Nitrates skyrocketed - HELP

intenseimage · 08/25/2008, 08:19 PM

On 8/17 Nitrates tested at 0 ppm. Today they tested at 60 ppm!

Yes, I was bad and left a filter sock in a bit too long (2 weeks) and my wife likes to feed a bit heavy but the tank has been running like that since Feb with no issues.

Now, we did move some sand around which could have kicked up some nasty stuff -- but enough to raise the levels that much?

The tank is a 75g RR with 29g sump ... I did a 5g WC tonite with what I had on hand and will be doing 10g a day until Sunday to bring these levels down.

We have stopped the auto feeder and will cut back on feeding. I removed the sock (obvious) and cleaned the skimmer to make sure thats 100%

But, in the meantime is there anything else I should be doing or should I not really worry about it yet.

I am thinking about picking up some Purigen tomorrow -- any thoughts on that product?

flamron · 08/25/2008, 08:29 PM

I would do a series of water changes - about 30% each...

GL

seapug · 08/25/2008, 08:44 PM

yeah, water changes are probably a much more effective method for your situation.

cgh38 · 08/25/2008, 08:55 PM

sugar brings it down for me.

CAROLGYRL · 08/25/2008, 09:53 PM

i HAVE NEVER HEARD OF SUGAR BRING USED TO BRING DOWN NITRATES!!aRE YOU SERIOUS? OR IS THAT SLANG FOR SOMETHING ELSE?/

seapug · 08/25/2008, 10:08 PM

sugar is used as a carbon source to fuel a bacteria bloom that consumes the nitrate. Vinegar and Vodka can be used as well, but it's not something you do haphazardly as it can easily crash and kill everything your tank. Sugar is the riskiest method of the three common ways. There's been some evidence that sugar is extremely toxic for corals.

Trigeek · 08/25/2008, 10:13 PM

There is evidence that vodka is extremely toxic for me.

Mikeeal · 08/25/2008, 10:20 PM

lolol ^^^

OP, water changes brutha!

Bruno3047 · 08/25/2008, 10:27 PM

You can spend the rest of your reefing life doing water changes to bring down your nitrates, or you could invest in a DeNitrate reactor and never have to do another water change for that reason again.

Before you buy, though, I would do a thorough and exhaustive amount of research into how they work, what the risks are, and the cheapest (if that matters to you) way to get one running and working in your water column.

JMHO

Oh, and I'll have mine with 7-UP and a twist, please.

cgh38 · 08/25/2008, 11:09 PM

I used 1/4 teaspoon for 3 days with heavy skimming on my 90g and got it down from 25PPM to 0 with no water changes and no side effects, check ot this thread:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...ighlight=sugar

limitdown · 08/25/2008, 11:58 PM

Water change +sugar/vodka for quick relief.

Long-term you should definitely consider getting a sulfur denitrator. They're almost set-and-forget, but they do take about 1-month to cycle. Don't get a carbon-based denitrator because you will need to feed it with sugar water every single day.

I run a heavily stocked 200g FO and a Schuran sulfur denitrator and my nitrates are never detectable.

Here's a good thread on sulfur denitrators.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...5&pagenumber=1

boxfishpooalot · 08/26/2008, 04:05 AM

Now, we did move some sand around which could have kicked up some nasty stuff -- but enough to raise the levels that much?

Just a guess, not proven but- Stirring sand will allow a bucket load of organics to enter the aerobic water colum and allow bacteria to decompose organics into their constituentes No3 and Po4. Keeping it in the sand, keep it anerobic.

intenseimage · 08/26/2008, 06:42 AM

I am well aware of Sugar/Vodka dosing and prefer to stay away from that. I do believe that our stirring up of the sand as we smoothed it out was the cause.

I will be changing 10g/day until Sunday to see what happens and may attempt Purigen as well during the week

SCIFI_3D_zoo · 08/26/2008, 08:31 AM

Mmm... that's not what caused it. The problem is still over-feeding and the use of sock filters. You can help keep stuff from settling if you are hand feeding and only putting in small amounts so none settles on the sand/rock. Who knows what your auto-feeder is doing. You should observe that or take it off-line (use for vacations only). I think your Nitrates were already on the way up (your test kit was wrong if you had 0 most likely) and you might have exacerbated it with the sand. But it would have happened eventually,, and probably much worse over time. I just get the feeling you were trying to say if you didn't stir your sand this would have never happened?

intenseimage · 08/26/2008, 09:23 AM

I know the sock filter could add to the issue if not kept clean and that was my fault and has since been taken care of.

