Nitrate question???

[bgrae001]

OK, so I've been doing SW for about 3 years now, and this is the first time I've had an elevated Nitrate test. I noticed some of my corals were not fully expanding so I decided to run all the tests. Here is a little history, This tank has been up and running for 10 months. It's a 55gal with a W/D and a seaclone 100 protein skimmer. I run a 15watt UV sterilizer and a calcium reactor. I do weekly or biweekly water changes with RO/DI water.
I noticed about a month ago that my skimmer wasn't producing much waste and I just figured that it was because of the frequent water changes. But after I ran the full water test I cleaned out the skimmer and skimming seemed to be a little more effective.
I don't have the money to replace my skimmer, yet. I'll be replacing my skimmer with a EURO style skimmer in few months.
So how do I get the Nitrate back down? Should I do a series of water changes? Say every couple of days?
Here are my parameters
CAL 440
MG 1125
PH 7.9
ALK 7 dkh
AMONIA 0
NITRITE 0
NITRATE 15
SALT 1.026

 

[petjunkie]

Do a couple larger water changes 20 gallons or so each. Should get them back down pretty quick. Does your wet dry have bioballs and if so do you clean them out regularly because they can trap nitrates if you don't.

 

[ninjamini]

You can also add some macro algae to consume those nitratres.

 

[bgrae001]

Originally Posted by petjunkie
Do a couple larger water changes 20 gallons or so each. Should get them back down pretty quick. Does your wet dry have bioballs and if so do you clean them out regularly because they can trap nitrates if you don't.
Yes, I have Bioballs in the W/D. How much should I remove to clean. I don't want to lose all my beneficial bacteria. I was thinking about doing half and a 20 gal water change.
I did a 15 gal water change 2 days ago.

 

[bgrae001]

Originally Posted by ninjamini
You can also add some macro algae to consume those nitratres.
What kind of macro should I add? I would have to add it to my DT, I don't have room in the sump for it.
I have a LMB and an Atlantic blue tang that would benefit from the macro too.

 

[ninjamini]

I use cheto. From what i hear it is the safeest. Get a plastic sponge hoplder like for the kitchen sink. It has suction cups and holes in the side and bottom. That way it does not float around. a in tank refrigum.

 

[miaheatlvr]

Originally Posted by bgrae001
OK, so I've been doing SW for about 3 years now, and this is the first time I've had an elevated Nitrate test. I noticed some of my corals were not fully expanding so I decided to run all the tests. Here is a little history, This tank has been up and running for 10 months. It's a 55gal with a W/D and a seaclone 100 protein skimmer. I run a 15watt UV sterilizer and a calcium reactor. I do weekly or biweekly water changes with RO/DI water.
I noticed about a month ago that my skimmer wasn't producing much waste and I just figured that it was because of the frequent water changes. But after I ran the full water test I cleaned out the skimmer and skimming seemed to be a little more effective.
I don't have the money to replace my skimmer, yet. I'll be replacing my skimmer with a EURO style skimmer in few months.
So how do I get the Nitrate back down? Should I do a series of water changes? Say every couple of days?
Here are my parameters
CAL 440
MG 1125
PH 7.9
ALK 7 dkh
AMONIA 0
NITRITE 0
NITRATE 15
SALT 1.026
My Trates always run about 10-20max ppm, Xenia and Chaeto growing like crazy, at 15ppm I dont think you are in the red.

 

[bgrae001]

Originally Posted by MiaHeatLvr
My Trates always run about 10-20max ppm, Xenia and Chaeto growing like crazy, at 15ppm I dont think you are in the red.
Yeah, but my waving hand Xenia haven't been looking too good for a couple of weeks. They were growing like crazy and now there all shriveled up. All my other corals look great. Heck I'm going to have to frag my Frogspawn and Torch coral pretty soon, when I got them 8 months ago they had 3 heads each now they each have over 12.
Is this normal behavior for Xenia? I don't want to loose another croal.

 

[miaheatlvr]

Originally Posted by bgrae001
Yeah, but my waving hand Xenia haven't been looking too good for a couple of weeks. They were growing like crazy and now there all shriveled up. All my other corals look great. Heck I'm going to have to frag my Frogspawn and Torch coral pretty soon, when I got them 8 months ago they had 3 heads each now they each have over 12.
Is this normal behavior for Xenia? I don't want to loose another croal.
My brown waving, dies and disenergrates in some areas, shrivels up and disapears, BUT its always growing and sprouting in other areas, I think is natural selection. IF the whole THING itself is dieing then I think there are other issues at play, Other people here with excellent water conditions are always telling stories of complete XENIA die off for no aprarent reason whatsoever.

 

[farslayer]

Originally Posted by MiaHeatLvr
My brown waving, dies and disenergrates in some areas, shrivels up and disapears, BUT its always growing and sprouting in other areas, I think is natural selection. IF the whole THING itself is dieing then I think there are other issues at play, Other people here with excellent water conditions are always telling stories of complete XENIA die off for no aprarent reason whatsoever.
You could be experiencing coral warfare, Xenia will attack nearby colonies. I run activated carbon to keep this from happening. One of the very crappy LFS had a tank loaded with Xenia, and in about a week it was all dead. Just something to think about anyway

 

[bgrae001]

Well I'm going to try to get my Nitrates below 10 and see if that helps. My Xenia were thriving and now they seem to be dyeing off. I lost all my zoos not to long ago too. Everything else in my tank is doing awesome. I feel that the elevated nitrate is leading to this demise. In all my other tanks my Nitrate level was always undetectable, now, in this tank it's slightly elevated and I think that it could be part of the problem.

