Advice on Nitrate/Phosphate problems

[Jaws]

From what I've heard bloodworms are always packed full of nutirents and I haven't heard of too many people using them. Same goes for mysis but not as much. You might want to try feeding more cyclopeeze and flake or pellet food more often and using mysis as a treat.

Also for phosphate, a phosban reactor works very well and is relatively inexpensive.

For Nitrate there's been a few people using a 5 or 10G sealed bucket almost full to the top with unused aragonite. Leave about 2 or three inches for water to pass over the sand. Pump some water from your sump or tank into the top few inches of one side of the bucket and out the other side back into the sump with enough flow to ensure nothing is going to settle on the sand like detritus. From what I've read this works like a charm. The sand soaks up all the nitrate and works very well as a pH buffer too. Change the sand when the you notice your nitrate going up again. I think it lasts a long time though. There's a thread on Canreef about this. I'll try and find it for you.

[albert_dao]

Just straight up ditch the foam.

[trilinearmipmap]

Just to play devils advocate...

Sugar.

[albert_dao]

Originally Posted by trilinearmipmap

Just to play devils advocate...

Sugar.

LOL!

[robzilla]

Originally Posted by albert_dao

Just straight up ditch the foam.

doesnt the foam work as a bubble trap?

[Reefer Rob]

If you have a lot of spare time you can read this http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...5&pagenumber=1 My next tank will have a sandbed filter similar to these, only bigger.

[albert_dao]

Just from my experience, 6 out of 10 people who start with a sandbed will quit their tank before a year has elapsed.

[Ruth]

Well I didn't quit and still have one tank (230g) with a deep sand bed.......but if I had to do it all over again I wouldn't have one. All my other tanks are BB and I will probably eventually remove the sand from the 230g.
Sand and foam are evil. Every tank I have ever had a foam in has had high nitrates - remove the foam and the nitrates fell. Even though I was rinsing the heck out of the foam every week or even 2 times a week I still stuggled with nitrates. Not that they have totally disappeared but at least they are managable with water changes twice a month.

[Sammy]

I have found and heard from others that reef roids will increase you nitrates if used too often. Not sure if you use this or not but just a thought. Also like Albert mentioned , removing all sponge will help. You could replace the sponge with other media like a filter sock with some phosban or something like that for a few days every other week.

Cheers,

Sammy

[cav~firez22]

Originally Posted by Jaws

From what I've heard bloodworms are always packed full of nutirents and I haven't heard of too many people using them. Same goes for mysis but not as much. You might want to try feeding more cyclopeeze and flake or pellet food more often and using mysis as a treat.

Also for phosphate, a phosban reactor works very well and is relatively inexpensive.

For Nitrate there's been a few people using a 5 or 10G sealed bucket almost full to the top with unused aragonite. Leave about 2 or three inches for water to pass over the sand. Pump some water from your sump or tank into the top few inches of one side of the bucket and out the other side back into the sump with enough flow to ensure nothing is going to settle on the sand like detritus. From what I've read this works like a charm. The sand soaks up all the nitrate and works very well as a pH buffer too. Change the sand when the you notice your nitrate going up again. I think it lasts a long time though. There's a thread on Canreef about this. I'll try and find it for you.

Any luck on finding the link??? both my tanks, 75G & 20 G are high in nitrates too