Where are my Nitrates going?

[Captain45]

My Fluval 13.5 has been up for about 3 months. I used fairly established LR and sand so I never really noticed a big cycle but after 6 weeks from startup I added a CUC to combat some small hair algae and they did fine, added some ricordeas and they are doing well to.

My Nitrates and phos have always been undetectable so about 3 weeks ago I added a pair of clowns and fed generously to get some bioload up. Still didn't see any nitrates/phos.

Clowns have been moved to a hospital tank due to some internal issues so my fish bioload is gone again so I started dosing my Fluval neonitro and neophos while they are out of the Fluval. I dosed 8ml of nitro last night and measured 6.5ppm Nitrates (Hanna) within 20 mins and I'm going really slow on adding neophos, I only dosed 1ml (I think that would come out to a theoretical 0.02ppm addition)

Today Nitrates tested at 2.8ppm and phos still undetectable (salifert). I don't have any hair algae problems. Only thing I notice in my tank is a decent amount of brown film develops on the glass that needs scraping 2-3 times a week. It starts in small circling patches and grows outward and seems to be only on the glass, snails love it (diatoms or just normal glass film?). I had some white cotton looking fuzz sprout up on some of my lr but has since been receding.

So tl;dr Any idea what's eating up my Nitrates? Filtration is simply intake chamber 1 with bonded floss, bag of carbon for smells. Other than that I have one bag of fluval ceramic rings in chamber 2 (I keep them back there for when I need to seed a hospital tank). I stopped any water changes and keeping old floss in for a bit to dirty it up. Is this just part of a new 3 month old tank with little bioload or am I missing something?


Tank just before I removed the clowns.



White fuzz

 

[Reefahholic]

Better start dosing or you’ll end up with a tank full of Dino’s. Brightwell NeoPhos and NeoNitro are a good choice. No mixing required.

 

[doubleshot00]

Op did you ever figure this out having the same issue in a fluval

 

[Captain45]

Op did you ever figure this out having the same issue in a fluval

No idea. I ended up getting Dinos about a week after. Cut out White light and added a UV filter for about 2 weeks and stopped water changes and they cleared up. I'm still dosing NeoNitro and NeoPhos. At first I had to dose a decent amount of Nitrates each day (like 3-5ml daily) but now they are starting to hold and I dose about 1ml every 3 days or so. My Phosphates are still fairly undetectable so I just dose 1ml each day.

I figure Ill have to hold onto this dosing schedule until I can get more bioload (fish) into my tank.

 

[Lavey29]

No idea. I ended up getting Dinos about a week after. Cut out White light and added a UV filter for about 2 weeks and stopped water changes and they cleared up. I'm still dosing NeoNitro and NeoPhos. At first I had to dose a decent amount of Nitrates each day (like 3-5ml daily) but now they are starting to hold and I dose about 1ml every 3 days or so. My Phosphates are still fairly undetectable so I just dose 1ml each day.

I figure Ill have to hold onto this dosing schedule until I can get more bioload (fish) into my tank.

I had to double dose neophos and neonitro for multiple weeks before I got measurable numbers.