 

[rabbit_72]

Dropping your nitrates shouldn't hurt, so I would try. At least then you would know for certain if that was the problem.

 

[farslayer]

Originally Posted by bgrae001
Well I'm going to try to get my Nitrates below 10 and see if that helps. My Xenia were thriving and now they seem to be dyeing off. I lost all my zoos not to long ago too. Everything else in my tank is doing awesome. I feel that the elevated nitrate is leading to this demise. In all my other tanks my Nitrate level was always undetectable, now, in this tank it's slightly elevated and I think that it could be part of the problem.

Xenia may very well do better in a tank with excess nutrients. I strongly recommend you run some carbon and see how it goes. Xenia can pollute the water, I've seen it happen before.

 

[bgrae001]

OK, So last night I pulled out my Bioballs and boiled them for 30 minutes. Then I did a 15 gal water change. That was the second water change in 5 days. Now in a few hours I'm going to run all the tests again to see what happened. I hope that my nitrite and ammonia don't spike because of what I've done.
I'll post the results later today.

 

[bgrae001]

Originally Posted by Farslayer
Xenia may very well do better in a tank with excess nutrients. I strongly recommend you run some carbon and see how it goes. Xenia can pollute the water, I've seen it happen before.
I do run activated carbon, I'm sure I can stand to replace it though. I feed my tank daily with live phytoplankton and Tropic Marine Pro-Coral zooton (I don't know how to translate that to English, I buy my supplements from a local German fish store)
Will running activated carbon effect the nutrients that I supplement?

 

[bgrae001]

OK, So I removed a large sponge that was under my bioballs that trapped bubbles and replaced it with a bag of 1000 g of active carbon. Tonight I'm going to run the water tests and see what's going on. I'm going to really keep and eye on my Xenia to see how they react to the large amount of carbon I put in my sump.

 

[petjunkie]

How long have you had your xenia? From what I understand xenia actually has a fairly short lifespan of a few years so maybe yours is just dying off. Watch your water parameters close to make sure your tank can handle the bioload without the bacteria on the bioballs, don't want to have a spike but since this is an established tank you should be okay. Carbon won't affect the plankton you add.

 

[bgrae001]

Originally Posted by petjunkie
How long have you had your xenia? From what I understand xenia actually has a fairly short lifespan of a few years so maybe yours is just dying off. Watch your water parameters close to make sure your tank can handle the bioload without the bacteria on the bioballs, don't want to have a spike but since this is an established tank you should be okay. Carbon won't affect the plankton you add.
Thanks... I'm going to watch the water real close and I have 34 gal of sw ready in case I have a spike to help bring it back down.

 

[azfishgal]

My Nitrates are at 13 and my Xenia is growing like crazy. So I'm wondering if it's something else, like the others said, just the natural life cycle of the Xenia.

But it certainly won't hurt your tank to get the Nitrates down, I've been working on that myself.

 

[sjimmyh]

Originally Posted by bgrae001
Yes, I have Bioballs in the W/D. How much should I remove to clean. I don't want to lose all my beneficial bacteria. I was thinking about doing half and a 20 gal water change.
I did a 15 gal water change 2 days ago.
I read through the posts. Looks like you are on the right track. As stated by one poster, 15 ppm really shouldn't hurt much, but like you I would want to lower them to get as low as possible.
The wet-dry filter tends to trap organics which can degrade into nitrates thereby becoming a little nitrate factory, as stated earlier. In answer to your bacteria question, I wouldn't worry too much about the bacteria on the bioballs. If you have a good supply of live rock and sand in the tank (which I am only assuming that you do) that should be plenty of biological filtration. Many people use old w/d filters with the bioballs removed now days and turn them into refugiums. You may consider removal of the bio-balls or you could just periodically clean them like you are doing now.
Caulerpa and Chaetomorpha macro-algaes are the most commonly used aglaes to "scrub" tank water of excess phosphates and nitrates. Both work very well and grow fairly fast. Chaeto has the added bennefit that it will not go sexual on you (a state that the plant disintigrates into mobile swimmies that can use a LOT of oxygen and cause a possible tank crash or just a mess). Using a 24/7 lighting schedule on caulerpa tends to prevent this from happening. Thats why it is kept in a fuge where it can be lighted all the time without disrupting your DT's lighting schedule.
I wouldn't recommend using either of these plants INSIDE the DT. Chaeto can twist around corals and its also just not the prettiest plant in the world. Caulerpa can overgrow a DT and its little hold-fasts (root-like structures) can damage corals by boring into them.
If you want plants inside the DT. Good choices would be calcium skeleton forming macro-algaes like shaving brush, mermaids fan or halimeda. They are much less "invasive" on your corals and also tend to not grow as rapidly as the other macro-algaes can which makes it much more managable and less of a maintanence item. These plants most likely won't lower nitrates as well as Chaeto or Caulerpa, but they still do scrub the tanks water.
I use a combination of Caulerpa and Chaeto in my refugium with zero nitrates.
As stated earlier, the fastest way to reduce nitrates is by water changes and use of RO/DI water to make new tank water. Macro-algaes are very good at keeping nitrates low in the long run, but a water change can do in minutes what the plants may need days or weeks to accomplish.