Nitrate Reduction

[TiberianSun]

So we have had a high nitrate issue for a while in our 450G tank. Yesterday we cleaned out the 175G sump by completely emptying it, removing all the rock, and removing all the sand that was in the center chamber. Our thought was the sand was holding more waste and was causing the nitrate issues. We replaced the water with fresh salt water then started the system back up after getting the new water temp up. All of this was wrapped up yesterday about 4:00.

Today we did a test on tank and are not seeing much of a change in the nitrate levels.

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[slgcmg]

How much San did you remove. Be aware of a mini cycle.

Have you cross checked your test with another test? Maybe take a sample to an LFS. Have you considered running a reactor?

 

[saltyrottie]

I stated using Red Sea NoPOx and it is awesome at reducing nitrates. Took my tank from 20 to 0 in about 4 days.

 

[TiberianSun]

@slgcmg wrote:

we removed 100% of the sand from the sump and the tank is a bare bottom. we removed all the water from the sump and vacuumed the champers out.

We didn't cross check but will try that tomorrow. We hooked up a reactor 2 weeks ago but from what I've read it can take several weeks to over a month for them to start kicking in.

 

[SGT_York]

Nothing good happens quickely, Nitrates don't go away on their own even after the problem is solved, algae, skimmer (after eaten by CUC), or chemical are the only ways to actually remove them.

 

[TiberianSun]

Thanks all. We are still working on them. Tonight we vacuumed up as much stuff as we could and the. Got into the rocks with a pump to blow stuff around so it could go over the overflows. Getting ready for another water change so we will see.