Nitrates

levi83 · Dec 30, 2018

my nitrates run somewhere between 10 and 25 on my saliferts test. I have a reefer 250. Roughly 55 gallons capacity.
Alk 8.0
Calcium 450
Mg 1400
Ph 8.5
Phosphates show zero on my saliferts test.

1” sand bed in places

2 clowns
1 six line
1 starry blend
Wrasse like fish I can’t ever think of the name of.

Lps, zoas, sps, clam, and a nem.

No filter socks, just a big sponge I clean once a week during a ten gallon water change. Classic 110 ss reef octopus skimmer. Running carbon and ferric oxide together in a reactor that gets changed weekly. Chaeto tractor that has recently stopped growing anything.

Why are my nitrates high? Is the relation of 0 phosphates to nitrates off? Are my shallow spots of sand holding nitrates? I got rid of two medium tangs a month ago and expected to see a drop but haven’t yet. Wondering if I should siphon the rest of my sand out.

levi83 · Dec 30, 2018

Flow is a jebao gyre and an OW 50. It’s running at 30% and it’s a 3200 gph powerhead.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Dec 30, 2018

There’s no reason to expect nitrate and phosphate to always move in tandem.

If your phosphate is actually below 0.01 ppm, that would concern me more than the elevated nitrate.

The chaeto may have stopped growing when it ran out of phosphate.

levi83 · Dec 30, 2018

So I assume I should remove the reactor from the system. Is the lack of phosphate going keep my sps from encrusting? The sps not encrusting is the only problem I have that I can see. I added a forest fire digi colony and a zoa grow out plate about two months ago and the ff digi is almost gone. I assumed it was from the nitrates.

levi83 · Dec 30, 2018

Both of the corals I added had some green hair algae that I cannot get rid of for the life of me.

miPapareef · Dec 30, 2018

Why do I have high nitrates but low phosphates?

levi83 · Dec 30, 2018

I use Kalkwasser and gfo. I took the reactor out of the sump. See if that gets my chaeto reactor working again.

levi83 · Jan 5, 2019

I took my phosphate/carbon reactor offline when I had this conversation last Sunday. I just did my normal weekly 10% water change and my nitrates are between 2.5 and 5. Good lesson to learn. Without phosphates your macro algae won’t eat nitrates.