and bump up the dose by .5ml every week. I'm up to 3.5ml. I haven't seen a drop in nitrates yet but my skimmer has been producing like crazy.
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What most people do is follow Melevs experimental way of dosing, he did this to show everyone on paper how it worked, and how long it takes to get to a certain MLS to drop Ntirates. The way I advise it done, won't take 7 months to drop someones numbers down, and it will not harm the tank.
 
After a total of 140 gallons of water changes nitrates are now reading 14-15 ppm. That's about 100% of total system volume and nitrates have dropped approximately 50%.
Doesn't seem to be rising in between the water changes. Gonna continue with water changes until it drops to 8 ppm range. Hopefully I can maintain those levels with my normal maintenance.
Heading to lfs tomorrow to pick up more chaeto...and salt. Maybe a frag or too while I'm at it.
 
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Does anybody know where to buy Iron in Buk, If I dose Red Sea C, I go throught a lot of it. Tank volume is 700 galons, including sumps.
 
blacktippr said:
Does anybody know where to buy Iron in Buk, If I dose Red Sea C, I go throught a lot of it. Tank volume is 700 galons, including sumps.
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Not sure that you need "bulk". One bottle of Fergon tablets from a drug store will last a very long time, even on a 700 gallon tank. :)
 
I use Ferron tablets. I only used 4 or 5 tablets in a year. 150 gallon system
 
Avast
What I do is dissolve one tablet in about 25 mL of Ro/DI water by soaking overnight, then shake briefly to mix, then let it settle, and I add about 1-2 mL of the clear liquid to my system, with a total water volume of about 250 gallons.
 
Randy Holmes-Farley said:
What I do is dissolve one tablet in about 25 mL of Ro/DI water by soaking overnight, then shake briefly to mix, then let it settle, and I add about 1-2 mL of the clear liquid to my system, with a total water volume of about 250 gallons.
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Do you measure Iron with a test kit, What range should be ideal?
 
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blacktippr said:
Do you measure Iron with a test kit, What range should be ideal?
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No, there's no kit that can read low enough. In some sense, the exact dose appears to not be critical as it is fairly rapidly depleted. Surface NSW levels are on the order of 0.000006 ppm.

One Fergon table contains 27 mg of iron. Adding 1/10th of a tablet to 700 gallons would put the concentration at about 0.001 ppm (1 ppb). No kit can read that low, but it is much higher than NSW levels, at least when first dosed.

I know iron isn't substantially accumulating in the water of my system because while a Triton test can detect the amount I first dose (1-2 ppb), it did not detect any when I tested the water (and claims to be able to detect 0.3 ppb).
 

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