The Auto feeder has only been setup for the past 3 days in prep for a vacation next week (needed to get them used to eating flake as they normally get Rods and PE mysis). The feeder was setup to spin 2x a day and gave MINIMAL ammts of flake (consumed in under a minute!)

My nitrates normally test between 0 and 5 ppm and tested at 0 on 8/17 ... so within 10 days it rose to 60 ppm -- thats a HUGE jump in a short period of time and the ONLY thing I can think of that could have caused that was the sandbed.

Wouldnt overfeeding show a GRADUAL rise in Nitrates?

SCIFI_3D_zoo · 08/26/2008, 09:38 AM

If you get sick of changing socks out every 2-3 days, which you should do, you can get rid of it all together. A lot of people just use them for 24 hours when they do a water change and stir everything up. And if you need to you can syphon out your sump if you have excessive amount settling in there. If you don't stay on top of that you can cause a LOT more problems than any benefit you get from running them 24/7. And it gets old quick messing with them. I have tried both ways and running it once after a water change and my tank was the same as far as nitrates go, and my rock is 99% dust free now too. So it's not necessary to run it all the time. If your rock is really dirty you can run them temporarily and clean your system out real good by stirring it up everyday for a week.

10 days is plenty. I assume you weren't testing it every day. So it really did happen gradually over 10 days. Or your kit testing was wrong. Maybe the accuracy of your kit didn't show you the subtle rise IF you did do it more often. Actually... the effects of over-feeding would probably show up with all that food rotting in much less time... 24-72 hrs. depending on how much waste we're talking about. PLus the more they eat the more they poop too.

intenseimage · 08/26/2008, 10:00 AM

Yes normally we dont run the sock but figured we would put it in for a week (and of course got lazy and left it there) -- its not going back in any time soon.

I guess I just never expected a rise of 50 ppm in 10 days.

Hopefully the 10g WC/day until Sunday can clear this up to where it was a week ago.

And like I said, since Feb when the tank was setup I would always be in the 0-5 ppm range!

SCIFI_3D_zoo · 08/26/2008, 10:08 AM

I just saw a thread about the same thing in the "Reef Chemistry" forum. Randy Holmes said to just do a 50% water change and it should cut donw Nitrates 50%.

stingythingy45 · 08/26/2008, 10:14 AM

I'm still a strong advocate for (DSB)deep sand beds.
Either remote or in the display,it works great.
I've really never gone above 5ppm nitrate in over a year.

intenseimage · 08/26/2008, 10:18 AM

Couldnt a 50% change (at once) cause a bit of a shock to the animals? Thats the only reason why I was spreading it out over a few days?

stingythingy45 · 08/26/2008, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by intenseimage
Couldnt a 50% change (at once) cause a bit of a shock to the animals? Thats the only reason why I was spreading it out over a few days?

The only problem with spreading it out over days is that some % of the water you change in subsequent changes will be water that's already been changed.

intenseimage · 08/26/2008, 10:34 AM

Yes, its more of a dilution than straight up change.

SCIFI_3D_zoo · 08/26/2008, 10:39 AM

I have no idea what you have.. .but a good amount of rock, dsb (some don't have sand at all), fuge, etc. can all help.

Yea, I've read the same thing about large changes. Maybe he was being hypothetical. BUt you should look for that thread. http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...readid=1457926 Some good article links there too. BUT... he does say 50% there... but you could just do 2 days 25% each. It's kinda silly to do a ton of 10%. In fact, once a month normally is enough... 20-30%. Some people do this weekly bi-weekly stuff. And one day... I'm gonna figure out how to get by 1-3 months.

AH.. good point. Somewhere... there was a Randy article with graphs showing that one large change was better than 4 smaller ones.

intenseimage · 08/26/2008, 10:57 AM

Another question: If this was truly caused by the stirring of the sandbed, would it naturally fall over time as it is used up again by the LR and sand bed?

What still surprises me is that everyone says Xenia hates nitrates but mine are thriving !

What are the negatives of high nitrates - ive seen things like algae blooms but no real side effects on the livestock?

SCIFI_3D_zoo · 08/26/2008, 11:29 AM

I never said I believed that theory. You don't want any food on your sand or rock. Crabs and whatnot are not gonna process it quickly enough. It will rot and just turn into nitrates after it goes through the waste cycle. Not just to waste time rehashing what is already said, but I don't want to get it wrong either.. so you shold ck. out those links and brush up your knowledge on Nitrates.

