What method for reducing nitrates/phosphates do you use?

[Animal-Chin]

Lets discuss our removal method successes and failures here. I'm trying to go next level and I'm not sure what method I want to try, lots of info online, lots of scary stories.

I have a 125 6 foot tank stocked with 9 fish. My fish are pigs so I feed daily and I feed frozen food (Mysis, clam, krill, brine, silversides).

When my tank had like 4 fish, I had no phos or nitrates, sparkling clean sand.

Now, my phosphates are .o2 (no biggie) but my nitrates are about 10. This makes me nervous...lol

I run Rowa Phos in a reactor, this seems to work great for phosphates.

For nitrates I have my skimmer rated for 150 gallons and a refugium PACKED full of cheato. This did the trick for a smaller bioload but doesn't hold the nitrates down anymore. I have a small CUC (10 turbos, 5 hermits, 1 tiger tail cucumber if its alive) and I do weekly 15 gallon water changes.


Where should I go from here? Vodka? Red Sea NoPx? Bio Pellets? Aquaforest Salt?

What do you use? How well does it work? What would you never do again?

[Reef-Geek]

Originally Posted by Animal-Chin

Lets discuss our removal method successes and failures here. I'm trying to go next level and I'm not sure what method I want to try, lots of info online, lots of scary stories.

I have a 125 6 foot tank stocked with 9 fish. My fish are pigs so I feed daily and I feed frozen food (Mysis, clam, krill, brine, silversides).

When my tank had like 4 fish, I had no phos or nitrates, sparkling clean sand.

Now, my phosphates are .o2 (no biggie) but my nitrates are about 10. This makes me nervous...lol

I run Rowa Phos in a reactor, this seems to work great for phosphates.

For nitrates I have my skimmer rated for 150 gallons and a refugium PACKED full of cheato. This did the trick for a smaller bioload but doesn't hold the nitrates down anymore. I have a small CUC (10 turbos, 5 hermits, 1 tiger tail cucumber if its alive) and I do weekly 15 gallon water changes.


Where should I go from here? Vodka? Red Sea NoPx? Bio Pellets? Aquaforest Salt?

What do you use? How well does it work? What would you never do again?

How about upgrade skimmer?

[WarDog]

I use Zeo. Damn expensive but I get good results for no3 and po4. Not a huge bioload of fish however.

[Reef Pilot]

I use GFO to keep my phosphates down, and bio-pellets to keep nitrates at near zero. I also use MB7 with my bio pellets to prevent mulm and cyano. Works great for me.

Go to post #30 of my journal (link below) to see all my tank husbandry practices.

[Aquattro]

I tried vodka, no luck. Switched to biopellets, no better luck. Switched back to Zeo, too early to tell.

[Reef Pilot]

And if you browse through the first few pages of my journal, you can see some of my early struggles with nitrates before I finally figured it out. A couple years ago (also documented in my journal) I experimented with decommissioning my bio pellet reactor. That turned out to be a big mistake, as the nitrates returned with a vengeance and took many months to get them under control again.

[crimper]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

And if you browse through the first few pages of my journal, you can see some of my early struggles with nitrates before I finally figured it out. A couple years ago (also documented in my journal) I experimented with decommissioning my bio pellet reactor. That turned out to be a big mistake, as the nitrates returned with a vengeance and took many months to get them under control again.

What Biopellet do you use Walter?

[Animal-Chin]

Originally Posted by Reef-Geek

How about upgrade skimmer?

Selling one?

Honestly, I could afford a bottle of vodka right now but not to drop $800 on a new skimmer. Perhaps in the future but my skimmer seems to work really well, I empty a lot of black goo every 4 days, just ask my family, they LOVE the smell...

[Myka]

In my own tank I just use light stocking and good maintenance. I don't use GFO or carbon dosing. Nitrate is less than 0.25 ppm and phosphate is 0.003-0.009 ppm.

One of my clients' 230-gallon tanks had 750 ppm nitrate and 2.5 ppm phosphate when I started maintaining it. Using a small recirculating biopellet reactor with only 500 mL biopellets the nitrate is down to 20 ppm and phosphate is down to 0.3 ppm. Biopellets can certainly mop up a good mess!

[Animal-Chin]

750? Could you see the fish through the algae?