High Nitrate!

[User1]

What skimmers do you have? Two would seem to say the skimmer isn't sized correctly or efficient.

You can also pick up a ATI Lab ICP test and send that off while debugging other issues. Just note the date you send it off and what temps you have to compare against. I also tend to agree with the poster above saying to test for Nitrites. That will skew the test Nitrate test result. Your tank looks great with a light bio load and very clean sand bed.

 

[LisaJ21]

What skimmers do you have? Two would seem to say the skimmer isn't sized correctly or efficient.

You can also pick up a ATI Lab ICP test and send that off while debugging other issues. Just note the date you send it off and what temps you have to compare against. I also tend to agree with the poster above saying to test for Nitrites. That will skew the test Nitrate test result. Your tank looks great with a light bio load and very clean sand bed.

Coral Life skimmers. 125 gallon and a 250 gallon.
I just checked my nitrite and its zero.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Coral Life skimmers. 125 gallon and a 250 gallon.
I just checked my nitrite and its zero.

Look into a bio pellet reactor or sulfur reactor to reduce your N03.

The skimmers you have are limited, but upgrading most likely won't have much impact on N03 reduction.

 

[User1]

Look into a bio pellet reactor or sulfur reactor to reduce your N03.

The skimmers you have are limited, but upgrading most likely won't have much impact on N03 reduction.

Probably right although I'd wager there are more efficient skimmers and reduction in cleaning two instead of one. Especially if they go down the route of dosing something like vodka, vinegar, or nopox to reduce the nitrate.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Probably right although I'd wager there are more efficient skimmers and reduction in cleaning two instead of one. Especially if they go down the route of dosing something like vodka, vinegar, or nopox to reduce the nitrate.

Skimmers are effective in pulling DOC's out of the water, not so much in reduction of N03.

 

[lapin]

Look into a bio pellet reactor or sulfur reactor to reduce your N03.

First get a second opinion on the water using a different kit.
To the above you can also look into a "algae turf scrubber" or ATS.

 

[Dan_P]

A teaspoon of table sugar every day for a month now. The tank gets really cloudy but clears out the next day. About two days after the walls are full of a white film. I clean it off once a week.
Maybe I'm being impatient but I've watched YouTube videos of guys sugar dosing and the nitrate going down after a week or so for them.

I did a 25% water change three days ago. I do one once a week.

OK thanks. I will go off to a corner and do some figures.

I have an interest in carbon dosing and started studying the method using calcium acetate. I do not have many experiments under my belt yet but I am starting to wonder whether cloudiness can occur with little or no nitrate reduction. That might happen when the bacteria are obtaining their nitrogen from something other than nitrate. So many questions...

 

[Dan_P]

A teaspoon of table sugar every day for a month now. The tank gets really cloudy but clears out the next day. About two days after the walls are full of a white film. I clean it off once a week.
Maybe I'm being impatient but I've watched YouTube videos of guys sugar dosing and the nitrate going down after a week or so for them.

I did a 25% water change three days ago. I do one once a week.

A teaspoon of sucrose in 125 gallons of water delivers about the same amount of carbon as adding vinegar at a rate of 1 mL vinegar per gallon. And that seems to be considered near the top end of the addition rate for vinegar, where you can start to see bacterial blooms.

It seems many folks ramp up the dosing rate of vinegar over weeks before finally seeing their nitrates decline, sometimes before reaching the highest dosing rate. I don’t know if ramping up is beneficial or just a cautious approach. Also, it seems that dosing might not be equally effective in every situaion, though this can simply be a result of everyone doing it slightly different.

If you don’t want the cloudiness that accompanies dosing but want to continue dosing, try lowering the dose until you don’t see haze. You might also try splitting the dose between a morning and evening addition. The time to see results could be awhile (I don’t know why though).

 

[Qusai A.]

I once bought “RO” water that had a higher TDS reading than the local source water, that’s what happens when people don’t change the filter membranes

 

[Belgian Anthias]

Adding this amount of sugar daily increases the bio-load explosively. Making a cloud every day? Bacteria growing explosively will also die at the same rate . Carbon dosing does not remove a thing from the system but produces protein which becomes part of the food chain and will be dissimulated and remineralized when not removed in time. Also when consumed most nitrogen will be released back into the system. Do not expect the skimmer to remove all organics, it does not. A skimmer removes max +- 30% . If the added food has a high protein content and high nitrogen content, the nitrate level will not decrease without a proper denitrification capacity.
For the moment the carrying capacity of the system, based on its ability to reduce ammonia, is probably supported mainly by heterothropic growth. Bacteria prefer ammonia as a nitrogen source and will assimilate nitrate only when ammonia is used up. As the nitrate level does not go down wile the nitrification capacity is kept very low a lot of ammonia must be cycling in this system.
Do NOT stop dosing sugar but build it down very slowly and try to install a denitrification capacity. This can be done once the ammonia reduction is balanced again between heterothropic and autothropic ammonia reduction. Take at least tree weeks to build down sugar dosing completely . When starting building down the doses I would not add food for two days. During the building down period include some days without feeding.
Carbon dosing should be based on a known parameter connected to the system, limited to the daily NO3-N overproduction.

