Transition to Bare Bottom = Higher Nitrates?

[CHOX]

About a month ago I decided I was fed up with the liability of having a hang on the back overflow. Therefore, I drained all the water (replaced about 50%) and removed the live stock so I could drill a hole for a better overflow. Since I had stirred up a bunch of nasty sand, I figured screw it, lets try bare bottom.

I've noticed a bit of a spike in the nitrate levels. I was hovering around 0 ppm and now I'm sitting anywhere from 10 to 20 ppm in an SPS Tank. I figure this makes sense since I just took out a bunch of nitrifying bacteria.

Are higher nitrate levels normal in bare bottom aquariums?

[bertoni]

The sandbed might have been doing some denitrification, and disturbing the tank might have caused some temporary issues, as well. It's hard to predict how a tank will respond because the conditions can be very different from one tank to the next. I might consider doing a few water changes, to see whether the nitrate level bounces back up quickly. On the other hand, the situation might change in a few more weeks, too. Are the animals okay? If so, I wouldn't worry all that much, although for SPS, I'd be tempted to be more cautious.

[CHOX]

I'm hoping its just temporary issues. It's a 27 gallon. I've been doing 10% water changes over the past couple of weeks, but there hasn't been a really big issues. It also doesn't help that my skimmer overflowed after having nice bit of collection. I'm going to try a 25% change tomorrow.

All the animals are doing great (Maroon Clown, Royal Gramma and Yellow Watchman) and my birdenest and stylophora have great looking polyps. It's especially frustrating now, because I'm making a lot of upgrades to my tank (lighting, vortechs, apex) and just overall keeping a closer eye on the levels in my tank. I have never had nitrate issues up until now, and it may be 5 ppm or 10 ppm, I really can't tell with these test kits (API).

[Member No. 1]

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Are higher nitrate levels normal in bare bottom aquariums?

I run a 80 gallon BB, pretty heavy bio load, feed heavy, run 2 4" filter socks on my sump (some claim these are nitrate factories), and I stopped checking nitrates because they always seem low.
Highest I've seen them in the past 6 months is 5ppm.
I do not run carbon, or GFO, and do not have any algae issues.

[mrbigshot]

im the same as number . mine is only a 40br but it and the last 3 tanks were bare bottoms and nitrates have always been near unmeasurable. just turkey baste the rocks and change filter socks. no real need to test.

[CHOX]

Hmmmm, I just measured the nitrates in my salt water holding container (Roughneck, food safe, with a big jump constantly moving water) and the nitrates in that measured about as high as those in my tank. A fresh batch of saltwater that I mixed on Friday and am holding in a 5 gallon bucket is showing 0 ppm.

Is there a limit to how long I should leave water mixing in one of those Roughneck garbage cans? I'm hoping that is the source of the nitrates.

[bertoni]

As long as the animals are doing well, I would enjoy the tank and skip the worrying. The filter socks likely can produce a fair amount of nitrate if they aren't emptied regularly, but otherwise are fine. The water should be fine in the garbage cans indefinitely if the salt product has no organics in it. There might be a bit of ammonia in the salt mix that could convert to nitrate over time, and in some houses, the water might pick up a bit more ammonia from the air, but that's unlikely to be a problem. You could try an ammonia test if you're worried, but I wouldn't bother at this point.