Magic Nitrate Fairy?

[~RuSh~]

My tank has been up and running for almost three months. Things have been going great. A few weeks ago I had a little mishap though. I fed a little too much (frozen brine shrimp) and got an ammonia spike. Only up to .25 ppm, but it was enough to close up my candy cane.

Since then I've been feeding more stable. Mostly the same amount every day. I did a small water change after that incident, but I haven't since. Yesterday I ran another set of tests and came up with goose eggs across the board.

Ammonia - 0ppm, Nitrite - 0ppm, Nitrate - 0ppm. What's going on? Over a week with no water change... feedings daily sometimes twice....

Tank specs:
29g tank, 35 lbs LR, 1 inch LS, 2 ocellaris clowns, 1 fire shrimp, candy cane, CUC. No sump. No macro algae... No idea?



PS - Yes, I did test more than once.

[bnumair]

do u have any algae in ur tank coz that will hide ur nitrate and phos. algae gorws on those two and if ur tank is few and producing little amount of nitrates and phos u wont register unless it goes over the algaes consumption. ammo and nitrite on the other hand are being broken down to nitrates by ur good bacteria in ur tank. once ur tank cycles fully u will never register ammo and nitrite unless u feed way too much whic in turn will create more ammonia and thus more bacteria to kill it soon causing it to come back to 0.
thats the only explaination i can think of.

[~RuSh~]

Hmmmm.... I didn't figure the algae in the tank would be enough to consume the nitrates. I did have a good amount of algae on the sides of the tank and the face... Coraline spots were starting to form so I scrubbed her down good. Can I expect the nitrates to bounce back because of this? The bioload must be minute if the algae can break it down....

[Chris27]

Are you feeding anything other then Brine?

[~RuSh~]

Yes. Feeding NLS pellets, NLS flake, frozen brine - infused w/ spirulina, and frozen mysis. I want to get some PE mysis here soon, and some other foods as well. They have been picky though. I think they were (tank raised) raised on the brine shrimp so it has taken some effort to get them to take other foods.

[Pcrain]

bad test? what are you using?

[~RuSh~]

API. Should be fine. I bought it when I started up the tank.

[Chris27]

Are you vigorously shaking the vile for 60 seconds before letting it rest for 5 min? If you skip that step, the API kit will tell you that Nitrate is 0.

[~RuSh~]

Yes sir. I've been using the API kits for several years so yes, that is a step that I have goofed in the past, but I know better now.

I'll test again tonight and see what the results are.

[travis32]

I'm not surprised your nitrates are zero. It seems in my experience with my 55g up for 10 months and now my 125g up for 4 months, that nitrates tend to be zero for the first year of operation if you're doing a good job skimming and stuff.

In my 55g, I had a lot of cyano issues. It took over the sand bed and I couldn't get rid of it. I switched to RODI water (was using just RO) in my 125g, and switched my substrate from crushed coral to pure aragonite sand, and so far the 4 months of my 125g being up I still have zero nitrates and no cyano growth. HOwever, I have a sufficient supply of HA.. . ....

So, my guess is my HA consume what little nitrates I would normally have.

[Urchinhead]

Either your live rock based bacterium and any chemical filtration and any algae and corals you have is taking up the excess wastes post spike or you have a bad test kit.