Nitrates out of control

[Saltwater Guy]

Right now I have a 155 fowlr but am in the process of converting to a reef tank. I just started testing and my nitrates are out of control over 50ppm y nitrites are .05 my amonia is 0 and my ph is 8.2.


I am running a phosban reactor with phosban and one with carbon a tunze 9015 and a 9 watt uv steralizer 200lbs of lr and about a 1 inch sand bed. I plan on adding a light with cheao but i dont know if this will solve the problem.

All that is in the tank is a pixi hawk, chromis and damzel
What else could be causing this?

[bertoni]

This article covers nitrate problems in detail:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/august2003/chem.htm

It's a good place to start.

Only three fish? Does the tank have a bio-wheel, wet-dry, or some other artificial filter?

[Mavrk]

Being able to detect nitrite usually means either a cycle or a bad test kit.

What water are you using? How old is the tank?

Since you just started testing, you don't know if 50 is higher or lower than it has been running. Water changes and chaeto will help. Don't overfeed (this is probably #1).

[Saltwater Guy]

This tank has been up and running now for about 1.5 years. It use to house my eel but I traded him in once I decied to start my conversion to a reef.

After reading that artice the only thing that seems to be a possibility is that I am using tap water.

The other thing could be my test kit, i am using a Red Sea Master test kit.

I feed maybe twice a week and when i do feed its a very very small amount due to the lack of fish. I just added the phosban and carbon about 2 weeks ago as well as the tunze. I have been doing bi weekly 10-20% water changes as well.

The problem is that i dont know how long the nitrates have been like this see I just started testing for it.

I will test my tap water to see what the nitrates are out the tap.

[Saltwater Guy]

forgot to mention that i have no type of artifical filter

[bertoni]

I don't trust Red Sea test kits, due to personal experience and various posts. In any case, though, a second opinion is usually a good idea.

[Saltwater Guy]

i will pick up a salafit test kit and see what that reads

[Mavrk]

you could just bring it to your LFS and have them test it.

With an eel, your nitrates were probably pretty high to begin with. Run the skimmer a little wetter than normal and do weekly 10% water changes. If you don't have any fish in there, then what are you feeding?

[Saltwater Guy]

i have three fish that i am feeding. My Tunze is running full go and it producing a small amount of skim. I know that they can take a few days to break in but dont think that it would take 2 weeks. I dont know if its just from a small bio load.