What method for reducing nitrates/phosphates do you use?
Lets discuss our removal method successes and failures here. I'm trying to go next level and I'm not sure what method I want to try, lots of info online, lots of scary stories.
I have a 125 6 foot tank stocked with 9 fish. My fish are pigs so I feed daily and I feed frozen food (Mysis, clam, krill, brine, silversides).
When my tank had like 4 fish, I had no phos or nitrates, sparkling clean sand.
Now, my phosphates are .o2 (no biggie) but my nitrates are about 10. This makes me nervous...lol
I run Rowa Phos in a reactor, this seems to work great for phosphates.
For nitrates I have my skimmer rated for 150 gallons and a refugium PACKED full of cheato. This did the trick for a smaller bioload but doesn't hold the nitrates down anymore. I have a small CUC (10 turbos, 5 hermits, 1 tiger tail cucumber if its alive) and I do weekly 15 gallon water changes.
Where should I go from here? Vodka? Red Sea NoPx? Bio Pellets? Aquaforest Salt?
What do you use? How well does it work? What would you never do again?
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