High nitrates

Kimberely · Oct 12, 2018

I have a 125 gallon reef stocked with 2 ocellaris clowns, 2 azure damsels, 2 green chromis, a royal gramma, a diamond goby, and 4 Indian Ocean lyretail anthias, softies and lps. I'm running 2 Fluval 406 canisters. I got sick and had to have major surgery to remove a 15 pound cyst and was subsequently unable to do water changes or clean the filters for 8 weeks (and it had been almost a month since my last water change when this happened). My nitrates are at 20ppm and phosphate 0.02, how big of a water change can I do to get the nitrate back down to 5-10ppm without disrupting the system too much? And should I still split cleaning the canisters between 2 water changes like I normally do or just do both at once?

GoPitt88 · Oct 12, 2018

To lower the nitrates 50%, you'd need to change 50% of the water. But I don't think 20 ppm of nitrates is bad at all.

Kimberely · Oct 12, 2018

GoPitt88 said:
To lower the nitrates 50%, you'd need to change 50% of the water. But I don't think 20 ppm of nitrates is bad at all.

Thanks. It's not terrible but I'd prefer it to be lower. I was just a bit afraid to change so much all at once. Normally I'd do about 20% a month but that wasn't going to lower it as much as I'd like.

GoPitt88 · Oct 12, 2018

Kimberely said:
Thanks. It's not terrible but I'd prefer it to be lower. I was just a bit afraid to change so much all at once. Normally I'd do about 20% a month but that wasn't going to lower it as much as I'd like.

Maybe do 20% weekly for a month or so and see if that helps.