high Nitrates?

[snakeklr]

I have high nitrates. My system is not doing good. After almost 4 years at it and nothing this major. A friend came by to help and suggested removing all live items from display and put in my wifes tank. now all moved out 1 1/2 week later still up at 40ppm. help plz? anyone know of how to remove or reduce nitrates ? one website suggestion removing all LR and sifting thru the sand to see if anything is dead in it or decaying. My knowledge is never touch or sift thru the sand bed at all or little. This site is telling me to clean it out as if it were freshwater tank gravel cleaning? and really dont want to considering the size of my tank.

ok system is a 180g rr.
lights 175w10k MH (2x 250w 20k with ballast on order) 2x power brite antic blue moon lights.
125-150lbs of LR, 150lbs of DSB 3-4"deep
living items before moved out to other tank
1 yellow tang
2 engineer goby's
1 coral beauty
1 lawnmower blenny.
misc snails, hermits

Sump/fuge with DIY skimmer.

last test of stsyem

nitrates 40ppm
nitrites .5
alk between 180-300ppm
ph 7.8
amonia abt .25ppm
salinity 1.022/23 low due to recent water change today and ran out of salt. LOL small town LFS closed sun-mon.

forgot to state system is about 7months old.


Anyone have any ideas on what to do? thank you for the help.

[Don-Coraleone]

40 ppm isnt horrible but to get rid of the nitrate you have to change half your tanks water volume to bring the nitrate down a quarter. do a couple large water changes and you will be fine.

[fivesmallworlds]

Skimmer may not be keeping up with your stocking levels.

Your bioload doesn't seem that high, but if your skimmer isn't pulling out all the nasties, it just converts to nitrates.

How much flow? if you have a lot of dead areas (flow wise) you may have a lot of excess food and fish waste decaying in those areas rather than being sucked into the overflow and into the sump/skimmer.

Using RO/DI water?

[Bill Cobb]

I'm sensing your nitrates are eminating from your sand bed. After a few water changes don't change anything, then it's your sand bed.

[snakeklr]

Five, flow is great, with moon lights only is awsome to watch the micro bubles floating around. Mag 9 with 2 outlest pointed at each corner of the tank like an outward V from overflow at center of the back to the two front corners. water comes out and downward to the cornesr then rolls around to the center and flows up from the bottom to the overflow.

skimmer is pulling out a bunch of yuck. put a Garorade bottle on the collection cup and about 1/4 to 1/2 a day fill up from that.

No we dont have a RO/Di yet. That is next on the get list. using tap water.

The hard part is after 4 years this problem?

Bill, I hope not the sand bed. there is a lot of sand in there and everything i have learned is never disturb the sand bed. I was alwasy taught no-no on stiring up the sand bed. BUT if so then it will take a lot of cleaning to clean all that sand. I probably will just suck it all out and just get new sand and replace it. but then what about all the bugs?

[Bill Cobb]

Bill, I hope not the sand bed. there is a lot of sand in there and everything i have learned is never disturb the sand bed. I was alwasy taught no-no on stiring up the sand bed. BUT if so then it will take a lot of cleaning to clean all that sand. I probably will just suck it all out and just get new sand and replace it. but then what about all the bugs? [/B][/QUOTE]

I only mention this because my original 55g experienced the same thing after a year, then all of a sudden my nitrates were climbing and I couldn't figure why. Ended up pulling it all out,rinsing in 5g buckets and installing a plenum, then putting it all back in again.
But only consider this if all else has not brought your levels down to where they should be.