How do you get nitrates at or near zero?

chris124 · Feb 20, 2014

How do you get nitrates at or near zero? My nitrates stay at or below 20 ppm. where do nitrates need to be for inverts? Just wondering because I have seen post where people say there nitrates are at 0.5 ppm.I would like to get them as low as possible. I have a skimmer on the tank but will be upgrading to a bigger one tomorrow.

Mike J. · Feb 20, 2014

There are a lot of ways. A good skimmer and water changes, dosing vodka or vinegar, bio pellets, algae scrubber, grow macro algae. I'm convinced that a very good way is to grow algae, but not in the display tank, like an algae scrubber, and then you can feed your corals and fish what they need.

MHG · Feb 20, 2014

for years I could not get my nitrates above zero and my corals looked like crap. Once I got them above zero every thing started growing and coloring up. My frag system has nitrates about 5 and everything looks great... The Long island Aquarium (20k Gallon reef) is about 20 all the time so I would not sweat it. However, Prodibio Bioclean (BIOPTIM and BIODIGEST) will get you to zero in about a month... Gor my 60 gallon tank it was about $100 a year... But it worked too good so I stopped it...

Reefing Madness · Feb 20, 2014

Vodka Dosing. Aka Carbon Dosing, not Activated Carbon.

HiddenUser · Feb 20, 2014

Carbon Dosing (Vodka, Bio-Pellets, etc), Strict (more frequent) Water Change Schedule, Bio-Media (Bioballs and Seachem Matrix), Refugiums, Good Skimmer, Algae Scrubber, Feeding Less (Frequency and Amount of food), etc...

Also if you're using filter socks, make sure you change them out fairly frequently. I change mine out every other day that way the crap collected isn't breaking down causing nitrates.

I also had a sponge in my sump which was suppose to collect microbubbles from the skimmer...I just ditched the sponge because it was filling up with nasty crap every few days...which I can only imagine was causing nitrates.