old liverock

[treesprite]

I am pretty much convinced at this point that my nitrate problem is primarily being caused by leeching of old rock, so I am making these suggestions to other people.

 

If you are having nitrate problems but don't do anything that would reasonably cause it, but your liverock is really old.... suspect the liverock. Either find a way to get the nitrate out of it or replace it with virgin stuff.

 

If you are considering buying old used liverock from someone, test the water it's in first, or if it's dried out, soak it in water and test the water after a couple hours to find out if the rock is leeching nitrate. If you buy it and find there is nitrate, find a way to get it out of the rock before putting the rock in your tank.

[dmehfoud]

Interesting. How old is the rock? I have had mine for 6 years and nitrates are undetectable. I suppose though it depends on the water quality of the tank it was in before.

[lhcorals]

How high is your Nitrates? How old is your live rock? Do you ever use a Turkey bastor or small pump to get the Distritus out of the rock? I have some rock in my tank that is 10 years old, and my nitrates are very, very low.

[treesprite]

I can put rock in a bucket with new zero nitrate water and end up with nitrate showing up.

 

Some of my rock is as old as 15 years, but age ranges from 15 years to a few weeks. When my clownfish were in the tank I fed a lot of frozen stuff and was over-feeding for many years (clowns now in their own tank and not fed as much). I blow off around my LR with a baster on a regualr basis but didn't do it a long time ago. A couple years ago the tank had crushed coral in it and nitrate that could have been the subject of a horror flick. I decided to either give the tank up or get serious, get some new equipment, and start keeping corals.... shortly after I decided to get serious I found WAMAS, thank goodness!

 

I did a 100% water change several weeks ago, scrubbed off all the liverock with a toothbrush, cleaned half the sand in clean water and the other half rinsed real well in tank water to get rid of detritus without killing off the bacteria. I do not even feed the fish every day nd have a light bioload. I tested the water yesterday and sure enough there was nitrate present - I dumped the sample with disgust as soon as color started showing rather than wait a few minutes to see how dark it would get.

 

I have read stuff before about old liverock - seems like it must be true, the stuff does get "too old" in an aquarium.

[Sharkey18]

Is the live rock / nitrate problem at all similar to the old deep sand bed issue? If it can happen in a dsb doesn't it make sense that it could happen in live rock?

 

Laura

[zygote2k]

Could it be that you are jumping to conclusions? Have you done any real tests before you suggest things?

I have old liverock and a DSB and don't have N03 issues. Could it be that the issues that you're having are unique to your system? How high are the nitrates in your system? Have you thoroughly siphoned the sandbed with a gravel vac? How about your regular maintenance procedures?

[lanman]

Could it be that you are jumping to conclusions? Have you done any real tests before you suggest things?

I have old liverock and a DSB and don't have N03 issues. Could it be that the issues that you're having are unique to your system? How high are the nitrates in your system? Have you thoroughly siphoned the sandbed with a gravel vac? How about your regular maintenance procedures?

 

If I understand what she is saying - there is no sand bed involved. There are no fish involved... there is nothing involved but live rock and freshly-mixed zero nitrate water. Fill container with water, insert rock, wait a couple of hours - and instant nitrates.

 

Forrest ... According to the literature, nitrates are a result of nitrites that have been 'handled' by bacteria in your live rock. Which nitrites should be coming from ammonia - or the precursors thereof. Nitrates shouldn't be 'fixed' in some way in your live rock that you can't rinse it off. Something doesn't seem quite right about your experiment. Not sure what. That is #1

 

#2 - why the doom and gloom about a bit of nitrates?? How high does it get? If it is 25 or less on Salifert's test kit - I wouldn't be too excited. You did say 'pink' at one point. I'd be happy with pink. I measure shades of purple in two of my tanks. And both have healthy fish and healthy corals in them. My water changes bounce me between 20 and 25ppm. There is no valid reason for my high nitrates - it just 'is'. I keep it under control, and the tank is fine. When it was approaching 50ppm, I was having problems with coral - brown tips, slow growth, etc. But pink?? No problem! Frequent (1-2 per week) 10% water changes to keep it under control, and don't worry about it unless you can't keep fish or corals alive. Be happy.

 

bob

[treesprite]

Bob, you have color in your corals, beautiful. My corals are brown - nitrate doesn't kill corals at this level, but it makes the zooxanthellae overpopulate which affects coloring.

 

Before I re-did the tank there was cyano - I am hoping it doesn't come back. Maybe AmQuel+ will keep cyano away (spoken half joking and half hopeful that it really is locking up the nitrate so the nitrate doesn't fuel anything... anyone got a tank of cyano for experimentation?).

 

I think if there was ammonia or nitrite in my rock the stars and worms & such would have died but they are still there.

 

I while back I did reading on old liverock which talked about this sort of a problem, but I will do some more research.