High Nitrate

[Claudia Renteria]

So I found my ATO inside my sump last night and my water was all cloudy all my 9 BTA were close. So today I tested my water everything was goo but my Nitrates, they were at 30-35ppm so I did a 10g water change. It's a 24g cube, tested the Nitrate again and drop down to 10. What else should I do? TIA

 

[Brew12]

So I found my ATO inside my sump last night and my water was all cloudy all my 9 BTA were close. So today I tested my water everything was goo but my Nitrates, they were at 30-35ppm so I did a 10g water change. It's a 24g cube, tested the Nitrate again and drop down to 10. What else should I do? TIA

Welcome to Reef2Reef! Glad to have you here!

35ppm NO3 really isn't terribly high. Are you saying part of your ATO system fell into your sump and stirred stuff up making it cloudy? If that is the case, I would recommend just letting everything settle out.

Maybe others in the #reefsquad can offer some advice.

 

[Maritimer]

What are your salinity, ALK and pH looking like?

~Bruce

 

[john.m.cole3]

WELCOME to R2R!!! The friendliest saltwater forum ever.

I think you took the correct actio by doing a water change, but I would recommend a smaller one next time. You did a 40% change at 10 gallons, so maybe several 20% or 10% changes done over a few weeks would not shock the system too much. From my experience, BTAs are quite hardy species. I would simply leave them alone and carry on as you were. Light always amplifies stress situations so if the BTA doesn't look a little better I would consider dimming your lights and slowly ramping them back up over a 2 week period of time.

As Bruce mentioned, a quick look at salinity, alk, and ph would help to make sure your little guy will be ok.

 

[Claudia Renteria]

Salinity is at 1.026, PH 8.0. Need to check my alk. So update, today everything looks a lot better, I have been adding stability to the water. Water is clear again! Will test my water again to make sure all parameters are good. Thank you!

 

[LobsterOfJustice]

It sounds like the control unit for your ATO fell into the sump? If so I think you did the right thing by doing a big water change. If I'm understanding this correctly, I don't think nitrate is what you need to worry about... there's lots of nasty stuff in electronics (copper wires, for one thing). I would run some carbon if you aren't already and run a poly filter to soak up any weird chemical contaminants.