my nitrates are high what do i do?

[cnunez3024]

my nitrates are at 20 is that too high i just did a water change yesterday :-( what do i do?

[Sisterlimonpot]

It's creeping up there. What do you think the cause of the high nitrates are?

[cnunez3024]

i have no clue man now my nitrites are at .50 WTFFF either im doing the test wrong or i dunno man.... this is scaring me

[Sisterlimonpot]

is it .5 PPM or 50PPM. Have you considered carbon dosing?

[cnunez3024]

its at .5 sorry about that and what is carbon dosing?

[cnunez3024]

would feeding my corals and fish those green coral cubes and mysis affect my readings for nitrates and nitrites...? i fed them and like 5 -10 minutes after i tested the water...?

[Sisterlimonpot]

.5 isn't bad at all. Carbon dosing is using a carbon based substance like vodka, sugar or vinegar (or all 3 VSV) to create bacteria in your tank that aids in removing nitrates. I dose vodka and have had great success with it. If you choose to do it I would suggest reading and fully understanding this article:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php
and read this thread on it:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...readid=1589131

[Sisterlimonpot]

Originally posted by cnunez3024
would feeding my corals and fish those green coral cubes and mysis affect my readings for nitrates and nitrites...? i fed them and like 5 -10 minutes after i tested the water...?

You shouldn't have any nitrites in your tank at all. They are consumed just as fast as they are created.

Over feeding is one of the main culprits of having high nitrates, this is due to the breakdown of the uneaten food and eventually it turns into nitrates. another culprit is the water that comes with the frozen foods, they seem to be extremely high in nitrates and phosphates. I don't think that testing right after feeding is going to give you a faulty reading for nitrates.

[cnunez3024]

my nitrites are .5mg/l though not nitrates.... my nitrates are at 20 ppm....

[Sisterlimonpot]

wow. seems like you have a mini cycle going on there. Did you just recently add more rock or a bunch of fish? In other words what have you done lately to increase the bioload?

[Sisterlimonpot]

Retest your nitrites and see if you get the same result.

[thegrun]

What level have your nitrates been at previously? Did something die? If they suddenly shot up, there has to be a cause. If it has been a slow gradual build up, you may be overfeeding. Are you using RO/DI water? My tap water nitrates run about 25 PPM.

[cnunez3024]

im using r/o water yes but the ones from the machines in at a local grocery store its a r/o water machine... and i had fish in there a while back the tank has been running for about 1 month now... and the tank is used and i used about 90 [pounds of the cycled live rock it came with.. the rest of the rock i bought and the rocks that i bought i cycled it for about 2 weeks and ammonia or nitrates never were high nitrates were around 5 ppm ... im thinking i got an incorrect reading on my nitrites... because all my sps and corals are fine nothing is dying or anything i had a fish die about a weeek ago but thats because she was getting picked on... other than that nothing has died...

[Sisterlimonpot]

Well aside from hopefully a faulty reading. I would recommend investing in an RODI unit. It will save you tons of money in the long run (it was broken down by melev that it cost roughly $.07 per gallon of RODI water when you factor in all the cost). I think the next best thing would be buying distilled water from the grocery store. I don't know if I would trust public RO machines because you don't know how old the filters are and if they're even still filtering correctly.