Nitrates are over 100, can't get them down.

[2Wheelsonly]

I have a 300G with about 9 fish. I don't feed heavy just a quarter size of reef frenzy once a day to keep my Anthias alive. My nitrates for years have always been around 5-10 with po4 at .02. Currently my tank is at over 100 nitrates, I removed a large birdsnest colony and had to move some rock around to get it out but for 4 weeks I have not been able to get nitrates under control and at this point don't know what to do. The birdsnet was about the size of two basketballs and alot of clippings fell into the bed as a result...could this be the cause of the massive nutrient spike?

I am have been dosing 40ml of nopox daily for 4 weeks and it has done nothing for me (skimming very heavy with oversized skimmer). Changing my socks daily, shop vacced my sump with 50g water changes every three days for that last 4 weeks. The nopox alone is a massive dose for the tank of my size (says 30 per week, I am doing 40 per day). The nitrates are not going anywhere...wont budge no matter how much I clean my tank and corals are starting to get upset.

I validated my test kit by purchasing 3 new ones with different brands...all show off the charts.

Would vibrant make things worse at this point? Causing algae die off and bumping no3 even more?

 

[tripdad]

How old is the tank? Sand bed? Depth of sand bed? Do/have you ever vacuumed it?

 

[dansreef]

Sorry to hear about your issues. When you removed your birdsnest and moved rock around, you could have stirred up the sand releasing nutrients bound in the sand.

How old is your tank? How deep is the sandbed? When you moved stuff around, did it cloud the water?? Was there a smell to it...? Like any rotten eggy kind of smell.....

I am guessing you will need to do some hefty water changes to move the nitrates down. I would skim like crazy... and continue dosing NoPoX.

I have a 220+ TWV tank that is a few years old now and I feed like crazy.... I mean A LOT!!! I have a ton of rock in a 100 gal rubbermaid tub in the basement... I have a large Algae Scrubber, a big skimmer.... and I cannot keep enough nitrates in my system.... less than 2 with phosphates at around .02. I have a sandbed, but a goby that stirs things up... and a lot of flow that does the rest. I did have a spike a few months ago when I did some rock and sandwork. Not as high as yours... but it did elevate.

 

[tehmadreefer]

A sulphur bio denitrator would be best option with No3 that high. Guaranteed to work.

 

[HB AL]

I would up the dose of nopox. I have a 90g that’s heavily stocked with fish and corals, my fish get 10 to 12 Hikari cubes a day! My tank is in my bedroom so I don’t have room for a large refugium so I dose nopox, I dose 15 to 20ml each day in my 90g and that keeps the nitrate between 5 and 15 and everyone is happy. I would up the dose of the nopox, that will bring it down.

 

[SDK]

Are your phosphates zeroed out by any chance?

 

[2Wheelsonly]

thanks for the replies, tank is 4 years old heavy sps. Water changes are rare but nutrients were never an issue as I always worried more about them being too low.

The person who mentioned egg smell after moving my rock around was dead on, it was a very strong odor. What would that mean?

also, po4 is really really low (6pbb on ulr checker)

 

[HB AL]

Smell could be from a decomposing fish or not sure how though the live rock is dying inside.

 

[C. Eymann]

thanks for the replies, tank is 4 years old heavy sps. Water changes are rare but nutrients were never an issue as I always worried more about them being too low.

The person who mentioned egg smell after moving my rock around was dead on, it was a very strong odor. What would that mean?

also, po4 is really really low (6pbb on ulr checker)

Hydrogen sulfide, pockets of decaying nutrients in compacted sandbed areas that have become static/hypoxic.
Not good, dont move too many rocks around at onetime, or disturb deep layers of sandbed, hydrogen sulfide can kill fish/crash tanks.

IMO your sand bed is a full nutrient sink, probably due to mentioned lack of WC/cleanings and probably not enough sand dwelling/detrivore critters

Needs to be removed very slowly /safely and replaced, OR remove all livestock/ coral, fish and pull all at once/tank reset.

Just my .02

 

[Terry Mattson]

Do u have a refugium? I harvest a quart of cheto weekly. Nitrates are if anything to low. < 2. Tank is 1 year old.

