High nitrate only!

[fresh]

Hi all,

I just found out that my nitrates are sitting at 80. What is puzzling is that both ammonia and nitrite are reading 0! Other readings: salinity=1.0255, KH=11, PH=8.

The tank is a BioCube 14 with:
Softies and lps + One damsel + 2 shrimps + 3 snails + 1" arag sand bed + 20 lbs of lr.
all looking healthy and active. They all ate yesterday. I only feed once every 2 or 3 days.

The tank is almost 2 years old, but was moved 3 months ago.

Only one thing is doing bad: 3" cap coral. This was a test to see if I can keep SPS with stock lights, and obviously not. It has been fading in colour for the last 2 weeks or so. It is almost completely white now.

I have already started preparing water for a water change. I will do a 3 gal water change tomorrow.

Questions:
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What I would like to know is if you have had a similar experience where nitrates in your reef were that high? And if things can continue to look healthy if nitrates are that high? why would nitrates be high, and ammonia and nitrite are reading 0? Can the dying cap cause this on its own?

Any advice and input is appreciated.

Thanks
Fresh.

[Myka]

Could you take a sample to your LFS to get them to test it to confirm? 80 ppm is pretty darn high.

Btw, having high nitrate doesn't mean you should see ammonia or nitrite. High nitrate just means that there is too much nitrification going on. In a reef tank we use things like skimmers and filter socks to remove organics before they have a chance to break down and become nitrate. When you have an established nitrifying bacteria population it will consume the wastes out of the water quickly enough that ammonia and nitrite will remain undetectable.

When doing waterchanges blast rocks off with a turkey baster first, and vacuum the sand, this will help to remove detritus before it breaks down.

[Wayne]

You need to start doing water changes. I would do them every few days till nitrates get back to tolerable amounts. How accurate is your test kit? Recommend bringing a sample to another reefer or LFS to double check.

[Reef Pilot]

I have had high nitrate problems for a while in my display tank, and was up to about 100 a couple months ago. While I don't have any fancy corals, my toadstools, colt coral, bubble coral, frogspawn, and some others, all seem to be doing OK. Fish don't seem to care at all, incl some butterflies, and all healthy and eating well (too well, which is part of the problem).

Having said that, I my nitrates are now slowly falling and down to about 40 now. I have started up a bio pellet reactor and also changed my skimmer pump, and that seems to be helping. I was only getting about a cup of skimmate every week, at best, and now get that much pretty well every day.

So I hope to get mine under control soon.

[fresh]

Because I am dealing with a BC14, skimmer and reactor are out of the question unless I decide to mod the tank and top heavily, which I am not about to do. But I could certainly see how that would help solve the problem.

That being said, water changes are in order.

Honestly, with only one small fish in the tank and I don't plan to add more in the future, I really don't think that a skimmer is a must in my low bio load tank.

Myka and Wayne, perfect recommendation about re-testing with a different test kit. Will do so tonight or tomorrow.

[fresh]

Reef Pilot, thank you for sharing your experience. That is exactly what I was hoping to hear from others. You have put my mind at ease (at least for the time being). I am glad to know I am not the only one who has witnessed this, and more glad to know that your animals continued to thrive during your hard times and did not give up.

I am certainly going to try to resolve, but at least I know that things can continue to live during this time while I am trying to figure out a solution.

I would be very sad if one of my shrimps died.

[Beverly]

There are a few things I would do to reduce nitrate:

1. 30% water changes every couple of days to get nitrates below 10 ppm. Also, double check that your test kit is reading correctly.

2. Get some macroalgae to slurp up some of these nutrients.

3. If possible, throw on a HOB mechanic filter for a few days. Use a turkey baster to baste the rock and sandbed. This will stir up a lot of nitrate- and phosphate-producing crud that can be exported from your system by cleaning the filter. For best results, plan to do this over a weekend when you can baste the tank, let the crud fill up the filter, clean the filter, then do it over and over again until the tank is barely cloudy after basting. This is more work than a lot of people care to put into their tanks, but well worth the effort in the long run.

4. And do weekly water changes of at least 15% forevermore

[fresh]

After 3 sessions of turkey baster and later the water change, nitrate is down to around 50 today.

I know Myka tried above (thank you Myka), but I am still not very clear as to why ammonia and nitrite are reading 0 when nitrate is high?

[Wayne]

Ammonia gets converted to Nitrites which gets converted to Nitrates.

The only way to get rid of nitrates is with water changes, NP pellets, Zeo or Vodka dosing (or other similar bateria eating nitrate means)

[Myka]

Ammonia is eaten up in the system by the bacteria as quickly as it is produced so there is never enough ammonia to be read on a typical hobbyists' test kit. Same with nitrite. If you used a very expensive, very accurate, very sensitive ammonia test you could get an ammonia reading in pretty much any marine body of water. This also happens with nitrate and phosphate...both can be eaten up by algae so quickly that there is not enough left in the water column for typical hobbyist test kits to detect.

Originally Posted by Wayne

The only way to get rid of nitrates is with water changes, NP pellets, Zeo or Vodka dosing (or other similar bateria eating nitrate means)

That's not entirely true, the best natural denitrator is live rock. The anaerobic bacteria within the rock will convert nitrate to nitrogen gas.