Nitrates off the charts! Help please!

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mhayes462

Guest
Im new here on this site and to sw tanks. I have a Biocube 29. I bought it used and I also bought it with the live sand and live rock in it. I also took the water figuring I would have an established tank. However, when I picked it up he did not have it plugged in and I dont know for how long it sat that way. He did say he had fish in it a month or so ago. So I added another 5lb bag of CaribSea live sand to repopulate the lr and ls incase it had died off. It holds 15 gallons and I did a 5 gallon water change that I got from the lfs. I brought it home Fri and did the ls and water change Sat. I have modded the stock filter to accept poly-filter filter pad. I have changed it a few times to get rid of debris. Also on Sat I dropped 1 coctail shrimp in to get things started. It is now Mon and the water was super clear today. I did my first water test and the results are: pH-8.2, ammonia-1ppm, nitrites-.5ppm, (and now for the stunner) nitrates-160! Maybe more, but that was the last color on the chart. My salinity is a little high at 1.032. My temp is about 79. I think I know why my nitrates are so high. Probably because of a dirty tank, and Im sure the bioballs dont help. What would be the best course of action for me? Water change? If so, how much? Should I clean a portion of the bioballs? After the reading I looked at the sponge in chamber 3 and there was a ton of debris under it so I stirred it out and let it go into the tank and hopefully into the filter. If I do a water change should I clean the bottom of the chambers first and get everything stirred up so I can siphon it out with the water? Will this mess up the cycle of the new sand? Any advice on what to do would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
meowzer

meowzer

Moderator
WELCOME TO SWF
first let me ask.......you added new sand IN ADDITION to the old sand?????
ALSO I would get rid of the bio-balls.....just a personal preference.....
I bet you stirred a lot of gunk up
 
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mhayes462

Guest
Yes, that was in addition to the old sand. And yes, it got pretty cloudy in the tank! Lol
 
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mhayes462

Guest
Could my lr be full of phosphates and gunk from sitting in unfiltered water?
 
meowzer

meowzer

Moderator
mhayes....please excuse the ...um....the uh.......comedians here.....we tend to do this once in a while....it keeps things upbeat (BAHAHAHA)
JEFF you hook it onto your sink
 
novahobbies

novahobbies

Well-Known Member
Also, how old is the test kit and what brand is it? Many Nitrate kits tend to register high when they start to go "off-color." It wouldn't surprise me in the least, though, if your nitrates were on the high side after sitting fallow with no filtration as you mentioned. Definitely take a turkey baster to the rock and blow as much debris off as you can.
 
bugsman

bugsman

Member
Could your nitrates be so high because, if I read correctly, you threw in a cocktail shrimp to get the cycling started?? As long as there isn't any fish in there or inverts, I would do what all has recommended above, take the shrimp out, do some more water changes and let things settle down some. I'm still very new at all this too. Am I off here in what I've just said? And I'm laughing at you all as usual - a bunch of jokesters.
 
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mhayes462

Guest
Hey, no problem. I'm all for having a little fun. I was also advised to just leave it alone and let it finish any cycle it may be going through. Then when ammonia and nitrites reach 0 to do a pwc and cleaning to get rid of nitrates. Does that sound right? My test kit is an API master saltwater test kit that I got from *****.
 
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eric b 125

Guest
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhayes462 http:///t/389778/nitrates-off-the-charts-help-please#post_3447128
Could my lr be full of phosphates and gunk from sitting in unfiltered water?
LR can absorb and become saturated with phosphates. According to Anthony Calfo, these rocks will always leech phosphates back into the system. I've gotten rocks from other peoples tanks and after having them in a bucket of new saltwater for a day, the phosphate reading on that bucket went pretty high. I just kept the rock in the rubbermaid container and ran a phosban reactor on it, and did weekly water changes for around a month and now the phosphates are nearly undetectable, so although I respect Calfo's experience and whatnot, this little experiment would contradict his advice.
 
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mhayes462

Guest
So you cooked your rock then? I've been told I should do that, but I don't want to wait a month or more for that then another month or so to recycle. Probably just buy new lr before I went through that.
 
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