High Nitrate levels - how to control it

[desideria]

Hi all,

would like to some advice from you guys. My husband and I have been running a 2 feet by 1.5 feet tank the last 4 months and the water paramters are quite stable as in the weekly tests, we get :-

Ammonia - 0

Nitrite - 0

Phosphate - 0

The GH, KH and calcium are all within acceptable levels. PH is between 7.8 to 8.2 depending on time of day. Temperature is from 25 at night to about 27.5 during the day and we have no chiller.

The only problem we have is our NITRATE levels are always very high.. we are using the API testing kit and it's always between the 3rd to 4th color band like 20-40. I understand that it could be because of over feeding or bioload. Our Tank has the following inhabitants :-

- A Tomini ( not sure how it's spelt) Tang

- A tomato clown

- 2 Hawiian Damsels

- 1 Boxer shrimp

- 1 sand shifter star fish

Corals -

- 1 Jewel

- 1 bubble

- 1 freaking big Bubble Tip anamonea

- 1 zoo

- A small piece of leather coral

Plus live rock.

We feed twice a day, morning (flakes and pellets) and night ( just pellets).

Water Change average about once a week about 5-10L.

Can anyone recommend what we can add to our filtration system to help reduce the levels of nitrate? Any good brands of filter media that we can get that is tried and tested? Hope the info I had given above would help in any reefer providing any advice that could be useful to us!

Thanks a bunch!

Cheers

Desi

[cjh]

sulphur denitrator...

if not what you can do is a weekly water change and reduce feeding... should be able to control it...

[uws]

There are various ways like

- reduce bio-load

- using denitrator

- using live sand

- using more live rocks

- using chemical such as AZ-NO3

- Review existing filter, skimmer etc

You can check out my link on a discussion of the above as I am also having high NO3.

http://www.sgreefclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=66027

Now I am using AZ-NO3 for a daily dosing into my tank. The NO3 dropped to 25ppm after > 10 days of using. My target is to reduce to 5 ~ 10ppm.

[Achilles Tang]

You could try upgrading to a better skimmer to export nutrients before they degrade into NO3.

Small tanks tend to have a poorer natural filtration ability due to their size limitation. You have to either upgrade certain equipment, increase the size of your sump/natural media in it or cut down on livestock/feeding.

[desideria]

Thanks a bunch for the response.. I will read the other thread and try out the AZ-NO3 thingy too.. Thank you!!

[surferguy1978]

There are various ways like

- reduce bio-load

- using denitrator

- using live sand

- using more live rocks

- using chemical such as AZ-NO3

- Review existing filter, skimmer etc

You can check out my link on a discussion of the above as I am also having high NO3.

http://www.sgreefclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=66027

Now I am using AZ-NO3 for a daily dosing into my tank. The NO3 dropped to 25ppm after > 10 days of using. My target is to reduce to 5 ~ 10ppm.

just wondering will dosing AZ-NO3 affect the corals growth?

[uws]

just wondering will dosing AZ-NO3 affect the corals growth?

So far ok for mine SPS (birdnest, montipora) and LPS (leather, torch), sun coral...

But RD told me the KH parameter will need to be maintain if dosed the AZ-NO3.