Eating my coral?

[DKoKoMan]

I would be careful transferring too much as if essential bacteria die off this may cause an ammonia spike. If you are aggressively dosing NOPOX, you will literally run in to zero nitrates (have dosed Nopox in the past).

What nitrate test kit are you using? I feel as if your reading may be inaccurate based on your livestock amount. 100ppm is very high, I am overstocked and currently have 25ppm which I’m trying to reduce down with more natural methods.

[Frogger]

I would first double check your test kit with a completely different brand of test kit. Some test kits are good for high range some are good for low range and some are just crap or from a bad batch.

I would check the phosphate as well (use the hanna ULR for this). Sometimes when the nitrate is high the phosphate is extremely low. More importantly than high nitrates is you have to have the nitrate phosphates in balance. If low phosphates is the problem it can cause serious problems with your corals. You may be inadvertently adding nitrates to your tank which have crashed your phosphates. What additives are you putting in your tanks?

I crashed my phosphates by adding nitrates last year and within a couple days fried about half of my sps.

If you nitrates are high and your phosphates are equally high you need to ask yourself what have you done (husbandry) to get your nitrates that high? What are you feeding?

[Myka]

How old is this tank? If it's less than a year old, what type of rock did you use to start it?

These guys are right about the phosphate. The key element they haven't mentioned is that if the PO4 is "zero", then the NOPOX will not work (nor any other type of carbon dosing). The bacteria that feed off the NOPOX use organic carbon (the NOPOX), nitrate, and phosphate. If any of these nutrients are missing then the bacteria will not be able to do their job. If you've stripped the PO4 out, then the nitrate will continue to rise.

The rock, sand (for those who have it), and the water always want to be at equilibrium - so when you do a big water change, the water will be cleaner than the rock and sand. The rock and sand will then leach both nitrate (and phosphate if available) until they are back at equilibrium. That's why you're seeing no reduction in nitrate the next day. For this reason, using water changes to reduce nitrate is not a good long-term solution. The NOPOX or biopellets or something is a good option, just stick to 10-15% water changes, and you may need to ADD phosphate to your system in order for the NOPOX to be able to reduce nitrate.

So first order of business, get a phosphate reading. I also agree the phosphare checkers are a good option. I don't think you need the ULR (ultra low range) one since you want phosphate to be high end to get a reading on the ULR and the regular, so it really doesn't matter which one you buy.