I think they may hate them too high.. but they don't hate them. It could take days or a few weeks till they start dying off from poor water quality. When I use to grow large colonies of those I would just cut my skimmer off for awhile to keep nutrients in the water longer for them. But a skimmer doesn't remove nitrates... just materials that could turn into nitrates. So they're thriving b/c you have so much food in your tank. But obviously too much for your tank to handle and process. How many fish do you have, what types, how big tank, etc. How often are you feeding, and feeding what? I've gone from feeding a little to a lot of a lot of diff. stuff and my nitrates have never changes. So my system can handle it. I keep hearing even for SPS that 5-10 ppm or even 15 may be ok and beneficial, but an awful lot of the experts brag about how they have 0 nitrates. But I have seen excellent systems both ways. I'm running about 10-15ppm but I'm gonna just take it down to 0-5 so I could feed more.
]
What are the effects? Again read those articles. Randy goes into what types of corals like this, don't, don't care, etc. Most but the sensitive stuff don't care about 0-15 ppm nitrates. No, not just algae, nitrates can kill corals AND fish.

08/25/2008, 08:19 PM	#1
intenseimage Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Northampton, PA Posts: 1,135	Nitrates skyrocketed - HELP On 8/17 Nitrates tested at 0 ppm. Today they tested at 60 ppm! Yes, I was bad and left a filter sock in a bit too long (2 weeks) and my wife likes to feed a bit heavy but the tank has been running like that since Feb with no issues. Now, we did move some sand around which could have kicked up some nasty stuff -- but enough to raise the levels that much? The tank is a 75g RR with 29g sump ... I did a 5g WC tonite with what I had on hand and will be doing 10g a day until Sunday to bring these levels down. We have stopped the auto feeder and will cut back on feeding. I removed the sock (obvious) and cleaned the skimmer to make sure thats 100% But, in the meantime is there anything else I should be doing or should I not really worry about it yet. I am thinking about picking up some Purigen tomorrow -- any thoughts on that product?

08/25/2008, 08:29 PM	#2
flamron Professional Stick Gluer Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: NW Arkansas Posts: 2,216	I would do a series of water changes - about 30% each... GL __________________ Ronnie 60g cube - Ghost Overflow - ATI 8 bulb dimmable sunpower - Apex - MP10s - Synergy sump

08/25/2008, 08:44 PM	#3
seapug Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: 4980 ft. Posts: 7,954 Blog Entries: 1	yeah, water changes are probably a much more effective method for your situation. __________________ insert clever saying here. Current Tank Info: 200 gallon custom Marineland DD peninsular tank. LPS dominated mixed reef. Previous 90 gallon mixed reef TOTM April 2009.

08/25/2008, 10:08 PM	#6
seapug Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: 4980 ft. Posts: 7,954 Blog Entries: 1	sugar is used as a carbon source to fuel a bacteria bloom that consumes the nitrate. Vinegar and Vodka can be used as well, but it's not something you do haphazardly as it can easily crash and kill everything your tank. Sugar is the riskiest method of the three common ways. There's been some evidence that sugar is extremely toxic for corals. __________________ insert clever saying here. Current Tank Info: 200 gallon custom Marineland DD peninsular tank. LPS dominated mixed reef. Previous 90 gallon mixed reef TOTM April 2009.

08/25/2008, 10:20 PM	#8
Mikeeal Same avatar since '05 Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Northern Nevada Posts: 1,285	lolol ^^^ OP, water changes brutha! __________________ "The leanest burger in the world!!! can be the MEEEAANEST burger in the world..if you cook it that way......" Current Tank Info: 125g fowlr

08/25/2008, 08:55 PM	#4
cgh38 Registered Member Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: New Jersey , Exit 9 Posts: 394	sugar brings it down for me.

08/25/2008, 09:53 PM	#5
CAROLGYRL Registered Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: PALM DESERT, CA. Posts: 184	i HAVE NEVER HEARD OF SUGAR BRING USED TO BRING DOWN NITRATES!!aRE YOU SERIOUS? OR IS THAT SLANG FOR SOMETHING ELSE?/

08/25/2008, 10:13 PM	#7
Trigeek Registered Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Broward County, FL Posts: 638	There is evidence that vodka is extremely toxic for me.

