Nitrate will not go down...

[Carandiru]

So I have been battling higher nitrates for some time now. I reduced my feeding. I bought a biopellet reactor (aquamaxx biomaxx reactor). I run rowaphos aswell. Still the nitrates haven't gone down. I vacummed my sand bed and pulled out a lot of brown stuff. The sandbed is only 1 to 2 inches deep max. There is a lot of live rock, 90 gallons more than 90 pounds. The tank is about a year old now. The phosphates are no going lower than 0.29. This is measured with the hanna meter. The Seachem test consistently shows nitrate as a deep purple which is around 40 to 50.
My alkalinity is 8 to 8.9 dKh. PH is consistent from 8.1 to 8.4. 0 ammonia 0 nitrite.

I've been trying out prodibio for over a month and keeping up with the regular dosing. I've also been dosing AZNO3 for a couple weeks now with no side affects except notcing my skimmer working more efficiently pulling out lots of crap. Also noticed brown fuzzy slimmy stuff (I think it's biofilm ) growing on the sand bed after dosing this AZNO3.

No hair algae outbreaks, that stopped quite some time ago.

So what am I doing wrong, my goal is to keep SPS corals. My current soft / LPS corals are doing good.

Any ideas?

[CM125]

Whats in your tank now? How often are you feeding? how often are you doing water changes? Have you tested your new water before it goes in?

[Reef Pilot]

Are you sure your bio-pellet reactor is working properly? How well are the pellets tumbling? How many ml of bio-pellets are you using? Are you dosing a bacteria supplement like MB7?

I have been running a Vertex UF-20, but let it run out of pellets over the summer. As a result my nitrates got back up to over 50 ppm. I filled my reactor, dosed MB7, and in 3 weeks, nitrates went right down to zero. I used 1000 ml of bio-pellets in my reactor. My tank is 100g.

Let me emphasize the use of MB7 which helps make the bio-pellets work, prevents clumping and mulm, and prevents cyano.

[whatcaneyedo]

It sounds to me like your skimmer can't handle your system volume and stocking. What do you have?

[monocus]

you can get your phosphates lower by using precision solutions phosphate remover.i started a week ago and went from 1.26 to .14.you might not have enough live rock in your system-try making a nitrate reactor-give the bacteria someplace to live

[jagermaier]

Are you running a refugium? If not that will help a lot. Also I found that it takes a long time before bio pellets start to make a noticeable difference but given time it does work. You could also try an algea scrubber.