Frustration

[gregvabch]

i'm tired of nitrates. last weekend i changed out my crushed coral and put in sand, 40 lbs of aragonite, 20 lbs of aragalive aragonite. changed out 10% of my water on friday and still my nitrates are somewhere between 10 and 20 ppm. the only thing that i can figure is that it's my filter. i'm running an emperor 400 and a seclone 50 on my 55 gal right now. never have problems with ammonia or nitrites but it seems no matter what kind of livestock i've got the nitrates always go up instead of down. any simple solutions or recommendations? filter? if so, what kind of easily maintainable unit should i go for?

 

[goldrush]

Between 10 and 20 is not life threatening.Tell us more about your setup. Age? Size? Livestock? What are your other readings?

 

[gregvabch]

i've got a 55 gal., roughly 70 lbs of lr, 40 lbs aragonite sand, 20 lbs aragalive aragonite. little less than 2 dozen small misc. hermits, 1 blue knee hermit, 3 camel shrimp, 1 coral banded shrimp, 2 scooter blennies, a gold tail damsel, a mandarin, and these weird mussell/clam looking things growing on some of my lr. i've never had any problems with ammonia or nitrites since my initial cycle last july when i started the tank. after i changed the substrate over to sand, i had a small spike in ammonia, but within a few days it was back to 0 ppm from where it peaked at .5 ppm. nitrates have always been a problem. i know where it is now is not that bad but it's gotten there in about a week and a half. unless i do some serious water changes once a week, it's definetly going to get worse....or is it? i just think my filter isn't cutting it. i've tried using extra carbon and nitrate reducing crystals in the extra media containers for it; right now i've got biomax filter rings in both of them, don't seem to be making a difference. could use some insight. not real crazy about building a refugium, seems like a lot more commitment. there's gotta be an easier way....

 

[gregvabch]

bump

 

[ty_05_f]

It might just take time for the nitrates to turn in to the gas and be expelled.

 

[sebae0]

it also could be the mechanical filter is breaking down the waste to efficiently faster than the dsb and live rock can reduce the nitrate. alot of people will use a mechanical filter but will not use the "pads" with them, they use them for water movement and for adding media like phosphate remover or nitrate sponge. any trapped debris in the pads is converted to nitrate pretty quickly in those filters.

 

[searcher]

I've only had my tank up since November, so take this advice with a grain of salt.
I took the sponge or pads out of my filter system and my nitrates went from 10 to .5 in two weeks. Now my filter isn't really a filter at all it just circulates the water. The live rock and sand does all the filtration.