Nitrate!

[RSM]

It has been a month now and my tank parameters are:
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitate 0
PH 8.1-8.2
temp 77.5

I purchased two oscellaris clowns and some frogspawn coral 2 days ago. Now I read a 0.5 ppm in nitate. I assume this is normal as I am adding waste to my system.
What should I do?

[christyf5]

I'd just keep an eye on it. If you're that worried, do a waterchange, that should help the situation.:biggrin:

[RSM]

Thanks I will keep an eye on it for now.

[RSM]

Is it typical to get nitrate when adding fish or coral?

[Der_Iron_Chef]

I haven't experienced that myself. Can you provide a little more info? What type of skimmer are you using? And are there any other types of mechanical filtration like sponges or bio balls, etc?

[RSM]

Its a Red Sea Max 34g so it has a sponge with floss on top. It has a ceramics bag with carbon on top in the return chamber.Skimmer comes with the tank.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

How often do you clean the sponge & ceramics? These have been shown to increase nitrates. If it were me, I'd ditch them and just use your skimmer/carbon in those compartments.

[RSM]

Ceramics I have not touched as it has only been a month. The sponges I clean weekly and the floss every few days. Would it be ok to ditch the ceramics now or later once the tank is stable?

[mark]

fairly new tank, mini-cycle?

[RSM]

Yes, I actually just tested Nitrate again and it reads <0.2ppm so everything is ok. Thanks for everyones help.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Still I would ditch the ceramics! They will likely be a source of nitrates further down the road.

[RSM]

I think i will in a couple of weeks when i replace my bag of carbon.
Thanks

[christyf5]

Sorry to hijack, but Drew wouldn't the ceramics act sort of as live rock or are they super porous and act more like a sponge?

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Sorry to hijack, but Drew wouldn't the ceramics act sort of as live rock or are they super porous and act more like a sponge?

In my personal experience, they just collected tons of detritus. It wasn't a good scene, as I wasn't really fond of cleaning them every few days.

[christyf5]

ah ok, yeah never thought about that.

[fishytime]

Check out a this site www.nano-reef.com . Do a search or join and ask there what people are doing to their RSMs. Lots of tweaking going on and some cool ideas.

[RSM]

Cool site! Thanks for the link. Are you open tomorrow?

[fishytime]

See vendor announcements.