Deep Sand Bed Produces Toxic Gas??

[mikeyjer]

Originally Posted by 27mtaylor
Stanlalee, I have a question for you. I use CC in my tank. I have reduced it to 1" or less to try to reduce my nitrates. Currently my readings stay around 15 ppm. Do you use the CC that is about the size of a dime (or a little bigger) or do you have the stuff that is crushed up a lot finer? I'm trying to avoid going to sand, but I'm running out of options. I'm about to add an additional 30 pounds of live rock and that should give me a total of about 50+ pounds in my 46 gallon tank. Do you think this will help lower them any? Thanks!
If you siphon your CC during water changes, it would help!!! You could do something like a 20-25% water changes every other day to really lower nitrates big time. Overfeeding is also a cause of nitrates!!! Any protein skimmer?? Filltration systems?? :happyfish

 

[27mtaylor]

I'm running 2 hang on filters and a skimmer. I also do vacuum my cc with every waterchange. Before I reduced my cc to 1", my nitrates were around 40ppm. that was a little over 2 months ago. Now they stay around 15 ppm. I do a 10% water change every week and sometimes I do a 20% change. Will the more finely crushed CC work better than the dime sizes peices that I use? What about the addition of more live rock? Also someone posted on here once that adding Maidens Hair Plant to thier tank brought their Nitrates down to 0, would it be that effective?

 

[stanlalee]

Originally Posted by 27mtaylor
Stanlalee, I have a question for you. I use CC in my tank. I have reduced it to 1" or less to try to reduce my nitrates. Currently my readings stay around 15 ppm. Do you use the CC that is about the size of a dime (or a little bigger) or do you have the stuff that is crushed up a lot finer? I'm trying to avoid going to sand, but I'm running out of options. I'm about to add an additional 30 pounds of live rock and that should give me a total of about 50+ pounds in my 46 gallon tank. Do you think this will help lower them any? Thanks!
Mine is crushed much smaller than dime size, maybe an avg of 1/4 the size of a dime if not smaller. IMO unless you have a reef system 15ppm is quite acceptable. Liverock will help but it may take a few months to show up. If you only have 20+ lbs of liverock in your tank now and 15ppm nitrates I dont think you have a problem. You may have to do a large water change at least once to lower nitrates quicky as nitrate reduction is directly related to the amount of water changed ex. with nitrates of 15ppm a 50% water change is only going to lower that at best to 7.5ppm in ANY TANK sand or CC. Thats why it amuses me when people say do 10% or 15% water changes weekly and wait for nitrates to drop. A 10% water change weekly will only lower your nitrates 1.5ppm weekly, BEST CASE SCENERIO (as in no more nitrates are being produced), which a tank with a nitrate problem to begin with is probably developing nitrates faster than you are removing it. The problem (if there was one in your case) is not addressed. Water changes arent the answer to lower nitrates, a system that keeps them low to begin with is wether it be biological or mechanical is.