Umm you aren't doing very well for a Newbie. Any Nitrates in your tank are bad (it burns your poor fishes gills) and any real reefer will do everything in their power to get them down to 0. I suggest a water change ASAP or you're just being mean.

Anything around 20 ppm is way too high. That means you need to do a water change. Your anenome will thank you. Try to keep them at least below 5 ppm or better yet undetectable.

I am asuming from all the happy faces you are joking, er I hope so anyways.. I am talking a system with perfect water condidions. when I did do my rare water changes, amonia, nitrate and nitrite were all still undetectable. I used both a Ca reactor and a kalk reactor, my skimmer was probably rated for 4 times my water volume, and I had low fish stalking and I feed on the lower side. don't use nitrates as a deciding factor as when you see them you should have already done one if your system can't handle them.

also don't be scared of large waterchanges.. I used to do 20% changes and if I decided I needed a big one I would do 80% and I have even done a couple 100% changes when I moved tanks ect.. as long as your salinity, PH, Ca, Alk and temp are very close you should be fine.

Steve

I hate it when my fish stalk eachother. :p Sorry I just had to. :D

I find it best to steer newbies away from large waterchanges for many reasons. One being that they aren't usually very good at matching water params, and two because they often figure that doing 75% waterchanges once every 6 months is the same as doing weekly 10%. Newbies shouldn't be given some information... :lol:

Who here has an SPS tank?

HAHAHA! Good question.

well I did go out and buy a couple of jars nitrate of sponges today i put them in nylon bags and into the sump BTW i was only kidding about the water change thing, i did do one earlier this week 20% or so. but my nitrates still stayed at
20 ppm I also know that zero nitrates is an impossible level to obtain any living tank will have some nitrates a person knows they are doing exceptionally well when nitrate levels are around 5 ppm in a few weeks with the aid of this sponge material, i should expect to see my nitrates drop considerably any suggestions on how to drop them sooner would be greatly appreciated. i do know my biological filters are working because i haven't seen any detectable ammonia yet
all i can see is the nitrates that they are producing and yes i really am a newbie

If you cannot match parameters in a water change you should seek out a lite-brite for that is the limit of your capable skills. Seriously water change are the best friend to people new to marine tanks. It is simple to change water, if you know what you are doing, but then if you know what you are doing most things are simple. If you notice in this hobby for every "you can't or shouldn't do that" there is a "i did it and it work fine for me". The only thing that is for sure is as you grow in this hobby you gain experience, without the reality of learning from your mistakes and actually running an maintaining a tank you have theoretical knowledge and that is it. Theory is good in theory only. There is a reason WISDOM and AGE go hand in hand, not beacuse one is older but because chances are the older you are (in this case the longer you have run a tank for) the more mistakes you have made and learned from. Keep in mind learning for yourself when asking questions, i guarantee you have people telling you both sides of a question. The only way to find out is to try.

That being said water changes worked for me when i was new to the hobby, I have also seen water changes kill a tank in 20 minutes (yes everything was done the same, most likely bad salt....another key to many problems, test you new water before and after you mix the salt. Unless you trust your RO/DI unit religiously....I also use tap water...i also test it for many things most people do not.

I try to do 20% water changes every week. Sometimes it gets forgotten for a week but never more then two. Of course I have a very high bio load and I feed my fish lots, so for me if I didn't do water changes often I'd be in big trouble.

me.. why?