Sandbed In fuge

[Jonathan Troutt]

hey guys battling nitrate issue currently wondering if a 4in sandbed in fuge could cause issues? The way I did it was sandbed then a bunch of liverock on top.

I did a 45 gal water change. My tank is a 40 breeder with a 20gal sump. After change my nitrates dropped to 50. That was Sunday. Today this evening at least my nitrates are showing back up at 100+ per salifert.

I cleaned everything during water change except for that sandbed in the fuge. Wanted opinions before I remove the thing.

 

[davocean]

I doubt that is your issue.

That is actually the beginning depth of being a DSB(really deeper would be better) and a dsb should provide denitrification benefits when done properly, and maintained properly, however if this is just in fuge it would be pretty minimal.

What is the rest of your filtration system?

Substrate in display?

Are you using filter pads, socks, bioballs?

What water are you using for WC's?

 

[Jonathan Troutt]

Ok so I will describe the best I can. Main tank is a 40 gal breeder. Sandbed is not really deep in here. It comes to the top of the bottom trim. I have right at 37lbs of LR in the DT. Over flow is one of those low profile stealthy ones. Medium in size. So two pipes run down to the first chamber of my fuge.

First chamber is the right most and houses my skimmer reef octo 150 and heaters. It has some space below it as I use a homemade stand to bring it up to the right depth but nothing really settles on the bottom of the chamber.

Second chamber houses the fuge. With the sand bed and the live rock. Used to have chaeto but lost fuge light and got rid of the chaeto until light can be replaced.

Third chamber is return nothing else.
Return pumps flows through 55w UV sterilizer then back into the tank.

That is it. I only run filter socks on occasion and when they are ran they are cleaned everyday. Now due to all the live rock in the sump i don’t ever vacuum it.

I have made sure to clean the overflow as well. There are still smal pieces of cheato that broke off the main bunch on top of the sand bed under all the live rock in the fuge.

 

[Jonathan Troutt]

Some pictures with Lr removed from fuge and of the sand bed from the side I can see. I have a healthy pod population. I brought a mandating back from literally a skeleton to nice and fat. And there is this orange slime stuff not sure what it is on a rock of mine pic of that included as well

 

[Alexreefer]

Maybe just stir your sandbed and lets get some more help.
#reefsquad

 

[Jonathan Troutt]

I should of made the title the quest for lower nitrates. It’s frustrating I didn’t have this issue with the first tank I ever did. I didn’t have this issue until a few months ago

 

[ryeguyy84]

I'm no dsb expert but I think the orange slime is a sponge. Pretty cool looking one too

 

[Scotty Buttons]

What fish do you have in your tank? It's possible your bioload is too high.

 

[Jonathan Troutt]

I'm no dsb expert but I think the orange slime is a sponge. Pretty cool looking one too

That’s what I was thinking. I have a freaking rediculous amount of pineapple sponges. In one spot they have grown all together and almost as big as a tangelo

 

[ryeguyy84]

What fish do you have in your tank? It's possible your bioload is too high.

+1, what's your feeding look like.

 

[Jonathan Troutt]

What fish do you have in your tank? It's possible your bioload is too high.

I have a target spot mandarin, two clowns, royal gramma, six line wrasse, skunk shrimp, emerald crab, 4 very large trochus, a few nessarius, a collection of red and blue leg hermits. I should note that the shrimp and hermits molt on a regular.

 

[Jonathan Troutt]

+1, what's your feeding look like.

