NITRATE OUT OF CONTROL

[RICKY81]

is it possible for the nitrate levels to get wacked out of control after doing a 20% (approx 25gal) water change on a 75gal aquarium. i have been having problems with the tank so i was doing water changes i had last done an approx 12gal water change about 2 weeks ago so i figured well now its time to do a 20% water change. so i checked my levels and registered some ammonia like a 0.1 and Nitrates 10ppm. so i did the water change and a few hours later i checked the levels again and ammonia's were gone and Nitrates sky high at 80ppm.... how is this possible :bareteeth: im going nutz over this as i have seen many of my corals crashing think im having a system crash event......could it be my salt? i had always used the Red Sea R/O Coral Pro Salt and suddenly changed it to Instant Ocean.

[tony]

sounds like it might be erroneous readings from a bad test kit

any way to test your test kit vs someone else's?

[brewercm]

You said that your corals are reacting to this also, is this correct?
If so I'd definitely get it tested again somewhere. I wonder if you could have gotten something in the salt that caused this to happen, unlikely but you never know.

[RICKY81]

yup my sps all started to bleach up and some have died. my softies changing colors and look like they are drying up too, and have also noticed that the purple coraline algae on the live rocks some are turning whitish and other spots pinkish.. the other levels are fine and temp is ok at 74..... the only problem is that the salt that i bought was from a fellow maast member and the bucket was open but supposely new...

[Texreefer]

many factors could be the cause, I doubt it is the salt.. if this is a cycled system them I would be looking for the source of your ammonia.. are you using water out of an ro unit?. did your sand bed get stirred up before you took the nitrate test?

[Texreefer]

74 is a little low but not your problem,, what is your salinity at?

[RICKY81]

my system has been running up for about almost 1.8 yrs, what i first did since i noticed that i had ammonia in the system i syphoned the sand bed and was disposing of the water over the filter pad then the bioballs,sponge and then i havefilter floss for debris (since i have a wet/dry filter) then back to main tank. then after finishing with the sand bed i proceeded to doing the water change just the water which was about 25gal... the prepared water with salt had been running up for about 24-48hrs or so but i added the additives of Reef builder to the water pending to be put into the water and was there for a good 12hrs or so. it madesome whiteish film over the plastic containers and the pumps.....?? don'tknow if its good or bad.

[RICKY81]

salinty is at 1.024

[BigKGlen]

Tap water, bottled water or RO/DI?

[RICKY81]

R/O DI WATER

[RICKY81]

ACTUALLY YOU KNOW WHAT............ about 4 gal were purified water, 5gal were distilled water and the rest about 12-15 gal were RO/DI water. did this because my RO/DI system is small needed some more water so had to go buy some water. and had to chose differrent water gallons since they didn't have enough.

[Texreefer]

never add buffer of any kind directly to salt water,, it causes the alk and cal to bind and precipitate out ( thats obviously a very simplified explanation),, thats the white film.. this will also cause your parameters to be way off..

[RICKY81]

oh darn well that is a big boobu from my part...didn't know that would happend. so if i changed the 25gal of water but itwas all covered with white film then that means water was not good and just dumped in messed up water to the tank right..... so i guess what i need again is another water change??

[hobogato]

....what i first did since i noticed that i had ammonia in the system i syphoned the sand bed and was disposing of the water over the filter pad then the bioballs,sponge and then i havefilter floss for debris (since i have a wet/dry filter) then back to main tank.....


do you mean that you siphoned out water from in the sand bed, and then ran that water thru all of that stuff and back into your tank/system?

if so, this is your issue. this can releas nitrates, phospates and sulfates into the water that can't be filtered out with a fiter pad etc. this could cause the spike in ammonia as well - your tank is likely going thru a mini cycle to re-establish the balanced nitrogen cycle it had.

[RICKY81]

[quote=hobogato;651580]do you mean that you siphoned out water from in the sand bed, and then ran that water thru all of that stuff and back into your tank/system?


yup that is exactly what i did:confused:. i figured i could get rid off all the junk under the sand bed if i did this but didn't know all that could happend..... so if its going through a mini cycle what do u recommend.... water change? or give it time?

[tony]

You said that your corals are reacting to this also, is this correct?



good catch, i totally glossed over that

[hobogato]

some things that might help include:

run some activated carbon in a small reactor - i have one you can borrow if you need to.

run phosban in a small reactor

make sure your skimmer is very clean and working at its best - you may even want to skim a little wet for a few days.

some more small water changes daily - 5 to 10 gallons each

you may also add a small air stone on an air pump in your sump to make sure the oxygen levels stay high enough as well.

[Bill S]

You likely stirred up quite a bit of junk from the sand bed. The first hint is that you have ammonia - which should always be zero. Disturbing a sand bed can be somewhat toxic. Ask me how I know...

I'd follow Ace's suggestion above, except that if nitrates are still above about 30, you might want to do a big water change...

[RICKY81]

well another thing that i realized is that i had a digital thermometer from PETCO that i bought long time ago for $10. so the whole time it was giving me readings of 62-68 degrees so i went crazy and hooked up to 200w heaters until it was reading 72-76 degrees.. but it occurred to me to do the finger dip temp test and water just felt way too hot... so i got 2 of the cheapy dip thermometers with mercury on them left them there for about an hr and realized that both of them read 90 F degrees... not cool.. well after about half of my frags mainly sps have died i have now taken what was left of my coral to a reefer buddy of mine that also lives in Laredo, Tx.... waiting for the levels to go back to normal.. i know this will take a few weeks. and meanwhile i will be doing what all you guys have recommended. thanks

[michael_t]

Ricky, that sucks about the temp miss read. That should solve your coral problem.

You might want to consider getting rid of that wet dry filter too. Mine was a nitrate factory. No matter what I did, it was always at 80 ppm. Then I switched to a skimmer and they dropped to 10 ppm. Then I added an intank refugium and that dropped nitrates to 0 ppm.

[wesheltonj]

Wet/dry's get a bad rap. I use one and currently my NO3 is @ 0 on an API test and @ .25 on Salifert. I for ever I could not get it down below 20, then I went to weekly 10% water change.