very High NITRATES

[ReeferDude]

I was wondering if its ok to rip apart my sump and clean out all the sponges and bioballs. Will it hurt my tank or will it benefit cause if there was a chart that went high enough my nitrates are probably about 400ppm

 

[TomD]

You should just remove them if you have reef but do it slowly. If you do it all at once you could go into a cycle.

 

[JayM]

Wow, I though mine went high when they hit about 50......

1 50% water change should drop them by 1/2, and sounds like a really good idea to me at this point

 

[rich]

bioballs bad

yes definately take them out and yes slowly over a couple of weeks, bioballs are only good for fish only systems, do you have a protein skimmer in use and how much do you feed. 50 % water change a must as well. Do you have a canister filter? Because those can be nitrate traps as well.

 

[RichConley]

Do you have a skimmer? Or fuge?


How were you expecting to get rid of nitrates?

 

[ReeferDude]

I donot have a skimmer my sump is not bug enough and i have no room off the back of the tank im maxed out to the limit

 

[TomD]

That is not good. You are going to have a very hard time trying to run a clean reef without a good skimmer in my opinion.

 

[focus]

Hang a skimmer off the side. Do you have a DSB?

Get 1 of these, they are cheap but work well.

http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merc...uct_Code=ESU-33000&Category_Code=Superskimmer

 

[smcnally]

I donot have a skimmer my sump is not bug enough and i have no room off the back of the tank im maxed out to the limit

I had a 10 gallon sump, and I crammed an AquaC Urchin skimmer in there. Something like that would be perfect for your size tank.

 

[Scott G]

I had the same problem, I was running my tank without a skimmer, nitrates way up high, all of my corals were unhappy. Now that I have a Euro-Reef RS80, my nitrates are at 10ppm.

 

[MAReefer1]

Hang a skimmer off the side. Do you have a DSB?

Get 1 of these, they are cheap but work well.

http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merc...uct_Code=ESU-33000&Category_Code=Superskimmer

I highly reccomend this skimmer, wow! really, great skimmer for the money.

 

[naturebatslast]

You bioload is pretty sizable as well. You could get a bigger tank and/or sump, a bigass skimmer, maybe think about refugium and/or get rid of some of your fish.

 

[merk1_99]

Reduce the number of fish. Lose the tang and anthias and maybe the oddball chromis to make it an even number of four fish. Stop multiple daily feedings and reduce to one feeding once a day to every 2-3 days. Start performing large water changes. I would do a series of 10 gallons every other day for a week.

Are you using ro/di water? Also how old is the tank.


Sure you aren't using the test kit incorrectly? 400 sounds really high. I thought mine was high @ 120.