Finally Reaching Out For?

[Comic_Reef]

Hello everyone,

So after 6 months of thinking I could handle it myself and tearing out my hair, I am finally reaching out for help and/or ideas.

I have been dealing with obnoxiously high nitrates since November. The problem started when I had a skimmer outage for about a week due to a broken impeller. Since then I have tried everything I can think of to get the nitrates under control to no avail. Prior to the outage I maintained 2-5ppm nitrates for nearly 2 years. Since the spike, consistently sitting at 50-100+.I have lost all my SPS corals while LPS and softies appear fine. No visible algae growth except one small spot of Cyano on the sandbed.

Parameters as of tonight :

Tank: 29g Biocube
Lighting: RapidLED Biocube Kit
Skimmer: Eshopps PSK-75H (pulling plenty of skimmate)
Powerhead: MP10

Salinity : 1.026
Phosphate: .024ppm - Hannah
Calcium: 450ppm - Salifert
Alkalinity: 12dkh - Hannah
Magnesium: 1380ppm - Salifert
Temperature: 79F (stable)
Ammonia: 0ppm - API
Nitrite: 0ppm - API
Nitrate: 100+ppm - Salifert

Things I've tried:
- Different test kits
- Dosing Phosphates (was testing at 0.00 using Hannah Phosphorus ULR prior to dosing)
- Continuous Large Water Changes (50% per week)
- Upping Vinegar Dosing gradually to 1ml/gal a day (bacteria everywhere, little to no change)
- Siphoning Sandbed
- Changing aqua scape to facilitate flow.
- Different filter medias (floss, carbon, chemipure elite, purigen)
- Adding more powerheads (no visible dead zones)
- Chaeto reactor (saw a big dip temporarily, still using)

Livestock:
1 Oscellaris Clown
2 Blue Chromis
1 Tuxedo Urchin
Cleanup Crew (snails and 2 scarlet hermits)

Any help is hugely appreciated. Thank you.

 

[JaimeAdams]

50% water changes 2 days apart will get you to where you want to be assuming you are using 0 TDS RO/DI base water.

 

[Waters]

As JaimeAdams stated, it should be as simple as water changes. Have you tested your new saltwater for nitrates?

 

[Comic_Reef]

As JaimeAdams stated, it should be as simple as water changes. Have you tested your new saltwater for nitrates?

Have done this as well. Nitrates then tested as low as 25ppm but were back up to 100 within the week.

New saltwater has been testing out at perfectly clean. RODI is the only water I've been using for new salt and top off water.

 

[theMeat]

Would guess your rocks and sand are releasing nitrate. That’s why your water changes aren’t doing what math would tell you they should.
Typical that people carbon dose and don’t see a change fast enough, then conclude it didn’t work. Stick to it, everyday, it works, takes time.

 

[Comic_Reef]

Would guess your rocks and sand are releasing nitrate. That’s why your water changes aren’t doing what math would tell you they should.
Typical that people carbon dose and don’t see a change fast enough, then conclude it didn’t work. Stick to it, everyday, it works, takes time.

I had been carbon dosing before this all began to very good success. Again, I had nitrates down to low levels thanks to carbon dosing. I have been slowly increasing the dose since January and haven't seen a drop I can contribute to the dosing

 

[Luno]

Feeding?? Didn't see a mention of it.

Nitrate is one of those things, it just needs to be removed. Your testing zero ammonia and zero nitrate suggests your tank can process nitrogen just fine. And you said you've done some pretty extensive cleaning so I'm assuming there isn't a "nitrate factory" caught up somewhere in the tank but that's the only thing I come back to.

You sound like you have a pretty good idea of how to reef, so I won't bother treating you like a novice. So I'm sure you know nitrate doesn't bind to rock or sand like phosphate, so it means it has to be coming from somewhere. If your not over feeding (fish and coral) and there's no detritus build ups im scratching my head.

But if it really is as bad as you say, I would implement multiple nitrate reduction techniques simultaneously. I would have the algae scrubber, doing constant water changes atleast bi-weekly and vinegar dosing all together. Have you tried that or tried the means separately?

I have a heavy stocked 15g I have a refugium, (a homemade skimmer that I swear is the best bank skimmer not on the market) and dose vinegar (12.5ml per day) to keep nitrates 1-2.

 

[CNDReef]

Have you siphoned the rear chambers?
Mine gets full of ditrus back there.

 

[Comic_Reef]

Feeding?? Didn't see a mention of it.

Nitrate is one of those things, it just needs to be removed. Your testing zero ammonia and zero nitrate suggests your tank can process nitrogen just fine. And you said you've done some pretty extensive cleaning so I'm assuming there isn't a "nitrate factory" caught up somewhere in the tank but that's the only thing I come back to.

You sound like you have a pretty good idea of how to reef, so I won't bother treating you like a novice. So I'm sure you know nitrate doesn't bind to rock or sand like phosphate, so it means it has to be coming from somewhere. If your not over feeding (fish and coral) and there's no detritus build ups im scratching my head.

