High nitrates

[WeLoveReefers]

I've always had high nitrates 20 to 40 so I finally bought a skimmer and doing Vodka dosing. I am wondering will skimming and vodka dosing alone bring down my nitrates entirely I'd love to have them at 0-5. Or should I do a water change? The skimmer and vodka I've been doing for 4 days now and they went down from 25 to 15. Should I just stick with that or will the skimming and vodka bring them to where I want without a water change?

 

[beaslbob]

From what I hear dosing can/will bring down the nitrates.

One thing to consider is that plant action like algae or macros can result in nitrates as the plant life is consuming ammonia and not nitrates until aerobic bacteria build up. Once that happens the nitrates will drop down.

Another thing is that water changes alone will never result in low nitrates even with no nitrates in the replacement water. For instance, if you have say 1 ppm/day increse in nitrates and to a 10% water change every 10 days, nitrates will be 100ppm before the water change then drop down to 90 and be back up to 100 just before the next water change. Tthat 10ppm drop removes the 10ppm buildup between water changes.

I recommend algae like macros in a refugium to balance out and stabilize the system. Once the bacteria have built up then nitrates will usually just remain unmeasurable.


my .02