Quote:
Originally Posted by JustAClownFish
I just found out that I've been doing the API nitrate test wrong all this time. I did it the way people here say on the forum you should do it. My nitrates are beyond 160ppm. No wonder the anemones are doing bad. The little one actually did and nuked one of my Kenya tree frags that was a couple inches next to it. The werid thing is that all fish are doing fine. That explains why some of my corals aren't as colorful. It's simply too much.
I got the Red Sea stuff. I heard that people overdosed and ended up with more problems. Do I have to keep dosing it until the nitrates are down and then stop?
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160ppm is really high. Inverts are normally way more sensitive to nitrates than fish, which is what you're seeing.
What stuff did you get? In my opinion, you should absolutely know what this is called at least before getting it. I'm guessing NoPo4x. Yes, if you overdose you can get gigantic bacteria blooms which could remove all dissolved oxygen fast and kill everything. In my opinion, NoPo4x helps maintain levels, not fix a problem or source.
Before you rely on that, you need to figure out the source of the high nitrates. Normal water changes should easily have helped, but if you are doing weekly or bi-weekly changes, your nitrates should be lower. Things to do before NoPo4-x:
1. Weekly water changes
2. Really good skimmer that removes particulates before they decompose to ammonia->nitrite->nitrate
3. Adjust feeding or bioload. All nitrates come from ammonia, which is what happens when you add organics in through food. You are either feeding too much, or enough for your bioload but have too many animals to feed
All 3 items above are related. The more you skim, the better your system handles bioload. The more bioload you have, and the more water changes you have, the better your system (which is YOU doing water changes) can handle.
At this point, you should do a large water change. If you only do 50%, your nitrates will still be 80ppm. You can do a few 50% water changes over the next couple days to get it down, or if you can manage it, I would just go for 80% to start. That'll get you down to 32ppm (about), and I think your inverts will be in range to not be in terrible shape, and you can start managing all the three items above.