low nitrates

[texas57]

i was wondering if anyone had any suggestions to help keep nitrates to a minimum? I was looking at the tank of the month and he said he has no nitrates or kept them to a min. I have had a FOWLR setup a couple years ago and i am looking into starting up another tank. I had a problem with my nitrates being really high and water changes didn't seem to help. i don't know if it may have been the test kit or what. Any suggestions for accurate test kits?

[Sisterlimonpot]

For a fowlr tank I wouldn't worry about nitrates. water changes are good enough. but if you were going reef. than there are a lot of choices. a denitrator, a deep sand bed (3-7 inches), macro algae, vodka dosing or also known as carbon dosing (can also use sugar, vinegar or all 3) and I know I'm missing some others these are the most common

[Sisterlimonpot]

and of course

<img src="/images/welcome.gif" width="500" height="62"><br><b><i><big><big>To Reef Central</b></i></big></big>

[thegrun]

Using RO/DI water will help if you were just using tap water in the past. My local tap water runs about 15 to 20 PPM of nitrates, so I could do water changes for the rest of my life and never get my nitrates down without first filtering my water. That said, my nitrates ran about 3 to5 PPM until I added a refugium with macroalgae, which cut my nitrates down to 0.

[tspors]

If you use RO/DI water and you do 10% weekly you can establish a Zero Nitrate tank.

[Fizz71]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14910148#post14910148 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sisterlimonpot
For a fowlr tank I wouldn't worry about nitrates. water changes are good enough. but if you were going reef. than there are a lot of choices. a denitrator, a deep sand bed (3-7 inches), macro algae, vodka dosing or also known as carbon dosing (can also use sugar, vinegar or all 3) and I know I'm missing some others these are the most common

+1 on those. Also monitor your feeding because too much food in the tank will cause a faster rise in nitrates. Some people LOVE to feed there corals X and their clams Y and their fish Z and wind up with high nitrates and wonder why. :)

[texas57]

thanks for the info. What is the carbon dosing with vinegar, etc. I have never heard about it.

[walkthedog]

Get started with this reading. I don't do it myself but others here have great results with it. There are other articles just search "carbon dosing or vodka dosing" with the search function.

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