 

[SDK]

+1 on hydrogen sulfide....

I don’t carbon dose, but I believe you need PO4 and NO3 for it to work. If you bottom out the PO4 the nitrate reducing effects will stall out.

 

[WVNed]

The standard answer is water changes. Nopox wont work unless you have phosphates. I have had to dose them in the past to get it to work.

 

[Jase4224]

+1 for sulphur denitrator. You can get this up and running to lower your nitrates whilst looking for a long term solution to your sand bed/nutrient sink. Parker’s Reef YouTube channel has the best rundown on sulphur reactors. Best of all once it’s running it’s set and forget, no dosing.

 

[tripdad]

Hydrogen sulfide, pockets of decaying nutrients in compacted sandbed areas that have become static/hypoxic.
Not good, dont move too many rocks around at onetime, or disturb deep layers of sandbed, hydrogen sulfide can kill fish/crash tanks.

IMO your sand bed is a full nutrient sink, probably due to mentioned lack of WC/cleanings and probably not enough sand dwelling/detrivore critters

Needs to be removed very slowly /safely and replaced, OR remove all livestock/ coral, fish and pull all at once/tank reset.

Just my .02

This is where I was headed when I asked the questions about sandbed. Be careful and proceed slowly with fixing this.

 

[C. Eymann]

The standard answer is water changes. Nopox wont work unless you have phosphates. I have had to dose them in the past to get it to work.

I do agree, but in this case I believe NOPOX would just be a bandaid.
Neglecting a deep sandbed for years, esp without stocking with proper sand stirring critters isnt something a bottle can cure properly, once a sandbed goes from healthy and good deep anaerobic (denitrification) zones become compacted with organic waste and hypoxic, you can really start running into problems.

Commonly referred to as "Old tank sundrome back in the day"
This is actually what was usually the culprit.

 

[Jase4224]

I do agree, but in this case I believe NOPOX would just be a bandaid.
Neglecting a deep sandbed for years, esp without stocking with proper sand stirring critters isnt something a bottle can cure properly, once a sandbed goes from healthy and good deep anaerobic (denitrification) zones become compacted with organic waste and hypoxic, you can really start running into problems.

Commonly referred to as "Old tank sundrome back in the day"
This is actually what was usually the culprit.

Agree 100% as I experienced this myself.

 

[Dennis Cartier]

+1 for sulphur denitrator. You can get this up and running to lower your nitrates whilst looking for a long term solution to your sand bed/nutrient sink. Parker’s Reef YouTube channel has the best rundown on sulphur reactors. Best of all once it’s running it’s set and forget, no dosing.

As others have suggested, a sulphur denitrator would make short work of these nitrates.

There area couple of important points about running one. Alkalinity will be consumed as part of the dentrification process when using one of these. So you need to be prepared to supplement alkalinity to stop it from getting too out of balance.

The sulphur quantity controls how much nitrate is removed. So running a large amount of sulphur when nitrates are high will work well to deal with the high nitrates. Once nitrates start to come down, the sulphur media's bio film will run low on available nitrate and start to consume sulfate, producing hydrogen sulfide in the process (rotten egg smell). To deal with this, be prepared to remove some of the sulfur media to once nitrates are controlled and size the sulphur bed to your nitrate range.

Dennis

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Interesting that I have issues with the sandbed as it’s barely over one inch and my diamond goby does a good job keeping it white. I do stir it weekly as part of my routine.

this hobby always keeping me on guard lol.

 

[WVNed]

I have dealt with this by removing the sand bed with a large bore hose. Replaced the water removed with new water. Then I rinsed it and only put half back. But that was on a 50 gallon tank. My 240 only has a thin layer of crushed coral and has multiple conchs in it.

 

[ScottB]

Interesting that I have issues with the sandbed as it’s barely over one inch and my diamond goby does a good job keeping it white. I do stir it weekly as part of my routine.

this hobby always keeping me on guard lol.

Hmmm... the plot thickens. Regular stirring of the sand is great husbandry. But the rotten egg smell is a dead giveaway for H2S. It must have been trapped under the rock that was moved.

How equipped are you for some significant and repeatable WCs? Like 75G a shot?