Nitrates help Please
 

I have a 350 gallon system mixed with fish lps and sps. My display is 180 with 3 inches of sugar fine sand 250lbs live rock. My sump is 120 gallons with a higher flow 10 inch mud sandbed. Inline I have a 25 gallon refugium with 5 inch mud sandbed. I run a big arowfoamer skimmer, with ozone.

I moved my tank about 4 months ago and now I cannot get my nitrates down below 25 ppm. Maybe my deep sand beds have not kicked in yet?

I also have a problem with free floating detrius but have been removing that with sponges. I thought if i hooked up my fluvel 305 I could get rid of that, and if I kept the sponges clean then It would not increase my nitrates any more. If you are not supposed to use sponges because they increase nitrates then how do you remove the detius?

I was also wondering peoples oppinions on nitrate filters.

Thanks a bunch Chester

I know lots of people use filter socks where the water enters the sump from the display. Pretty easy to change out every few days or so.

You could also consider a DIY Coil Denitrator. If you do a search for it here on Canreef, you'll find half a dozen threads or so. You could also look here for a detailed plan/explanation.

I would try the filter socks first. Its amazing how much crap they pull from the water.

Scott

Moving to the reefing forum. Should have a better discussion there.

Another trick I found for cleaning detritus is to take a hose and attach a filter sock to one end with an elastic. Put the end with the sock on it in the sump and siphon the detritus off the rock and sand in your tank leaving the return pump running. It works just like a water change but since you aren’t removing water you can do a far more thorough cleaning.

On the big system like yours i would go with DeNitrator.

http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_search...~parsed~1.html

water changes are costly on that saize and would not bring No3 down anyway, because all that junk is stored in live rocks and sand bed.

http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/s...uct_ID=cs-nno3
quote from J&L's site.
Nitrate troubles? Current research shows that sulfur based denitrators hold promise for significant nitrate reduction in heavily bio-loaded systems. These experimental biologically driven de-nitrator/reactors rely on a combination of pure sulfur, aragonite and sulfur reducing bacteria. NO-NO3® is that media.

i also like the sock and the hose water loop trick !

How much algae are you growing in the refugium? I believe that if you can grow enough algae, you'll use up the nitrate available in the system.

I am using a filter sock on the return line where the water enters the sump. After that I have a little bit of coarse gravel on the bottom with some conch and some crabs.

Let me see if I am getting this correct. Basically you are syphoning water out of your tank into your sump through a filter sock? Neet concept and I bet it would work good. But my sump is in another room so what I do is turky baste everything before I clean my filter sock on my return line. Kinda the same thing but not as effective. I could do it your way into pails and hall it back to my sump.

I am thinking of using the LSM . I am just a little scared. I have heard of people stripping their sps.

Would I be best off to build a coil detrinator and put the LSM in there, or just put it in the second chamber of my calcium reactor?