08/25/2008, 10:27 PM	#9
Bruno3047 Registered Member Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 1,018	You can spend the rest of your reefing life doing water changes to bring down your nitrates, or you could invest in a DeNitrate reactor and never have to do another water change for that reason again. Before you buy, though, I would do a thorough and exhaustive amount of research into how they work, what the risks are, and the cheapest (if that matters to you) way to get one running and working in your water column. JMHO Oh, and I'll have mine with 7-UP and a twist, please.

08/25/2008, 11:09 PM	#10
cgh38 Registered Member Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: New Jersey , Exit 9 Posts: 394	I used 1/4 teaspoon for 3 days with heavy skimming on my 90g and got it down from 25PPM to 0 with no water changes and no side effects, check ot this thread: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...ighlight=sugar

08/25/2008, 11:58 PM	#11
limitdown Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 640	Water change +sugar/vodka for quick relief. Long-term you should definitely consider getting a sulfur denitrator. They're almost set-and-forget, but they do take about 1-month to cycle. Don't get a carbon-based denitrator because you will need to feed it with sugar water every single day. I run a heavily stocked 200g FO and a Schuran sulfur denitrator and my nitrates are never detectable. Here's a good thread on sulfur denitrators. http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...5&pagenumber=1 __________________ All I want for Christmas is to stay employed... Current Tank Info: 200g display + 50g sump FO

08/26/2008, 04:05 AM	#12
boxfishpooalot Registered Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: canada, Grande Praire, Ab Posts: 5,824	Now, we did move some sand around which could have kicked up some nasty stuff -- but enough to raise the levels that much? Just a guess, not proven but- Stirring sand will allow a bucket load of organics to enter the aerobic water colum and allow bacteria to decompose organics into their constituentes No3 and Po4. Keeping it in the sand, keep it anerobic. __________________ Its a good idea to have a refrence sample for alk test kits. 1.1350 grams of baking soda in 1gallon of distilled water=10dkh. Check your alkalinity test kit! Algae is Mother Natures phosphate remover Current Tank Info: 220 galon mixed reef.

08/26/2008, 06:42 AM	#13
intenseimage Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Northampton, PA Posts: 1,135	I am well aware of Sugar/Vodka dosing and prefer to stay away from that. I do believe that our stirring up of the sand as we smoothed it out was the cause. I will be changing 10g/day until Sunday to see what happens and may attempt Purigen as well during the week

08/26/2008, 08:31 AM	#14
SCIFI_3D_zoo Registered Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Sebring, Florida Posts: 1,072	Mmm... that's not what caused it. The problem is still over-feeding and the use of sock filters. You can help keep stuff from settling if you are hand feeding and only putting in small amounts so none settles on the sand/rock. Who knows what your auto-feeder is doing. You should observe that or take it off-line (use for vacations only). I think your Nitrates were already on the way up (your test kit was wrong if you had 0 most likely) and you might have exacerbated it with the sand. But it would have happened eventually,, and probably much worse over time. I just get the feeling you were trying to say if you didn't stir your sand this would have never happened?

08/26/2008, 09:23 AM	#15
intenseimage Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Northampton, PA Posts: 1,135	I know the sock filter could add to the issue if not kept clean and that was my fault and has since been taken care of. The Auto feeder has only been setup for the past 3 days in prep for a vacation next week (needed to get them used to eating flake as they normally get Rods and PE mysis). The feeder was setup to spin 2x a day and gave MINIMAL ammts of flake (consumed in under a minute!) My nitrates normally test between 0 and 5 ppm and tested at 0 on 8/17 ... so within 10 days it rose to 60 ppm -- thats a HUGE jump in a short period of time and the ONLY thing I can think of that could have caused that was the sandbed. Wouldnt overfeeding show a GRADUAL rise in Nitrates?

08/26/2008, 09:38 AM	#16
SCIFI_3D_zoo Registered Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Sebring, Florida Posts: 1,072	If you get sick of changing socks out every 2-3 days, which you should do, you can get rid of it all together. A lot of people just use them for 24 hours when they do a water change and stir everything up. And if you need to you can syphon out your sump if you have excessive amount settling in there. If you don't stay on top of that you can cause a LOT more problems than any benefit you get from running them 24/7. And it gets old quick messing with them. I have tried both ways and running it once after a water change and my tank was the same as far as nitrates go, and my rock is 99% dust free now too. So it's not necessary to run it all the time. If your rock is really dirty you can run them temporarily and clean your system out real good by stirring it up everyday for a week. 10 days is plenty. I assume you weren't testing it every day. So it really did happen gradually over 10 days. Or your kit testing was wrong. Maybe the accuracy of your kit didn't show you the subtle rise IF you did do it more often. Actually... the effects of over-feeding would probably show up with all that food rotting in much less time... 24-72 hrs. depending on how much waste we're talking about. PLus the more they eat the more they poop too.

