Nitrate control in heavy bio-load tanks

[mcginnisandrew]

I have a 55g tank with undetectable nitrates but phosphates around 0.12 ppm because my rock is leaching it from the early days.

I currently:
skim heavy/wet and do wetskim water changes
manually remove algae
grow chaeto
turkey baste my rock daily
run GFO
dose vinegar and potassium nitrate
I also started up an upflow algae scrubber a couple days ago but so far there is not much on it.

I know you asked about nitrate specifically, but the biological controls for nitrate and phosphate are mostly identical so I thought I'd share. Plus my tank is pretty nitrate starved so i figured that everything I do that reduces nitrate (skimming, carbon dosing, growing chaeto, and hopefully soon the algae scrubber) would be relevant here. If I don't dose nitrate then my phosphate won't drop, so I'm willing to allow some algae growth if it means I can reduce my phosphate to near undetectable levels. Then hopefully I can stop with the carbon dosing and GFO. I attribute my nitrate starvation to the carbon dosing though, and a nice side effect is I have a lot of sponge growth.

[biecacka]

Funny thing is I have no algae in the tank. P04 is really low too. Ultimately I want to add about 15 more fish to the display. I like the variety of ideas to help control the outcome of heavy feedings. Now that I can access my sump more easily I wave added filter socks and will change the water from there. Getting any crud that could escape the sock.

Corey

[biecacka]

Been dosing vodka/vinegar for about 10 months now. Skimmer is kicking butt. Nitrates have been around 5-7 for months now.

Corey

[Andrew D]

I've not seen this mentioned yet so I'll add that in addition to lots of LR, carbon, regular basting and siphoning and an ATS I also have a DSB in the first compartment of my sump. I hav about 50 fish in a 350G display 700G system that I feed a lot, and my nitrates have always been less than 5 ppm. Phosphates on the other hand are a little higher....