refugium question

[sanababit]

hello guys, i have a question, how long does a refugium take to start lowering nitrates, i build fuge 10 days ago for 2 reasons, first to grow pods so i can take care of a mandarin in the future and to lower my nitrates, the fuge is 10 gallon with 4-5 inch ball of cheato, live rock rubble, and dsb, mag 5 return with no foam so pods go to DT, a 27 watt dual light, and a poly filter beetwen baffles, anyways, before installing it i had like 10ppm of nitrates going on DT, and after like 5 days it went to 0 (but i have a bad cyano and green algae problem, or should i say had because turn lights off for 2 days and kinda got it in control), reverse cycle lighting on fuge stayed the same, just turn off lights on DT, finally today i turn the lights back on and did a water test, the result i got was ammo 0, trite 0, ph 8.3, but trate went to 10 ppm again

first i have not seen the cheato grow, what could cause this

second maybe the algae blooms where using the trate up, thats why i got 0 trate

third i do have a lot of pods running around now so at least im doing something right

sana

[barngeatbayman]

10 days? Give it some more time

[KRASHPD]

10 for nitrate is not really that high. Give it some more time and the algae die-off can raise the nitrates as the normal amonia cycle runs its corse.

[rob28]

Put a few snails in your fuge.I have 3 turbos,2astrea's and a couple nasseraus snails in mine and i light it 24-7 to keep my calerpa from going sexual.My nitraters never above 5.A 10% water change every 2 weeks kepps it pretty much 0

[mg426]

When i first set up my refugium, I went a similar route. DSB, Chaeto,LR . My nitrates were running about 20 PPM. It was 6 weeks before I saw any reduction in Nitrates. When iit did drop though it went to 0 and has remained there, been 2 years.