Nitrates w/ Wet/Dry

R

RyanM

I need some advise - PLEASE.

I have a 110 gallon reef tank that I just recently purcahsed from an individual that was establised for about 1.5 years. It has a Sealife Wet/Dry rated for a 125 gallon. I have a coralife super skimmer rated at 220 gallons - I don't really know how well this is working so far. It's very difficult to get dialed in and with evaporation happening it's difficult to keep the waterline full so it operates as it should. Very sensitive skimmer it seems.

There were a handful or different soft corals in this sysyem and I am tying to get them back in good health.

I have 3 tags, 4 chromis, 2 clowns and 1 goby....2 shirmp too. I am still trying to determine how much to feed these guys, but getting some many different answers from different people

I am testing Nitrates about 30ppm right now and want to get that down and have it stay down if possible. I am going to do a water change this weekend, but I need some feedback on if it's truely possible to have 0 nitrates using a wet/dry. Here is a pic of it.

What tips can be provided to get the nitartes down with using this setup?

It seems that it might be a multitude of different things, but don't want to have to spend a lot of money on replacing everything right now since I just bought it....

Please help!
 
I assume you know the nitrogen cycle. ammonia to nitrite to nitrate?

The situation with bio balls and drip filters is that is does a great job on the first two parts and produces alot of the last, hence why they are called "nitrate factories" (same can be said for biowheel, hang on back or canister filters). Now in a system with fish only that is OK because they can handle slightly elevated nitrates and these can be handled by regular water changes. Not so with corals so that is why you want to strive to keep them as near to zero as possible. Now you could slowly remove the bio balls, a few at time over a few weeks to a month. You must go slowly or you could risk a mini cycle and introduce ammonia to the system again. This would stop the factory affect but will lower you systems capacity to process the bio load. Your load does not seem that heavy for the size of tank though so with proper maintenance (good skimming and regular water changes) you should be OK. Now you do need to get the high level of nitrates down to begin with. The easiest way is through multiple water changes. There are tools out there that can remove nitrate but they are a little on the expensive side. There is also some people who are dosing Vodka but I do not know too much about that. If interested you could do the research. As far as the skimmer goes, yes if you are running of the return section of the sump where the water level varies it will be hard to keep dialed in so you could either get an auto top off system or when you get the bio ball chamber empty you can then run the skimmer from there.

Just a start, I am sure more will chime in.

Hope that helps.

Stanley T''' - SALT
 
Yes rubble would be good but make sure that it is fully submerged. you do not want a situation where water is "triclkling" over something that is exposed to air. You could also add some macro algae and light and that would help to reduce the nitrates.
 
@SALT wrote:
Yes rubble would be good but make sure that it is fully submerged. you do not want a situation where water is "triclkling" over something that is exposed to air. You could also add some macro algae and light and that would help to reduce the nitrates. said:
SALT's advice is solid. I was going to suggest converting the wet dry to just a sump with macro algae, I did and the macro algae works great.......as far as nitrate remover, I have successfully used a product called AZ NO3 that Marc suggested, however it seemed to increase my cyano, so I am 6 days into vodka dosing. Here is a link talking and walking you through it

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php

good luck

Tj
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TJ,

Do you have the same wet/dry that I do? If so, can you send me a picture of how you have yours setup?

I would like to see an example of how to set/covert this up as a successful working sump.

Thanks!
 
i would do a 40% water chang about every week antil the nittrats are at 10 or so and then do as salt said. now the water changes are big ones40% so if you go this way make shere you match up the prams of the water to the prams of your tank temp , ph . alk, sal. or you will do more harm than good and give the chang water time to get stable 5 or 6 days. hope this helps
 
@RyanM wrote:
TJ said:
Mine was similar, but it was worth more than a sump, so after playing with it, I reassembled it, sold it as a wet/dry and made a sump out of a 10 gallon aquarium (any size will do) there are a lot of do it yourself sump building threads. IMO and just mine.......a good sump with caeto is just as good as a wet/dry assuming that you have a good protein skimmer and plenty of live rock.

http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/liverockberlinsetups/a/aa052504berlin.htm

good luck and you will get a lot of great responses from hobbist much more experienced than I.
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<-- definitely a big fan of refugiums and the nitrate export that they can provide. If space is limited, you might also consider a RDSB (remote deep sand bed) aka DSB in a bucket.
 
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