tested my water for Nitrates guess what
 

Well all this time I thought that i didn't have any nitrates and I thought that having clams would take it out. So i tested and found out that I have the nitrates in the range of 30-35. So I'm guessing that is why my sps were dying in the tank. I'm going to be setting up a RDSb today and have hope that this will work. And with a super strong skimmer and sucking out the crap in thesump and the BB tank. You can still have
NO3

hmm.. thats sorta scary.. i havent been testing for nitrates lately either. but then i dont really have any signs of nitrates right now. clams are supposed to reduce nitrates?

Yes, but you need a lot of them for NO3 management!

I dont think thats what was bothering your corals though. It would certainly be, along with phosphates, whats fueling the red turf algae. Perhaps the nitrate & phosphates combined were bothering the corals ?

well I thought that i would go to princess auto to get some white sand balsting sand to add to the RDSb. All that they had was brown silca sand. so I told him to get me a bag. then a another guy came out and asked me what it was for so I told him it was for my fish tank. then he told me that IT WILL KILL YOUR FISH. SO I left now that was close I have 2 30 lb bags of sea chem select that i bought I think that i will buy the same then. Man that was a close call.

In my 65 Gallon system, each Clam I added reduced my Nitrate by 5-10ppm. So the 3 Clams I have take care of alot of Nitrate, I run at around 5ppm.

Hey Mike, Sharkbait (Chris) from the WFF has a Sulfer Denitrator that he may be able to rent or lend to you. He had Nitrates higher than you, and the Denitrator knocked in down in a couple weeks, he doesn't run it now, keeps it just in case. Still do the DSB, but you won't see the results for quite a while.

Zeo is great if your away around to clean the reactor and mix the filtering around. and its quite expensive to run.

Rdsb
 

well I hooked up the RDSB to the tank i used 2 30 lb bags of seachem Select .5-1.0mm grain for the DSB. it was 70 per bag and i got it for 35 each not bad when you support your LFS and help him out all the time to get him pointed in the right direction it does pay off. I think I'm going to add another couple of bags of this stuff after i get back from Disney world... there is only 2 bags in there as of now thou... http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e1...d/DSC03575.jpg

Why not build a DIY coil denitrator? They look pretty easy and cheap to do. I would think your DSB is going to take a couple of months to get running at capacity.

what's a good type of flow should be used in a RDSB any ways i have a mag 12 that is my return and i hav a dual stack in my over flow one goes to the sump and the other on goes to the right side of the smaller tank but I would estimate its only a 100 gph should i run it a bit faster. but in order to do that i will need to add a bigger bulk head to the back of the tank, reason is the out put of the small tank is 3/4 bulkhead.

well I spent about 1 hour taking the pods out of the sump and allowing them to go into the sand bed to get it going all the pods that i find from the sump are straight into the smaller tank with the sand bed. I hope this will work. Im going totry to get some more flow into the tank too.

well I checked the kit for nitrates and it dropped from 30 to around 20 PPM that is weird

what brand of test kit are you using? did you add more volume to your system or do a partial water change?

I have those Nitrate strips. I really don't believe that it would work that fast. i did do a 25 gal water change around 2 days ago and I did add another 15 gal to the system , but that shouldn't make that much of a difference. I think it s may of been the test kits where you have the range is so open. like thereading is showing 0-20-40-60-80 so there is alot of play in the kits

I wouldnt believe those strips. Try to get a sample tested at LFS or a friend using a good test kit. As for the drop, yes with the water changes and added system volume i think you may have removed/diluted enough to have a positive reaction on your reading.