yikes heavy nitrates reeked havic in my reef

[phreezee]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

People talk of dosing vodka, dosing sugar as methods for feeding bacteria which feed upon the nitrate and then are skimmed out - you can try reading up on those methods.

I used sugar, and it worked amazing for me! I recommend it over wasting money on salt, denitrators, etc.

[Snappy]

Well it seems there are a lot of different views out there. My new skimmer is great, a Euro-Reef RC500, however the nitrate problem occurred because I was pretty much skimmerless for quite a while. I do my water changes through my refugium to minimize stress and it seems to work well. I am not sure what or how much sugar to use, obviously not refined, but I have also heard that sugar can create other problems down the road. I have continued with the Reef-resh which I think helps but my new problem is I am away next week on holidays so whatever I do I need to do now. I will look into the "clay" idea, thank you, and continue with water changes. I am not set up to be able to handle more than about 10% at a time so I think I will keep doing them at that rate this week. Darryl I am sorry to hear about the bubble gum, hopefully my insurance frag from you makes it so I can get a piece back to you. My chiller keeps the water temp great for the corals but gives off enough heat that the room is too hot for me. Man the sacrifices we make for this hobby. Thanks for the feed back everyone, I really appreciate it.