50% water change and still 20ppm nitrates

[reefwars]

Get your fuge running you said you were having a hard time keeping any Macro alive did you find out why?? Have you tried chaeto????

[Milad]

already tried that red algea and cheato, no dice

[Milad]

zeobak is the bacteria not the food
anyone got some more ideas?

[Gooly001]

Hi Milad,

Are you using R.O. water?

Cheers

Paul

[reefwars]

the ideas are never ending thats the best part of this hobby lol so youve always checked your nitrates right there must have been a point where you noticed them going up was it some thing you did think hard anything you changed or added or did it creep up slowly maybe from food or something small over time????? where did you get your rock and how old is it?? i had a problem with very old rock and lowering my nitrates so i did the ol switch er oo

[o.c.d.]

You said your sure it nitrate because of the algae growth. Frequent water changes should lower the nitrate if not your kit is probably bunk. Have you tested the po4? Cause it's the algae that is also making you mad right. So if you stopped using GFO your po4 may have started accumulating over what the zeo bacteria can handle consuming. Over time the po4 can accumulate then high enough it will precipitate and bind to the rock in solid form. Then slowly dissolves esp when the O2 drops, That then provides a perfect food source for algae, water change will do little for that situation. Also po4 in a solid form will not show up on a test kit. It then becomes a tedious process of removing the po4

[Milad]

yes im using RO water

No i didnt test nitrates all the time, i just tested after i saw the oil slick

i dont have a phosphate test kit so i havent tested it yet.

the rock i believe is decently old, i bought it from another reefer (mikeolsen) i believe he had it for several years.

this all started when the oil slick on the top of the tank showed up. The changes I did during the oil slick time was remove rowphos and start zeobak, coral snow, sponge power, zeo zyme, cv.

Then i stoped most of the zeo stuff and just did zeo zyme and cv and bak to try to get rid of some cayno (which is still there).

[o.c.d.]

Po4 is one of the triggers for cyno.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Milad

im running euroreef 250 clone

the food is on two feeders at different sides of the tank feeding a little pellets 4 times a day.

my return and my power heads are all on one side of the tank. You think I should run the return on the other side of the tank?

quote:


i feed pellets 4 times a day on a schedule
i try to feed once a day brine shrimp or mysis before they go to bed
I use to feed 1 5inx2in nori sheet once a day before all this pooping happened




how much of this have you changed?? how many fish are in your tank in total i browsed through your thread and i cant get a solid answer but i seen alot of tangs and clowns lol

[Milad]

about 20 total fish, bunch of them are small with only 4-5 fish i would consider large (3"+)

I do 10% water changes weekly on the money

Salt is stirred for 1 week

Skimmer runs 24/7

Lights are on a timer

Autotop off is set with RO/DI water so the level is solid

Ive reduced feeding in the last week to almost nothing, enough that someone took a huge bite out of my xenia

I felt bad for the tangs so ive feed them a small piece of nori (1x5) last couple days.

I'm fine with not doing anything but this wasn't something that has been around this whole time, thats whats bugging me. All of a sudden all these things went wacko.

ill get a phosphate kit and test it out.