Highest Nitrite and Nitrate

[adamf83]

Since moving away from a canister filter to a sump setup, my parameters just don’t seem right. I previously had my nitrite at 0, my nitrates at around 8, now my nitrites are around 0.5, nitrates around 25-30.

The fish seem fine, but when something has been relatively stable for months I can’t help think It’s due to the change in setup.

I last did a water change 2 weeks ago, around 25 litres (it’s a 125l tank), doing another one today, but the last one didn’t seem to make a difference.

In terms of the sump, 3 chambers, drain from the DT goes into the back left, with a Bubble Magus Curve 5 skimmer. There is nasty looking stuff accumulating in the skimmer cup, but nothing too dark. Does the position of the inlet have any bearing on how well the skimmer works?

In the 2nd chamber, Marine Pure balls, a bag of Seachem Denitrate and a some filter wool between that chamber and the return pump chamber.

Any suggestions on what I can do to get the nitrite and nitrate back down, closer to where they were?

 

[brandon429]

We just dont factor it anymore, simple as that. Nitrite has been booted from reefing measure for the reasons you listed. ammonia control is all that matters, and nitrate is for algae tuning and coral color tuning and environmental tuning for invasion control.

I know how hard it is to un factor a reefing param. But if you un factor it, your reef works the same forever. For about 8 straight years now we've been making just massive threads showing reefs started and ran with nitrite claimed, and it just doesnt matter. specifically, if you have the one reef on file where nitrite was there truly, then it doesnt matter due to reasons Randy has listed from chloride channel blocking.

if its not there, and its a test blurb cross read of some type, still doesnt matter. Nitrite cannot stall a cycle, I know videos say it can, but I have hundreds of tanks on file where it doesnt matter.

there's no course to take, since the param is unimpactful in reefing start to finish. Its officially my most unneeded to know param in all of reefing.

without pics how do we know you have enough surface area after removing the canister or changing up the tank's surface area? Because your whole tank would be dead in 24 hours after the remove if you didnt. and there is no such thing as a partial cycle. your tank is either not cycled and cant preserve life past 24 hours, or it can, and its 1000% cycled/you have enough surface area. no middle ground.

the tester reporting free nitrite is suspect #1

if its a hach digital then Im curious to know what it reads, but still no action due. if we accept the testing is highly accurate, then one mechanism I can see causing it is upwelling detritus and casting it all around during the work. I give this tank a .001% chance of having true sustained free nitrite and if it does, simply rip clean all the waste castings out of the tank and it won't.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Since moving away from a canister filter to a sump setup, my parameters just don’t seem right. I previously had my nitrite at 0, my nitrates at around 8, now my nitrites are around 0.5, nitrates around 25-30.

The fish seem fine, but when something has been relatively stable for months I can’t help think It’s due to the change in setup.

I last did a water change 2 weeks ago, around 25 litres (it’s a 125l tank), doing another one today, but the last one didn’t seem to make a difference.

In terms of the sump, 3 chambers, drain from the DT goes into the back left, with a Bubble Magus Curve 5 skimmer. There is nasty looking stuff accumulating in the skimmer cup, but nothing too dark. Does the position of the inlet have any bearing on how well the skimmer works?

In the 2nd chamber, Marine Pure balls, a bag of Seachem Denitrate and a some filter wool between that chamber and the return pump chamber.

Any suggestions on what I can do to get the nitrite and nitrate back down, closer to where they were?

If nitrite is nonzero, the nitrate test may not be accurate. With some kits, 0.5 ppm nitrite will read as 50 ppm nitrate.

 

[brandon429]

Nitrite compliance itself I think is largely unstudied in the context of reef tank work, setup, changes and that's pretty neat to consider. I spend my time making sure ammonia is handled in cycling threads and tank action/cleaning threads and when its not, there's death we can see without having to test. nitrite being nonlethal and unfactored + not very accurately tested for makes it hard to predict compared to control of initial free ammonia in my opinion.

perhaps big cleaning jobs and any form of surface area reduction indeed does alter nitrite conversions, it doesnt harm initial ammonia conversion but nobody says all clades of bac and metabolism states have to all line up perfectly. If in time true measures show nitrite to be much more finicky than ammonia-controlling ability, that will be neat to see.

Nobody would've thought ammonia dynamics would have taken so long to uncover in the hobby, even that is very recent info. Check forum work in ammonia dynamics pre-seneye (API-governed learning) its a dang crazy zone of .25, .5 and 8 ppm all-on claims that never occur we can see nowadays, at least for that param. testing accuracy matters so much in what we think bacteria can tolerate.

its probably important to not assume ammonia control and nitrite control are tightly linked, till we get some proof.