But if it really is as bad as you say, I would implement multiple nitrate reduction techniques simultaneously. I would have the algae scrubber, doing constant water changes atleast bi-weekly and vinegar dosing all together. Have you tried that or tried the means separately?

I have a heavy stocked 15g I have a refugium, (a homemade skimmer that I swear is the best bank skimmer not on the market) and dose vinegar (12.5ml per day) to keep nitrates 1-2.

I'm scratching my own head to the point there's going to be a visible bald spot soon.

Feeding was the first thing to go, feeding small amounts once a day, making sure almost nothing is getting left to decompose. I know where my deader areas in the spot are and give them extra love every time I'm doing water changes. Nothing extensive collects there ever. Vacuum out my chambers every water change.

I have goopy stands off bacteria on everything (even stalls my power heads from time to time). I have been running vinegar and chaeto for about a month together now. I was up to 1ml/gal on the vinegar but cut back a little because the bacteria was beginning to cover the chaeto and kill it.

 

[Comic_Reef]

Have you siphoned the rear chambers?
Mine gets full of ditrus back there.

Yeah, I make sure to do that every go around. Recently scraped them completely clean with a scraper too

 

[Comic_Reef]

Would taking the rocks out, blowing them off thoroughly in a separate container of saltwater and vacuuming the sand beneath them hurt at all? Obviously, I dont want to cause more damage. Just brainstorming some ideas.

 

[CNDReef]

How old is your sand?
I had to replace my sand completely because of not being able to lower my nutrients.
Here’s the crud I got out with the sand

 

[Comic_Reef]

My sand is about 2 years old. I am months away from upgrading my tank so I would hate to replace the sand only to have to do it again in 3 months. If thats the case, I may just wait till I start up the new tank before doing that. Everything in the tank seems to be doing okay, the LPS and Softies still come out fully and the livestock seems stable

 

[Halal Hotdog]

Have you thought about carbon dosing? If the rocks are leaching out nitrates, IMO the easiest way is to remove it from the water column and let it reach an equilibrium. Carbon dosing can literally take your nitrates to zero, so be careful with it.

 

[Comic_Reef]

Have you thought about carbon dosing? If the rocks are leaching out nitrates, IMO the easiest way is to remove it from the water column and let it reach an equilibrium. Carbon dosing can literally take your nitrates to zero, so be careful with it.

Had been carbon dosing regularly for over a year. It did dip my Nitrates to near zero. Never stopped carbon dosing. The problem still exists. :?

 

[Halal Hotdog]

Had been carbon dosing regularly for over a year. It did dip my Nitrates to near zero. Never stopped carbon dosing. The problem still exists. :?

I missed the vinegar part in your initial write up, my apologizes. IME regardless of where your nitrates are you can significantly reduce them with carbon dosing. The only way it does not work effectively is if the phosphates dip to zero, but it seems you have already started dosing phosphate. Perhaps you need to take your phosphates even higher. Is your skimmer functioning normally?

 

[Fudsey]

How deep is your sand bed? You could gradually siphon out some on each water change and go bare bottom until the upgrade

 

[CNDReef]

My sand is about 2 years old. I am months away from upgrading my tank so I would hate to replace the sand only to have to do it again in 3 months. If thats the case, I may just wait till I start up the new tank before doing that. Everything in the tank seems to be doing okay, the LPS and Softies still come out fully and the livestock seems stable

Wasn’t too hard or expensive
I bought 1 bag of sand
Put my live rock corals and fish in a holding tank ( sterillite container) with about half the water from the tank.
Made fresh salt water to make up the difference
Removed the sand and the rest of the water and went at it backwards. Took about 3 hours to do on my biocube.

 

[Comic_Reef]

I missed the vinegar part in your initial write up, my apologizes. IME regardless of where your nitrates are you can significantly reduce them with carbon dosing. The only way it does not work effectively is if the phosphates dip to zero, but it seems you have already started dosing phosphate. Perhaps you need to take your phosphates even higher. Is your skimmer functioning normally?

I was thinking about throwing some more phosphate in even if just to help the chaeto a bit more. I dosed a bit of iron to help with that as well. My thinking was a such: worst case scenario, I fascilitate an algae outbreak, that algae consumes a lot of nutrients, I pluck it, vacuum it, etc and then I'm manually exporting it. When the nitrates dip, I use GFO to lower the phosphates back down. Obviously that a nuclear option but.....

 

[Comic_Reef]

So here is my to do list:

- Back to Back to Back 50% water changes
- Rinsing all rock off in a separate container searching for any hidden detritus traps that aren't obvious to the eye
- Replacing sand bed

Also: I have an old back of live sand that was opened a year ago. Would using it cause a big cycle? Could I cure it in saltwater by itself for a week or two to mitigate that?