Nitrate help

[HeatherLynn]

i have a 225gal tank that ive had for about a year 1/2 now. recently my nitrates have been at the bottom of the chart. ive done three water changes and my last water change i did 170gals all at once and they only came up a little on the chart. what else can i do? im sure my fish are near death. the algea is my tank is taking over because my nitrates are so high, so please help.

 

[Bifferwine]

Re: Nirate help

What number are they reading?

 

[HeatherLynn]

they were 160ppm but after i did the 170gal water change they came up to 40ppm. but thats still not good

 

[Smitty]

That's a nice reduction in ppm's...just continue to do larger water changes and the levels will continue to fall.

 

[lilmatty5dimes]

I had the same problem when I bought my 90g tank. Believe it or not I probably did a good 120g worth of water changes to drop it down to 30ppm. They were 2 50g & 20-30g changes so keep doing them til they disappear.
It works something like this. You have 160ppm do a 50% water change you'll bring it down 50% to 80ppm. And so on so on.

 

[HeatherLynn]

Thank you. It's so time consuming to do water changes on my tank and I was going to give up if there was an easier way but since it's working I'll continue.

 

[wontonflip]

If you had room you can always make an algae scrubber...they're great at lowering nitrates. Or put in a fuge w/ chaeto in it. Purigen packs are also know to work, I think. But just keep up with the water changes. Do you know what was causing the high ntrates to begin with? Are you using rodi or tap? How often are you feeding?

 

[FishyReef]

This is probably going to come across the wrong way, but I'm confused - here you say you have a 225 that you've had running for a year and a half, but you've had a lot of other posts recently with really basic questions saying you are new to reefing, and your signature says you have a 55g and have 10y experience. What gives?

 

[navyguyame]

What kind of water are you using for you water changes? Tap or RO/DI? If its RO/DI your fiters may be bad. Do you test the new water before you change it.

 

[HeatherLynn]

I'm using Tap water in my water changes and I honestly have no idea where the high nitrates came from. It's like they happened overnight. And I'm feeding twice a day.

 

[Bifferwine]

If you are feeding twice a day, you are probably overfeeding. And using tap water is a bad idea -- nitrates are only one of the problems it can lead to.

https://www.livingreefs.com/why-using-tap-water-bad-idea-t19865.html

 

[navyguyame]

+1 biff you only need to feed once a day I fed my last tank every other day most times. You should really look into getting an ro/di system I found mine on eBay for about $60 dollars it has been working great for 4 months now.

 

[wontonflip]

Test your new saltwater for nitrates. When I first started, I made the mistake of using "treated tap" water. My nitrates would never go down; they were around 120-160ppm. Finally I tested my new saltwater, and voila -- it had 20ppm of nitrates. So all my water changes did not help at all. Since switching to RODI, no more issues.

 

[HeatherLynn]

Thank you. I'm going to look into it.