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nate78

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I just joined,and have a quick question for u all.I have a 24gal nanocube 3yr old,with high nitrates 50ppm and can not get them down no matter what i have tryed.I do a 20% water change a week i dose a littlebit of vsv 1ml 1x a day at the same time. I have even tested with 2 diff test kit to make sure and they both show high nitrates,all other tests are where they need to be. I have a tunze 9002 skimmer,purigen,and chemi pure elite running as well. Some other info that might help is i have one fish maybe 2" long not a whole lot of corals,tank has been sitting in the same spot for about 1.5 years. So any and all suggestions would be very helpful TIA.
 
Deltec
I have live rock probably about 25lbs and the sand isnt live sand. What other info would u like to know? Thank u Albert.
 
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nate78 said:
I have live rock probably about 25lbs and the sand isnt live sand. What other info would u like to know? Thank u Albert.
Click to expand...

My thought is that the nutrients that you cannot get down and I suspect you PO4 may be high as well and what is happening is that when you change water more of the Nitrate and more of the phosphate that is now on the rocks and in the sand is leaching back into the water and as a result IMO your levels are not going down proportionally to the amount of water you change.

If you have not cleaned your rock and sand that would IME be the thing to do so that you clean all the accumulated detritus off the rocks and out of the sand. Once that is done when you then perform water changes your levels "will" go down but to get the rocks and sand clean may take some time.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Hopefully this helps but if you have more questions do not hesitate to post them on my thread or here.

Albert
 
nate78 said:
I have live rock probably about 25lbs and the sand isnt live sand. What other info would u like to know? Thank u Albert.
Click to expand...

When I blew the dirt off my rock a few days ago here is what it looked like in the tank :

clean11.png


As you can see it looks pretty nasty when you blow all that stuff of but if you don't then it will decompose and it will keep leaching into your tank's water ...

Not saying you do not clean your rock and sand but it is a possibility

Albert
 
Thank u for the replys i do use a turkey baster and blow off my rocks and it looks like a blizzard. Ive been removing some of the sand when i do my water changes to see if that helped but it didnt. I do have a ? for u should i baste the sand as well? I have heard some people say yes and i seen no also. Also how do u vac a sand bed?
 
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nate78 said:
Thank u for the replys i do use a turkey baster and blow off my rocks and it looks like a blizzard. Ive been removing some of the sand when i do my water changes to see if that helped but it didnt. I do have a ? for u should i baste the sand as well? I have heard some people say yes and i seen no also. Also how do u vac a sand bed?
Click to expand...

You are welcome. What I would do if I may suggest so is that you blow the rocks off several times in on a day where you can e.g. on the week-end if you are home, as each time you baste them some of the detritus gets out of the tank but a lot settles back down so to get it all out you may need to do it for instance every two hours or so till the amount that comes off the rocks is minimal and of course, clean your mechanical filter each time as "out of sight is not out of the system".

The way to clean the sand is to use a "gravel cleaner" that will suck up the larger detritus but not much sand. Usually it will be a hose with a much wider attachment at the end of it like the ones we used on FW tanks when we had a rocky bottom and wanted to get the dirt out of it. If you need a pic of it let me know and I'll post one.

Clean between the rocks and behind the rocks as well ... and when you clean the sand, clean like maybe 1/3 and then the next time another 1/3 and the next time the 1/3 you have not cleaned yet.

Clean any mechanical filtration medium at least once a week (I clean mine twice a week) so you remove from the system what it has trapped.

Try all of that and then do your water changes and let me know here or on my thread how things are going Nate.

Albert
 
Welcome to R2R!

We appreciate your membership!

Thanks for joining and please make sure to post often!

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Tidal Gardens
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Are you using ro/di filtered water or tap water. do a tds on your filtered water.
 
Top Shelf Aquatics
Rockhead said:
Are you using ro/di filtered water or tap water. do a tds on your filtered water.
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Yes indeed, especially since TDS meters have come down in price so much. You can find a good one for less than $50. There are cheaper ones even but to get a more accurate reading I would suggest getting one that is one step up from the real basic ones. FWIW
 
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