 

[LisaJ21]

Adding this amount of sugar daily increases the bio-load explosively. Making a cloud every day? Bacteria growing explosively will also die at the same rate . Carbon dosing does not remove a thing from the system but produces protein which becomes part of the food chain and will be dissimulated and remineralized when not removed in time. Also when consumed most nitrogen will be released back into the system. Do not expect the skimmer to remove all organics, it does not. A skimmer removes max +- 30% . If the added food has a high protein content and high nitrogen content, the nitrate level will not decrease without a proper denitrification capacity.
For the moment the carrying capacity of the system, based on its ability to reduce ammonia, is probably supported mainly by heterothropic growth. Bacteria prefer ammonia as a nitrogen source and will assimilate nitrate only when ammonia is used up. As the nitrate level does not go down wile the nitrification capacity is kept very low a lot of ammonia must be cycling in this system.
Do NOT stop dosing sugar but build it down very slowly and try to install a denitrification capacity. This can be done once the ammonia reduction is balanced again between heterothropic and autothropic ammonia reduction. Take at least tree weeks to build down sugar dosing completely . When starting building down the doses I would not add food for two days. During the building down period include some days without feeding.
Carbon dosing should be based on a known parameter connected to the system, limited to the daily NO3-N overproduction.

I don't have any ammonia, it's at zero along with nitrite.

 

[Cory]

Are you using any filter foam or floss?

 

[Cory]

Also growing macroalgae will help a lot or an algae turf scrubber is even better.

 

[LisaJ21]

Also growing macroalgae will help a lot or an algae turf scrubber is even better.

I have the macroalgae that I got back in August and it's been growing like crazy in the refugium. I was using polyfilters but I heard filter pads are nitrate factories.

 

[Cory]

I have the macroalgae that I got back in August and it's been growing like crazy in the refugium. I was using polyfilters but I heard filter pads are nitrate factories.

Yeah they can be if you have a high organic load. If you want to get rid of the nitrates look into organic input and organic uptake and export.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I personally do not prefer sugar dosing relative to dosing of other organics (vodka or vinegar). I think people more often have issues with it.

That said, if nitrate is high, the organic dosing should being it down. Checking the phosphate is a fine plan because if very low it could be an issue for nitrate reduction, but I think that unless you are exporting phosphate somehow (like GFO) then it is quite unlikely that you really have 180 ppm nitrate and phosphate too low. They usually come in together in foods.

 

[Belgian Anthias]

I don't have any ammonia, it's at zero along with nitrite.

What I mean is that a lot of ammonia must cycle in this system as the nitrate level does not decrease using the amount of sugar. This may be because not much of the produced bio-load is actually removed and is recycled. For example one may have a daily NH4-N production of 1ppm without measuring a thing . As 1 gram of sugar may induce the assimilation of +- 13.4 mg NH4-N one may estimate the amount of Nitrogen and bio-load cycled. The difference is in the way how the ammonia is reduced, by growth, the production op protein, or by autothropic nitrification. When nitrified the nitrogen may be removed by denitrification and is not available any more to be recycled.
If most ammonia is used up for growth due to the high availability of organic carbon, a very low nitrification capacity is available. That is why I advice to build off the additions very slowly. This to prevent ammonia to build up while reinstalling the nitrification capacity. As the system has a high nitrate level the base for the nitrification capacity must have been in place.

Sugar is glucose in combination with fructose. Only those bacteria which have the enzymes to divide the glucose from the fructose, use sucrose, are able to use sugar, meaning a selective bunch of bacteria is cultivated, able to use sugar as a carbon source. As a skimmer is selective in the removal of bio-load, maybe those types of bacteria are not readily skimmed off and stay behind?

 

[Rcpilot]

I know you said you've checked TDS. Is there a way to check the calibration of the TDS meter?

What is the source of your RO water? Do you have an RO unit or do you buy it? If you buy it, are you sure its okay?

I'd buy a different test kit. Get a fresh water test kit and test nitrates in the RO water.... before you mix in the salt.

 

[beaslbob]

sometimes nitrates can be high because the algae is busy consuming ammonia. Once the aerobic bacteria builds up and consumes the ammonia then nitrates drop down. If that is the case you have a very stable and balanced system.

 

[DiZASTiX]

You're "off the charts" for the API and RedSea test kits. The RedSea kit only goes to 64 ppm with high range testing. With 0 or near-0 phosphates, and over 64 ppm RedSea-tested nitrates, I did the following:

1. Purchase an ATS (ClearWater works great)
2. Dose vinegar (auto)
3. Use biopellets (reactor)
4. Manually dose sugar, initially to the point where I can see a white bacterial mulm, then cut back. For me, I know that's about 3 packets for roughly 50 gal). Dose Zeovit Bio-Mate if y0u like, to combat mulm.
5. Check phosphate daily using Hanna checker (Low or ULR) -- if I see 0.00, I dose phosphate. Check again every day, and figure out how much you need.
6. I do dose the bacterial source from both Zeovit and AquaForest daily.

Turn off ALK dosing. Make a note of how quickly ALK drops in a day. If you dosed a decent but not unsafe amount of carbon, you'll notice that pH will drop rapidly after an hour or so, and then rise back up. This is due to the increase in CO2 from bacteria. Then, if you test ALK, you'll notice that there was clearly ALK "added" to the tank. In my case, with ALK dosing off, with 4 packets of sugar, I got 0.3 dKH increase, so I knew that was probably too much organic carbon to dose.

I lowered the dosing until ALK would be lowering, as I like a low ALK.

After only a week, RedSea test measures a lighter red, though it's still off the charts.

Notes: It's probably not necessary to do #2 with #3, and Randy specifically pointed out for other people that VSV or some combination thereof doesn't have scientific merit. One carbon source is adequate. In my case, this combination seemed to have worked well. In my experience, sugar seems to work the fastest.

Randy doesn't really like sugar dosing, and I've been using it only as a stop gap measure. It doesn't dose as easily as sugar (you'd have to melt it, and I think it might break down in your reservoir; I don't know).