Tips for Lowering Nitrate.

[Bonta]

Hey RC, I just recently tested my water parameters , everything seems good except for the Nitrate which seems to have slowly increased to 20-40 ppm. I'm not going to let it go up any further ! What are good successful ideas to lowering nitrate ?


Thanks

[Tang Salad]

A 50% water change will lower your nitrate levels by 50%... can't get much simpler than that! After that, work on a strategy to keep them from rising too quickly; feed less, feed 'cleaner' foods, etc.

[jenglish]

What tang said + skim wetter. You can look into nitrate reduction strategies long term like nitrate reactors, ATS, fuges, carbon dosing etc, but if it is not a persistent problem the simpler solutions are often the way to go. Depending on your substrate, good siphoning, proper blasting of rocks and removing or regularly servicing mechanical filtration can also help.

[fufu]

Get some Macro algae in the fuge.

[dnsfpl]

wet skim, denitrator, reduce bioload, reduce feeding, keep chaeto, weekly large water change, dose vodka, algae scrubber...

clean your sump and change the wool everytime you change water
remove all nitrate "factory"

manage to reduce my no3 from 60ppm to 5ppm within 3 months
i keep chaeto, dose vodka, upgrade skimmer and 30% water change monthly

cheers

[Flipper62]

A 50% water change is NOT a good idea. Thats too much at one time. Your just going to shock the tank.

A 10% water change every few days is better. It will lower the nitrates over a week without shocking the tank.

However, you need to find out the reason for whats going on.

Do you have a refug ? Are you using any Nitrate removal media ?

If you dont get this under control, the Nitrates will just come back

[Tswifty]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15527395#post15527395 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Flipper62
A 10% water change every few days is better. It will lower the nitrates over a week without shocking the tank.
That won't lower nitrates. Maybe maintain them at best. In order to drastically reduce your nitrates, you need to swap out LARGE quantities of water. BUT... there is an appropriate way to do it so you don't shock your system.

I've used this system many times. It definitely works without harm.

http://www.melevsreef.com/reducing_nitrates.html

[Mopar Reefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15526930#post15526930 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dnsfpl
wet skim, denitrator, reduce bioload, reduce feeding, keep chaeto, weekly large water change, dose vodka, algae scrubber...

clean your sump and change the wool everytime you change water
remove all nitrate "factory"

manage to reduce my no3 from 60ppm to 5ppm within 3 months
i keep chaeto, dose vodka, upgrade skimmer and 30% water change monthly

cheers

Agreed ^^ also you need to find out where the excess nutrients are coming from as this will be your long term fix, or get a bigger tank :D

[fishuntbike]

+ 2 to find the cause and frequent water change

[redfishsc]

Here's what works for me in a medium-stocked (fish) system with a lot of heavily fed LPS, SPS, and softies, total system volume around 45 gallons.

1) Lots of high quality, porous live rock. I have about 50# total (half of it is Marco rock, the other half is very light fiji rock).

2) Skim wet. In this system I remove about a half quart a week of yellowish-green liquid.

3) Dose carbon. I dose Vitamin C and occasionally some glucose if I am seeing algae. Vodka works fine but I refuse to buy it b/c I'll just drink it :(

4) Refugium that's minimum 10% of your water volume. For me it's a 5.5g that has a 26W CF light over it (6500K daylight spectrum... from Lowe's)


I have not had any nitrate issues at all with this system. It's always under 5ppm (can't detect it on the API kit).

[Bonta]

Thanks guys, so does it depend on the kind of Vodka brand ? Cause I found some SKYY Vodka.


@ Flipper 62 - Well I've been feeding more , so I should lay it off. This could also mean why I've been getting green sand lately.