I feed a pinch of flakes in the morning. I see all this being eaten. I was feeding a mixture of reef roids, mysis, cyclopeze, and oyster feast once every couple weeks but I haven’t done that in 3 months. Since I’ve started having problems with nitrates

 

[Scotty Buttons]

Doesn't sound like you have a very heavy bioload. Are you seeing any adverse effects from high nitrates? Id probably just stay doing 10-20% water changes weekly and try to get some more cheato in that fuge. That's how I got my nitrates under control when I had nitrates as high as yours, got mine down to 10-20 in a couple months following that. I'll add that I use a couple cheap led grow light bulbs from ebay on my fuge and grow cheato like crazy.
Good luck

 

[Jonathan Troutt]

Doesn't sound like you have a very heavy bioload. Id probably just stay doing 10-20% water changes weekly and try to get some more cheato in that fuge. That's how I got my nitrates under control when I had nitrates as high as yours, got mine down to 10-20 in a couple months following that. I'll add that I use a couple cheap led grow light bulbs from ebay on my fuge and grow cheato like crazy.
Good luck

Yeah I had really good control of nitrates when I had cheato. Like they never got above 5ppm. I just find it hard to believe that a small ball of cheato was controlling the kind of nitrate issue I’m having currently.

 

[ryeguyy84]

I use one of those ufo grow lights people use to grow plants "cough" weed "cough" and it grows really well. It was like $30 bit it's pretty loud. I replaced the fan and it's mildly better but not great

 

[Jonathan Troutt]

I use one of those ufo grow lights people use to grow plants "cough" weed "cough" and it grows really well. It was like $30 bit it's pretty loud. I replaced the fan and it's mildly better but not great

Yeah I made my own it work amazingly well. But I didn’t put a splash shield on it. I assumed it was high enough and that wouldn’t be an issue. Well I was terrible wrong. Lol

 

[Saltyreef]

Jonathan, is the 45gal water change the only WC youve done?
Did you empty 45 gallons and then replace or was it slow over the course of a few hours?
The last time i had a nitrate problem, there was too much detritus build up in my sump and On the surface of the sand that wasnt getting stirred up. I used a powerhead to stir up my sump after turning off the return pump and sucked out all the merky water.
In the case of your sand bed in sump, dont aggetate the entire bed but rather stir up the surface a couple cms down into the sand bed to release the top layer of build up. Sometimes too much detritus on the surface of the sand can have a negative impact on the sands biological filtration. Think of it as a car running with the tailpipe plugged...

 

[Jonathan Troutt]

Jonathan, is the 45gal water change the only WC youve done?
Did you empty 45 gallons and then replace or was it slow over the course of a few hours?
The last time i had a nitrate problem, there was too much detritus build up in my sump and On the surface of the sand that wasnt getting stirred up. I used a powerhead to stir up my sump after turning off the return pump and sucked out all the merky water.
In the case of your sand bed in sump, dont aggetate the entire bed but rather stir up the surface a couple cms down into the sand bed to release the top layer of build up. Sometimes too much detritus on the surface of the sand can have a negative impact on the sands biological filtration. Think of it as a car running with the tailpipe plugged...

The 45 gal WC was all at once. I don’t ever stir my sandbed in my fuge but I don’t get much detritus buildup in the first chamber either. The live rock in the fuge don’t get build up on them. I did removed all the small pieces of chaeto that were on top of the sandbed.

At this point I think my nitrates are going down. They were back down at 50ppm last night. So hopefully they keep going down.

 

[Saltyreef]

So you did nearly a 100% water change, got the 100ppm of nitrates to 50ppm, but the nitrates slowly crept back up to 100 and now they are back to 50?
How old is your tank and do you have nitrite and ammonia test kits available? Any die offs?

 

[Jonathan Troutt]

So you did nearly a 100% water change, got the 100ppm of nitrates to 50ppm, but the nitrates slowly crept back up to 100 and now they are back to 50?
How old is your tank and do you have nitrite and ammonia test kits available? Any die offs?

Nitrate went from 50 after the WC done on a Saturday to over 160ppm in 3 days which would be tues. But then dropped back down to 50 in 24 hours which was this past Wednesday. Tested last night still at 50ppm. Will test tonight to see where they at. Yes I tested ammonia and nitrate. Both at 0. My tank is right at 1 year now.

No die off from what I can tell other than the small pieces of chaeto that were all over my sandbed in my fuge. My fuge light went out a while back and while I removed the main ball. I didn’t know so much had broken off and was underneath the rock and on top of the sandbed.