Why isn't my hammer bright green like in the lfs?

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by reeffish6

I would do 10-15% once a week

Well that's great for regular maintenance if the goal is to reduce nitrates you should be looking at doing much larger changes. The tank doesn't look that big so changes upwards of 50% should be feasible. If you do 50% changes you need four of them within a short time frame to get you to 5ppm. Do the math for 10% and you'll see why it does nothing.