Nitrate increase, continue removing cc?

[sinner's girl]

Okay, in the past I've done monthly water changes, for the past two years I've been fishless.
I had a problem with ph and alk (bad bag of salt) so I've been doing weekly water changes, plus I plan to move the tank soon, so I wanted to clean the cc extra well.
With each water change, about 10%, I've been removing about three nets of cc, after I've vacuumed that cc very well. I've been testing weekly, nitrates at lees than 20...this week I tested nitrates 40, last week I removed a bit more cc than normal. I have to move my lr around to remove the cc.
I was told that I could remove some cc with each water change. In a few weeks, I'll be moving the tank and adding sand.
Only inhabintants are three stars, brittle, serpent and cc. About 1/4 tank of Lr (no clue in lbs). I have not added anything in forever and nothing is dead. Am and nitrites zero, alk b/w 180 and 300 (that's why I'm doing weekly water changes). Whisper something for a filter...no clue really.
Questions, is me removing the cc causing my nitrates to increase? Or is it because I'm moving my rocks around? I'm in the middle of a water change, should I remove any cc or leave it be? Am I removing too much cc at a time?
Thanks...my stars seem fine, but they've been through much worse than nitrates...

 

[pallan]

my guess is the removal of the CC is mixing trapped junk into the water calum causing the increase. WC and removal of the CC will continue to help IMO.
The ammount of CC removed sounds ok/conservative to me. but ive never had to deal sith that.
you have a low bioload so i would think you could get away with removing more at a time and get it done and replaced with sand. keep some of the CC in a mesh bag/nylon when you get it all out this will help reseed the new sand.

 

[susieq]

That is exactly the way I switched to sand from cc. It takes quite a long time and your water quality may suffer a little bit but long term your tank will be better for it. If you have to have it all out by a specific time, keep taking it out and keep doing the water changes. The deeper you dig in the cc, the more nitrates will be released. I had to move about 10 lbs (out of 50) in my last change. The water was terrible. I lost my pencil urchin but everything else made it through. Now I'm all sand. I'm sorry I every put the cc in. (just like everyone else) Good luck.

 

[sinner's girl]

I've been cleaning the cc super well before removing the cc. There is no certain time, I can remove it whenever, not gonna happend before next weekend, my car needs fixed before then, and sinner needs ac (no way I can move the tank, I'm waiting till sinner has time...and I'm just moving the tank to another room, so there is no hurry). Also a matter of me buying sand...I'm buying it as I have the money add as ***** has it...I have 40lbs right now...I'll have some extra money coming in this week for more sand. so no rush on me removing it.
Thanks, I thought my nitrates would be okay by the way I was doing it... I've had cc for 6 years...

 

[sinner's girl]

I did a water change, tested water today with a different test kit, and got zero nitrates...I didn't do a big enough water change to go from 40 to 0, so I'm guessing it was the test, not my removing cc.
Also, my alk is now back to 180 but now ph is 8.0...it was tested with a liquid test and strip test, don't remember the brand of the liquid...

 

[thangbom]

cool.. but what i did prior to changing cc to sand was use that tube cc bed cleaner thing and sucked the most debree i could out of the cc as i could.. for a few days... ( of course i added new salt water mix ) then i took out the cc a bucket at a time till it was empty, then i moved all the inhabitats out into a temp tank,, took out the water then added the LS .. wet ls dotn wanna come ut of the bucket right.. it just sticks.. i could of dunked the bucket in the tank with the water but that would make a super sand storm.. so i took the animals out and did it the other way.. ( i perdy much redid the tank )

 

[sinner's girl]

but what i did prior to changing cc to sand was use that tube cc bed cleaner thing and sucked the most debree i could out of the cc as i could.. for a few days... ( of course i added new salt water mix ) then i took out the cc a bucket at a time till it was empty,
basically what I'm doing, I've been doing water changes twice a week or so to get my alk back in rang. I clean one area of the cc, then remove a few nets worth of the cleaned cc. (I'll be moving the tank soon, so I'll have to reset it up. I'll add the lr, sand, water then add back my stars.)

 

[vanos]

Make sure you clean out your protein skimmer every month and make sure you clean your liverock when you do water changes because nitrates can hide in the debris that is covering your rock.

 

[stanlalee]

how often do you change your filter media? How often do you feed your invertabreates? My guess is not that your adding organics to the water column by stirring up the CC. My guess is every time you remove a portion of the CC your removing a significant amount of biological filtration or something besides the substrate is the cause of your nitrates (at least the spike you described). There's not enough vacuuming and stirring up in the world to spike nitrates 20ppm in a week with no fish in a tank established 2yrs right after vacuuming and a water change. Those are the very things that reduce nitrates in tank with CC substrate. Even if that theory of stirring it up was true (which I dont buy having CC forever and never getting a nitrate spike after vacuuming/water changing), once the debri quickly settled nitrates should go right back down otherwise what would be the purpose of ever vacuuming to begin with if all it did was raise nitrates. Really makes no sense that a 2yr old tank wouldn't have establsihed biological filtration to remove a little crush coral either seeing that you dont have much of a bioload, 2yrs of establishment half full with liverock. you should re test.
However if the only thing you did different from the last few water changes was take out more substrate than usual its would seem logical to suspect a reduction in biological filtration is beginning to take its toll.
edit I was going to delete this response since you figured out it was the test kit but I wont since this is a classic case of when in doubt blame CC for everything.

 

[sinner's girl]

no protein skimmer, and I"ve never cleaned the lr, that's new to me, but I see no reason why not to. Good tip. Right now, the lr keeps getting moved every othe week or so, which I thought could be part of the problem.
how often do you change your filter media?
Never would be a safe answer. How often should I?
How often do you feed your invertabreates?
the cc star get greens whenever he comes to the front glass (otherwise, I can't reach him), the other two get raw shrimp about once a week or so. Sometimes the serpent gets greens if he comes out waving when I'm feeding the CC star.
I was going to delete this response since you figured out it was the test kit
normally when I get two different results, I'll test again. But the lfs did two test. The strip test and liquid. ***** did strip. This is a perfect example of why I never trust test results. A few years back, I was testing, with liquid test kid, my nitrates were stupid high, I did a large water change, had lfs test water and ***** test water and my nitrates were close to zero...