Removing substrate & lowering Nitrate advise needed

[Colin_S]

I have way too much substrate and need to remove about half of it. I plan on doing this over a year or so, every now and then take out a cup load. I know this highly not recommended, but it needs to be done, and if i do it slowly enough, then hopefully the rank will remain stable, but what affect will it have on my nitrates, and what do bare bottom reefers do to combat this?
The reason i ask is my nitrates are constantly at 25, i know this is not alarming high, but i plan on adding more fish and corals this year, and if i can manage my nitrates now, what will they be when the bio load increases? My phosphate is at 0.1. I want to lower my poshaate to 0.04 and nitrates to 10-15.
I have a Bubble Magus Curve 7 Skimmer and a Turf Scrubber which grows lots of hair algae, yet my nitrate remians the same.

I'm running trition method so i don't really want to do water changes, as it can unbalance my parameters plus i dont see water changes as a long term solution, my nitrates will simply come back. I have Marine Pure Rock in my sump, the large block, its been there for about 2 years now. I thought untill recently that this would lower nitrates, but really it dosen't. So what else could i use to lower them? i have more LR that i'm not using and have space for in my sump, would that help?
I prefer to run as close as i can to natural filtration, i.e Live Rock and Turf Scrubber/refugium so if i can i will avoid dosing.

any suggestions would be helpful... thanks

 

[lapin]

@brandon429

 

[brandon429]

hey neat Id like to link your work/take pics to our sand rinse thread.

Its better to just do the whole job at once, its safer that way. If you have a 300 gal system and can't reasonably disassembly clean it, then your way will work but nothing beats 4 hours/you have a new skip cycle tank.

the summary of the giant sand rinse thread is:

removing sand 100% all at once does not cause a recycle from lack of bacteria, we have no recycles or mini cycles.

the risk is detritus, which does sink up nitrate and leak it, nice call there. By taking your tank apart and ridding all waste in one pass, and owing to the rule of can't be under bac'd, the job is done and your tank benefits from the clean start not because you can starve nutrients, but because its interstices are now clean and ready to accept + feeding/driving params up again cyclically.


what we figured out was the rapidity available, the irony that ripping it all out at once is safest. for recent jobs read post #1 plus just the last two pages.

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

*we would clean all your sand, and the rocks and dislodge waste from them, and put back the portion of cloudless bed you want. we wouldn't remove from the top, leaving the clouded bed below that's opposite of what we do. can be done, but risky.

 

[Colin_S]

My sandbed is pretty clean, it gets fully hovered every 8 weeks or so. Its more to do with reducing the amount of sand from 2" to 0.5" and because its more visually pleasing to the eye, also it's easier to keep clean.
Any suggestions for nitrate issue?

I'll give the thread a full read....

 

[brandon429]

if its been prior worked I bet its ok just to shop vac that rascal out, without the disassembly cleaning.

regarding the nitrate, the portion we work on is the solid form.

If you can lift up a rock right now mid water, and twist it, a casting of dust might come off...thats whole form nitrate.

if it doesnt, then your curent and storage elsewhere in the tank is really balanced compared to most.

most people do their nitrate dosers/binders with a tank fully loaded with clouding nitrate waste.

we like making tanks totally clear of that. then your nitrate source is the feed input, new waste compiling, plus sum ammonia from all respiring organisms in the tank.