Nitrate level census

[capted]

Just wondering what would be considered an acceptable nitrate level. I'm old school and have been in this hobby for 35 years and always strived for the lowest nitrate and phosphate levels. I currently have a fish with tons of living rock and shrooms only tank. I have battled high nitrates (over 80ppm) for some time. After tons of water changes I have it down to 20-30 ppm. I also dosed vodka for 4 months with a 8ml per day dosage and all that did was bottom out my phosphate. I have been slowly dropping the dosage so I can stop it completely. Now I do 15% water changes weekly and it seems that the nitrates hover around 25-35ppm. Still have very low phosphates but that may change once I stop the vodka. Just a pain to change 20 gallons a week(125 gallon tank). Anybody have higher nitrates with know problems? I do get a heavy film on the glass which I clean weekly with the water change. It's thick enough that my Emporer Angel eats it as I scrape it!! No gha at all. Am I the only one that thinks this nitrate level is acceptable?

 

[Dan_P]

Just wondering what would be considered an acceptable nitrate level. I'm old school and have been in this hobby for 35 years and always strived for the lowest nitrate and phosphate levels. I currently have a fish with tons of living rock and shrooms only tank. I have battled high nitrates (over 80ppm) for some time. After tons of water changes I have it down to 20-30 ppm. I also dosed vodka for 4 months with a 8ml per day dosage and all that did was bottom out my phosphate. I have been slowly dropping the dosage so I can stop it completely. Now I do 15% water changes weekly and it seems that the nitrates hover around 25-35ppm. Still have very low phosphates but that may change once I stop the vodka. Just a pain to change 20 gallons a week(125 gallon tank). Anybody have higher nitrates with know problems? I do get a heavy film on the glass which I clean weekly with the water change. It's thick enough that my Emporer Angel eats it as I scrape it!! No gha at all. Am I the only one that thinks this nitrate level is acceptable?

A side note on dosing. You might have stopped increasing the dose too soon. Nitrate starts to plummet at 1 mL/gallon vinegar. I assume this would be equivalent to 1/8 mL vodka per gallon tank water or 15-16 mL of vodka in your case.

 

[MaxTremors]

Just wondering what would be considered an acceptable nitrate level. I'm old school and have been in this hobby for 35 years and always strived for the lowest nitrate and phosphate levels. I currently have a fish with tons of living rock and shrooms only tank. I have battled high nitrates (over 80ppm) for some time. After tons of water changes I have it down to 20-30 ppm. I also dosed vodka for 4 months with a 8ml per day dosage and all that did was bottom out my phosphate. I have been slowly dropping the dosage so I can stop it completely. Now I do 15% water changes weekly and it seems that the nitrates hover around 25-35ppm. Still have very low phosphates but that may change once I stop the vodka. Just a pain to change 20 gallons a week(125 gallon tank). Anybody have higher nitrates with know problems? I do get a heavy film on the glass which I clean weekly with the water change. It's thick enough that my Emporer Angel eats it as I scrape it!! No gha at all. Am I the only one that thinks this nitrate level is acceptable?

I wouldn’t say 20-30ppm is acceptable, but it’s certainly workable. I’m having a real conundrum with my nitrates right now, they are massive, and despite big, frequent water changes (like 50% twice a week for a few weeks) and starting carbon dosing (on week 3), and the fact that I only have four small fish (all less than 1”) that I feed very sparingly once a day, my nitrates are consistently between 60 and 100ppm. I think they are starting to come down, but I’m at a real loss as to what is causing it. The only thing I can think of is that I used 75% dry rock when I set this tank up (and 25% maricultured live rock), and the dry rock just doesn’t have the anaerobic bacteria to help process some of the nitrates into nitrogen. Besides this, I just don’t like it, I will never use dry rock again (it’s weird when I blow on it with a turkey baster, sand comes shooting out of the holes from the middle of the rock, out of the holes).

 

[mdb_talon]

I am convinced there is no universal "correct" answer. Depends on tank, stocking, goals, other params,etc.

For me if nitrates get above about 20 I can definetely notice a difference in some of my coral and in excessive algae growth.

I think the right answer is to base it off hoe your tank is doing and if you are happy with the growth/color/algae situation. If you are then sounds like no problem.

 

[blasterman]

I had a fish only tank some years ago that hit 70ppm nitrate. Had tons of shrooms and softies and they grew like crazy. Phosphate was non detectable so no nuisance algae. It was a cool tank. Fish were healthy and happy. Rarely did water changes. With my SPS tanks now I keep nitrate 5-10 and phosphate .03-.05 religiously.

I've never gone to the school of using water changes to reduce nitrate. You are just pouring water in a bucket with a hole in it.

 

[capted]

A side note on dosing. You might have stopped increasing the dose too soon. Nitrate starts to plummet at 1 mL/gallon vinegar. I assume this would be equivalent to 1/8 mL vodka per gallon tank water or 15-16 mL of vodka in your case.

Good point. Problem is that my phosphate level went to 0ppm. I believe the bacteria that reduces nitrates also needs phosphate.

