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?

I highly recommend the use of filter socks cleaned out regularly on the overflow from the tank to the sump, usually placed in the sump above the waterline of the sump. lets waste be collected before it has a chance to decompose and pollute the water.
Cheers!

That is kinda where that plan had failed. I don't have any readable phosphates in my water. So it makes it hard to grow much algae. I am managing to keep about an ice cream pail full of cheato alive. And I also have 5 mangrove pods. I have tried growing several different macro algaes but they just disinagrate. I just aquired a piece of sea grass I am hoping that will grow for me.

MMm. above the water line is a neet concept. I will try that but first I will have to make the one side of my sump a little higher because I get some splash over. I had to lower my pipe till it was almost ontop of the water line.

You could always try ZEOvit. :)

What are your feeding habits? Do you have any messy eaters like Eels, Puffers or something like that?

J

Well i just stripped my best colored SPS lately with ZEO,
I guess the lesson is : follow instruction to the "T’s" and if you go DIY be prepared to some surprises.
As to coil DeNitrator it worked for a lot of people and at the fraction of the cost compare to Sulfur retail unit.
I have never tried any DeNitrator , just reading on CanReef about it.

I am not sure even what this is I have heard of it three times now and heard of stripping your coarals two times.

I do over feed. I know I do. But I have a purple tang that will give my open brain a peck (sorta like a warning ) If I don't keep him fed.

Oh! Well I would say that they weren't implementing it properly, then. At least that's what I would assume without knowing all the information (dangerous, I know!)

But ZEOvit is a low-nutrient system that many, many people (including many on this forum) are using successfully! I'm using it myself, and my corals are very healthy.

www.zeovit.com

That's exactly what I do. My sump is under the tank so it is easy for me to do. The big advantage of this over turkey basting is it doesn't cloud the water.

I have also done a combination of this with basting. The siphon hose catches what the turkey baster blows out of the rock and sucks up the debris before it clouds the tank.

Since this method doesn't remove any water from the tank there is no limit on how much filtering you can do.

Nice.. Doing this by the pail full could be like work. But I guess I could set up a pump and push it into the sump.

Thanks I will look into it.