Nitrates through the roof!!

[Salty Chris]

Hi, this is my first post. I am new to salt water aquariums. I have a huge problem with my nitrate levels! They are 160 on the color chart. I have a 75 gallon tank with a canister filter. My nitrite is 0 and my ammonia is 0. I have used two bottles of the natural nitrate reducer with no luck! I have had the tank going since October 10th of 2016. Plenty of live rock. I have a zebra morey eel, 2 damsels, cleaner shrimp, 2 star fish and three crabs. I do a 10% water change every two weeks and change the filter elements once a month. Does anyone have any advice? Do I need a protein skimmer?

 

[lmforbis]

How often do you clean the canister.

 

[Salty Chris]

I clean the canister every time I change the polishing pad, carbon and pads at the bottom. So far it has been every 4 weeks. Also, I have about 1500gph flow rate in the tank with one power head and two hydor koralia circulation pumps. Is that too low for 75g tank?

 

[lmforbis]

In my opinion canisters need to be cleaned weekly to help keep nitrates down.

 

[Salty Chris]

Are you saying change the media weekly or just a rinse of the canister?

 

[lmforbis]

Just clean out the inside of the canister. Rinse the media. The trapped junk breaks down in the canister which results in nitrate. The more junk that builds up the more nitrates you get. Because there is a constant flow of water that has dissolved oxygen this process is pretty efficient in a canister filter. Unfortunately the process of changing nitrates to nitrogen gas is anerobic and won't happen in the canister. The dirty canister is pumping nitrates into the tank until you clean it. I ran a tank with a canister filter for probably 15 years. All was good as long as I cleaned the filter weekly. You might consider switching to a hang on the back filter.

 

[beth]

Better not to use a canister filter. Do you have live sand? I'm assuming by rock, you mean live rock? Is the canister the only filter you use?

 

[scrapman]

Just clean out the inside of the canister. Rinse the media. The trapped junk breaks down in the canister which results in nitrate. The more junk that builds up the more nitrates you get. Because there is a constant flow of water that has dissolved oxygen this process is pretty efficient in a canister filter. Unfortunately the process of changing nitrates to nitrogen gas is anerobic and won't happen in the canister. The dirty canister is pumping nitrates into the tank until you clean it. I ran a tank with a canister filter for probably 15 years. All was good as long as I cleaned the filter weekly. You might consider switching to a hang on the back filter.

very true.... I currently run two Fluval 405 to speed up the heaviy cleaning of my 90 gal DT.... they pull out a lot of junk that has to be cleaned regularly.

 

[jay0705]

I agree with above. Clean that sucker. There excellent for water volume but need to be cleaned often

 

[beth]

Every time I see a post like this, canister filter near always figures prominently as the problem. You're best bet would be to start transitioning your system over to another type of filter system. Live rock and live sand is one of the best filters. Use a protein skimmer, add some powerheads for circulation and ween off the canister. Down the line, you can think about starting up a refugium. Even a small one would do a lot of benefit to your system.

You can use the canister occasionally with carbon just to polish up the water (clarify) if necessary.

 

[jay0705]

I get the allure of a canister. They can filter a massive amount of water. Just have a major down side with sw

 

[beth]

In reality they are not a complete filter because they do not export nitrates, rather they trap detritus resulting in boatloads of nitrates. But, yes they do run water through filter media quite well and, as I mentioned, they can be used temporarily to polish water using quality carbon.

 

[Jesterrace]

160? What kind of kit even measures that? My Red Sea Kit maxes out at 50 and I freak out when my Nitrates hit 20. I also agree with Beth about Canister Filters. For Saltwater they are literally the absolute worst filtration method and situations like this are common. Canister Filters are also the worst for developing leaks and other mechanical problems. A Large HOB Filter with the likes of a Chemipure media bag will do a great job filtering and I would definitely get a protein skimmer for your size of tank and what you have in there. Also, how much are you feeding your tank?

 

[beaslbob]

The api kit measures 160ppm but ~60ppm-160ppm are various slightly different colors of red. When my nitrates finally fell, I didn't really notice differences until they got under 30ppm or so. or into a more orangy type color. Once there in only took a few days to drop to unmeasureable.

my .02