 

[capted]

I wouldn’t say 20-30ppm is acceptable, but it’s certainly workable. I’m having a real conundrum with my nitrates right now, they are massive, and despite big, frequent water changes (like 50% twice a week for a few weeks) and starting carbon dosing (on week 3), and the fact that I only have four small fish (all less than 1”) that I feed very sparingly once a day, my nitrates are consistently between 60 and 100ppm. I think they are starting to come down, but I’m at a real loss as to what is causing it. The only thing I can think of is that I used 75% dry rock when I set this tank up (and 25% maricultured live rock), and the dry rock just doesn’t have the anaerobic bacteria to help process some of the nitrates into nitrogen. Besides this, I just don’t like it, I will never use dry rock again (it’s weird when I blow on it with a turkey baster, sand comes shooting out of the holes from the middle of the rock, out of the holes).

That makes sense. I have a pretty deep sand bed that's probably 18 years old that I think helped with the anaerobic bacteria. Then I added 2 diamond gobies to help "clean" it up. Yeah, they cleaned it alright. Cloud storms for months. I believe they oxygenated it so much that it killed a lot of the bacteria causing my nitrates to spike! It does look clean now though. Ha..

 

[capted]

A bit off subject but I wonder if mushrooms uptake nitrates and phosphates like corals. My shrooms are thriving too much!

 

[MaxTremors]

A bit off subject but I wonder if mushrooms uptake nitrates and phosphates like corals. My shrooms are thriving too much!

They do, they’re just like any coral. Xenia is especially good at nutrient export (I’m growing some just for this purpose)

 

[capted]

They do, they’re just like any coral. Xenia is especially good at nutrient export (I’m growing some just for this purpose)

Good to know. The amount of shrooms in my take is crazy. I should have no nitrates. Ha. But I feed my fish heavily.

 

[Azedenkae]

I am convinced there is no universal "correct" answer. Depends on tank, stocking, goals, other params,etc.

For me if nitrates get above about 20 I can definetely notice a difference in some of my coral and in excessive algae growth.

I think the right answer is to base it off hoe your tank is doing and if you are happy with the growth/color/algae situation. If you are then sounds like no problem.

I believe that there is probably a nitrate level high enough that it can cause issues to one or more desirable organism simply due to said concentration itself.

However I do largely, or really mostly agree with you, because really, we have yet to seem to know what this 'high end' level is expected to be. And because the question is asking about a 'target' or 'acceptable' level itself, which from experience and from posts here varies greatly, I do yeah agree there is no quite one 'correct' answer to this and it just ends up being dependent on the health of our livestock themselves. I mean my nitrate bottoms out just because I run an efficient algae scrubber + allows quite a bit of algae to grow in the display, but I also feed a lot and corals look good, so am not fazed. Others of course may have to worry.

 

[vetteguy53081]

.5 - .10

 

[Spare time]

It really depends on how much food you provide for the corals (assuming they can capture and eat it). Wild reefs function because corals constantly feed to get their nitrogen and phosphorus. Our tanks don't need to be constantly fed if we have some phosphate and nitrate (typically issues arise under 5ppm nitrate and below 0.03 ppm phosphate assuming the test is accurate). I strive for 0.05 phosphate as it is above the error range of my test kit and phosphate I prefer 5-15 unless pH is really low. A lot of it also depends on how many fish you have (feeding them results in a source for nitrogen and phosphorus)

 

[capted]

.5 - .10

Seriously? I better order 500lbs of salt!!! When I kept some moray eels and lionfish my nitrates were above 100ppm and they did fine but so did the gha and other algae!

 

[vetteguy53081]

Seriously? I better order 500lbs of salt!!! When I kept some moray eels and lionfish my nitrates were above 100ppm and they did fine but so did the gha and other algae!

If youre talking fish Only, that changes things. I factored coral

 

[capted]

It really depends on how much food you provide for the corals (assuming they can capture and eat it). Wild reefs function because corals constantly feed to get their nitrogen and phosphorus. Our tanks don't need to be constantly fed if we have some phosphate and nitrate (typically issues arise under 5ppm nitrate and below 0.03 ppm phosphate assuming the test is accurate). I strive for 0.05 phosphate as it is above the error range of my test kit and phosphate I prefer 5-15 unless pH is really low.

I have mostly fish and mushrooms. No corals. I do feed the fish a lot which I'm sure is raising my nitrates. Funny thing is that my phosphate is super low but I use gfo also.

 

[capted]

If youre talking fish Only, that changes things. I factored coral

Only mushrooms which seem to thrive in my tank. Too much!

 

[mdb_talon]

.5 - .10

Honestly thats just funny. Not saying you cant run a sucessful coral tank at that level, but it is most certainly not the highest acceptable level.

 

[Jekyl]

Honestly thats just funny. Not saying you cant run a sucessful coral tank at that level, but it is most certainly not the highest acceptable level.

Highest acceptable? No... however it is most likely ideal.

 

[mdb_talon]

Highest acceptable? No... however it is most likely ideal.

That was not really the question anyway, but what do you base that off? To me that is just a holdover from the old "needs to be undetectable" mantra that was in place for decades and almost universally accepted to be bad idea now.

I in any case i even if correct I would say it is an extremely misleading answer and why i say it depends on the tank. If you constantly feed and have extremely high export rates you may convince me a level that low can be ideal. On the other hand if you minimally feed and keep your levels that low through starving the system i would certainly argue a level as high as 10-20 with higher feeding is a more ideal approach.