Hello all, I need some help. I have a new reef tank that has been running for about 5 months and I have been fighting high nitrates the whole time. My phosphates were high in the beginning but i have gotten them to come down to acceptable levels at .05 or .06 depending on the day. Nitrates are reguarly off the scale 50+ using redsea. I feed twice a week pellets and mysis. I have a skimmer running that is pulling gunk and the fuge is running but chaeto seems to have stalled some. Any advice would be much appreciated!
High Nitrates acceptable Phosphates
- Thread starter JD2716
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I have the same issue. Nitrates were regularly 40 while phosphates were around 30 or less on a Hanna checker. I started leaving my refugium light on 24/7 but that didn't do much despite significant growth of my chaeto. Eventually I started dosing with NoPox and now my nitrates finally started coming down. In 2 weeks, it's dropped 50% and I'm not even at the recommended dose. I started at a 1/3 of the recommended dose and have been titrating up by about 3ml every 4-5 days. NoPox lowers nitrates much more significantly than it does phosphates, so that might be your best bet.
I had this problem with my old tank, I ended up using nopox to get mine down takes about 2-3 weeks to see a drop. I never followed the corrected dosage till my levels dropped which tbh you have to do. I followed the instructions somewhat like for every 10ppm dosed 3ml of nopox per day. think I got it down from 35ppm to 8ppm after about 4-5 weeks once I was happy with the nitrate I switched to the recommended dosage of 2ml for 1-10ppm per 100l/25g
