I am just coming out of a year or more of trying to crush my nitrates with the idea of doing away with my algae. However, it really didn't make much of a dent in the algae. So after really thinking about the issue and being kind of lost on what the issue was it became clear that I didn't have enough algea eating animals. The whole system is about 275g and I only had 2 Tangs, and through my own ignorance I bought many snails that really didn't even eat the type of algae in my tank. I also noticed that my zoanthids have not done nearly as well, this could be due to going from MH to LED's, hard for me to say for sure. However, once I decided to stop doing water changes for awhile I notied the Zoanthids doing better and the algae levels being about the same. I have since added 4 more Tang's and 2 algae eating blennies so we will see how it works out but there is starting to be less algae.

I think I had so much algae that any time a nitrate got released it was quickly consumed by the algae in the tank, creating low levels in the water but not allowing for the skimmer or water changes to have a lot of affect. I am thinking that by turning over the algae into fish waste maybe this will help with exporting the waste. I have played with many different parameters over the past few years, trying different things but I now see nitrates as only small piece to the puzzle.

Mike