Reef nutrition

How to lower nitrate

Elite

Elite

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Hi guys,
My friend's tank nitrate is very high (don't know exact level). What is the best way to lower nitrate?

His email is below..
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Hello, need help if you can. Currently I am feeding fish 3 frozen cubes of mysis shrimp, and some seaweed.

Tank has 3 tangs, 1 wrasse, 4 chromis, 3 clownfish, assorted corals(soft 3). problem is that nitrate levels at very high. Installed a korallin sulphur biodenitrator 3 months ago, so far no drop in nitrates. do you think I am over feeding???? and the food is the source of the nitrates??? I am still doing 50 gal water changes weekly (300 gal tank). I checked the nitrate level of the new water, almost no nitrates. Any ideas???
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what about a sulfur reactor? like this?
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2009-01/diy/index.php from what I was reading including the ones on Reef central they seem to do their job quite well?
 
He said he installed the korallin sulphur biodenitrator 3 months ago...

He has sandbed. If I remember correctly, it's about 2"-3"..
 
not to state the obvious but you may have him check carefully for any dead spots where ditritus might be building up. A commonly missed area is the bottom of the overflow... I've seen tanks have a build up of several inches and once cleared the nitrate problem came into check.
 
Elite said:
He said he installed the korallin sulphur biodenitrator 3 months ago...

He has sandbed. If I remember correctly, it's about 2"-3"..
Click to expand...

Perhaps increasing the depth (so that denitrification can take place) or decreasing the depth (so it holds less detritus) would help.
 
10% a week will only keep nitrates at a stasis if they are already real high, your friends needs to do some heavy lifting and change at least 100g if the nitrates are real high (100 ppm+), and start to skim aggressively. More large water changes may be on tap in the future to bring it down to a reasonable level.
 
He has a Aqua EV 180. He said he has an elos test kit and it 1-5. Anyone familiar with elos test kit? Not sure if that is 1-5ppm. He said the skimmer is working fine. I will tell him to do bigger wc.
 
What problems are the higher nitrates presenting? Is it just a high number on the test, but everything else is fine? If everything is fine, then he doesn't need to do anything drastic. (ie; do things to bring it down, but don't rush any big changes!)

V
 
There is no problem so far. He wants to add more fish later on. He doesn't want to do it until he fix this problem.

Anyone familiar with the Elos test kit? He said the reading is 1-5. His nitrate is at 4. What the hell is 4?? :|
 
If it is 4ppm, he should rush out to the fish store and buy more fish ;) , people strive for numbers like that. FWIW I did a 75g water change on a 300 today and do it every other week (up to 100g if necessary) on a way too overcrowded tank and the nitrates hover around 15ppm, it's a super happy tank.
 
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