Fighting nitrates.

[paul day]

I have a 60 cube. 20 gallon sump. 80 pounds of live rock. 2 years old. 30 pounds of live sand. 5 fish 2 clowns 1 yellow tang. 1 coral beauty 1 green manderine. 11 coral frags. About 4 corals. 20 red and blue leg hermits. 10 snails. 5 tigger nausarius 1 fire shrimp. I. Run brs biopellets. In there reactor. About a cup. Dose Red Sea nopox. According to instructions. 8 ml a day. I run brs carbon rox 8. About half a cup per instructions. Gfo was removed cause of no pox. Ammonia 0 nitrite 0. Phosphate 0.25. Nitrates r always. 40ppm plus. Using a salivary test kit. I have a reef octopus skimmer 10 inch one. Think 250. Use Red Sea coral pro salt. At 35ppm salinity. Always have high nitrates.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I think you need a deep clean. something in there is funky.

A long couple months of weekly WC should help a lot. But how's everything in the tank doing. High numbers aren't always a bad thing.

 

[Myka]

First off, I hope you plan to re-home that Yellow Tang as he gets much too large and too active for a 60-gallon cube.

The simple answer to your implied question is: You're either overfeeding or under cleaning or both.

You have a whack of rock in that tank which leads me to believe there is a fair bit of flow restriction, and in cube tanks people tend to pile rocks in the middle like a pyramid. Not sure if yours is like that, but it allows a lot of detritus to get trapped. Your sand is about 1.5-2" deep given that weight? That's an awkward depth - it's too shallow to be a deep sand bed, and it's too deep to be a shallow sand bed. Personally, I like to only have 1/2-1" of sand as it stays much cleaner. Do you vacuum it with a gravel vacuum? You certainly need more sand cleaners - try 2 or 3 Strawberry/Fighting/Orange Lipped Conchs and a Tiger Tail Cucumber. Did you start with dry rock or was it live from the beginning? Did you buy it "used"? Do you have sponges/socks/pads? How often changed? Cleaned or new ones? Do you run the output of your biopellet reactor into the input of your skimmer? How much of what and how often do you feed? Do you feed the corals? Do you feed liquid foods? Need many more details to figure out if you're under cleaning or overfeeding or both.

Fwiw, I don't like to double up on organic carbon dosing like you're doing with the biopellets AND the NoPox. That's asking for trouble IME.

Also, please post a photo of your tank and your sump area. Pictures often speak 1000 words.

 

[paul day]

2pics of sumps

 

[paul day]

Sump rocks below

 

[paul day]

Dt

 

[paul day]

Dt

 

[paul day]

What I feed

 

[paul day]

How much a night

 

[paul day]

Out put tube from bio pellets goes right to intake of skimmer sand is about 3/4 inch barely enough to cover snails rock was dry and cleaned and cycled for two years with only clownfish in tank from Kb reefs I don't feed corals as thought that's what fish poop does and they get calcium and mg from salt that 15 gallons of water changes a week did.

 

[leocom2000]

Just feed less. Some chaeto or similar micro algae will help. Otherwise water changes and time -lowering nitrates takes time.

 

[Myka]

It doesn't look like you're overfeeding. The questions about feeding corals and such were because lots of people leave out the fact that they feed their corals some kind of magic food and their anemone a silverside everyday. Hahaha! So if you're not overfeeding, then you're under cleaning.

Marco rock, yes? That stuff is super heavy, and not too porous. It's not very inducive to anaerobic bacteria populations which help to reduce nitrate. Since the rocks are leaning against the glass there is a lot of stagnant area behind the rocks. If you hired my company to look after your tank, I'd do the following:

- Rearrange the rock work so none is touching the glass to allow better water flow around it.
- Remove the rock from the sump.
- Discontinue NoPox, but continue with biopellets. (how hard are your biopellets tumbling? I like TLF reactors better than those BRS ones)
- Do weekly 20% waterchanges and vacuum the sand in its entirety each time.
- Change filter socks 1 hour after each waterchange, wash them in the washing machine with bleach.

I would reassess after 4 weeks.