nuisance nitrates

[jamal]

i have been battling this prob for a while now. with little success. i recently purchased a bio denitrator from dan for my tank. with it and a more regular harvesting of macroalgae i have cut them in half. i have only had it about a month and a half. i have about 250gal of water in my system. trates are at 25ppm which is still very high but lower than it was. just wanted to share.

[gsedlack]

I have just taken that trip. My nitrates were off the chart since I neglected to test for a few months. I did 25% water changes weekly to get to 20, then I spoke to Tri Bui (Don) when I picked up a few things from him.

 

His advice was to cut back on feeding to every other day and let the fish live off the tank. Now my nitrates test at 0 to 0.5 and my corals are happy. It is the best thing I have done to date.

 

One question if I may ... I have a good growth of Macro in the fuge - does this mean that I still have too many nutrients?

[jamesbuf]

I have just taken that trip. My nitrates were off the chart since I neglected to test for a few months. I did 25% water changes weekly to get to 20, then I spoke to Tri Bui (Don) when I picked up a few things from him.

 

His advice was to cut back on feeding to every other day and let the fish live off the tank. Now my nitrates test at 0 to 0.5 and my corals are happy. It is the best thing I have done to date.

 

One question if I may ... I have a good growth of Macro in the fuge - does this mean that I still have too many nutrients?

 

Yeah, but that isn't fair to your fish to only feed them every other day. I guess the algae eaters and grazers would be ok, but what about those that aren't strict herbivores?

 

 

I also setup a sulfur denitrator and have had alot of success with it. Jamal, the best way to run it is to have a solenoid on the intake which can be turned off and on, which is controlled with a ORP probe inside the reactor. As you know the bacteria inside thrive in an oxygen deprived environtment. You can maximize the amount of flow through the reactor by controlling it with an ORP probe. If you're letting in too much new water, and the oxygen with it, the ORP probe will let you know this and can shut off the flow through the solenoid. Then once the ORP is low again in the reactor it'll let more water in. This is how I'd like to run mine once I get money to buy the ORP controller (either a stand alone ORP controller or an expansion box for my ACIII). For now I just test the nitrates coming out of the unit once every 3-4 days and adjust the flow appropriately.