08/26/2008, 10:00 AM	#17
intenseimage Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Northampton, PA Posts: 1,135	Yes normally we dont run the sock but figured we would put it in for a week (and of course got lazy and left it there) -- its not going back in any time soon. I guess I just never expected a rise of 50 ppm in 10 days. Hopefully the 10g WC/day until Sunday can clear this up to where it was a week ago. And like I said, since Feb when the tank was setup I would always be in the 0-5 ppm range!

08/26/2008, 10:08 AM	#18
SCIFI_3D_zoo Registered Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Sebring, Florida Posts: 1,072	I just saw a thread about the same thing in the "Reef Chemistry" forum. Randy Holmes said to just do a 50% water change and it should cut donw Nitrates 50%.

08/26/2008, 10:14 AM	#19
stingythingy45 Registered Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: MA Posts: 3,296	I'm still a strong advocate for (DSB)deep sand beds. Either remote or in the display,it works great. I've really never gone above 5ppm nitrate in over a year. __________________ Bob Current Tank Info: 90 gallon,mixed Reef,2-250 watt Optix 3 pendants(Phoenix 14K)2-54 watt T5 Super actnics ,ASM G-2 Gate/recirc mods,70 gal. basement sump,20L ref

08/26/2008, 10:18 AM	#20
intenseimage Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Northampton, PA Posts: 1,135	Couldnt a 50% change (at once) cause a bit of a shock to the animals? Thats the only reason why I was spreading it out over a few days?

08/26/2008, 10:34 AM	#22
intenseimage Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Northampton, PA Posts: 1,135	Yes, its more of a dilution than straight up change.

08/26/2008, 10:39 AM	#23
SCIFI_3D_zoo Registered Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Sebring, Florida Posts: 1,072	I have no idea what you have.. .but a good amount of rock, dsb (some don't have sand at all), fuge, etc. can all help. Yea, I've read the same thing about large changes. Maybe he was being hypothetical. BUt you should look for that thread. http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...readid=1457926 Some good article links there too. BUT... he does say 50% there... but you could just do 2 days 25% each. It's kinda silly to do a ton of 10%. In fact, once a month normally is enough... 20-30%. Some people do this weekly bi-weekly stuff. And one day... I'm gonna figure out how to get by 1-3 months. AH.. good point. Somewhere... there was a Randy article with graphs showing that one large change was better than 4 smaller ones.

08/26/2008, 10:57 AM	#24
intenseimage Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Northampton, PA Posts: 1,135	Another question: If this was truly caused by the stirring of the sandbed, would it naturally fall over time as it is used up again by the LR and sand bed? What still surprises me is that everyone says Xenia hates nitrates but mine are thriving ! What are the negatives of high nitrates - ive seen things like algae blooms but no real side effects on the livestock? Last edited by intenseimage; 08/26/2008 at 11:16 AM.

08/26/2008, 11:29 AM	#25
SCIFI_3D_zoo Registered Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Sebring, Florida Posts: 1,072	I never said I believed that theory. You don't want any food on your sand or rock. Crabs and whatnot are not gonna process it quickly enough. It will rot and just turn into nitrates after it goes through the waste cycle. Not just to waste time rehashing what is already said, but I don't want to get it wrong either.. so you shold ck. out those links and brush up your knowledge on Nitrates. I think they may hate them too high.. but they don't hate them. It could take days or a few weeks till they start dying off from poor water quality. When I use to grow large colonies of those I would just cut my skimmer off for awhile to keep nutrients in the water longer for them. But a skimmer doesn't remove nitrates... just materials that could turn into nitrates. So they're thriving b/c you have so much food in your tank. But obviously too much for your tank to handle and process. How many fish do you have, what types, how big tank, etc. How often are you feeding, and feeding what? I've gone from feeding a little to a lot of a lot of diff. stuff and my nitrates have never changes. So my system can handle it. I keep hearing even for SPS that 5-10 ppm or even 15 may be ok and beneficial, but an awful lot of the experts brag about how they have 0 nitrates. But I have seen excellent systems both ways. I'm running about 10-15ppm but I'm gonna just take it down to 0-5 so I could feed more. ] What are the effects? Again read those articles. Randy goes into what types of corals like this, don't, don't care, etc. Most but the sensitive stuff don't care about 0-15 ppm nitrates. No, not just algae, nitrates can kill corals AND fish.