I need Help

[neoh]

Originally Posted by craigwmiller

The only caution I would have to this method is that if you don't remove the source of nitrates they will come back. Be it source water, sand bed, filter floss, over feeding, etc.

In RomaFan's case, water is already being changed and it's not helping, so the source is very active and removing the source needs to happen first, then a massive water change afterwards!

This is very true.

If it were me, I would vacuum up as much of the sand as I could, while removing it, then complete a 90% waterchange.

High nitrates like that in such a small system should be manageable.

Have you checked the nitrates of the water out of the tap?

[asylumdown]

One of the reasons why I've never really been in love with the Berlin method is that it relies on something completely out of your control to deal with the nitrates. In principal, the idea that nitrate will diffuse in to anaerobic areas inside your live rock sounds good, but not all rocks are created equal, even if they look practically identical. There's no way of quantifying how effective your specific pieces of live rock are going to be at processing nitrate in advance, or how that capacity might change over time. If your'e lucky, you'll get awesome rock that can denitrify till the cows come home, or you might get rock that was only ever so-so at it due to the internal microscopic structure, with pore spaces that eventually get clogged up with dead bacterial mulm, pushing crowding out the anaerobes. Also, you can have great live rock but still be over-stocking/feeding relative to it's capacity, but the only way to find out if that's the case is to wind up in the position you're in now.

Very simply, the bioload in your tank combined with the amount you feed is greater than your aquarium's capacity to reduce nitrate to NO2 gas. I'm not suggesting you feed less or get rid of any livestock, but I do think you need to try and figure out a system for dealing with nitrates that's more intentional and controllable than just relying on the live rock.

You're using NoPOX? do you also have a skimmer? Have you tried dosing NoPOX in conjunction with a bacterial supplement like Microbacter7?

On a small tank like that you should be able to control them using just water changes, but to do that you need to figure out how quickly your nitrate levels are rising. The easiest way to do that would be to do a water change (I'd err on the side of a large water change), then immediately measure your nitrate levels. Measure your nitrate levels again one week later, and if they have gone up by say 20%, then you'll need to be doing more than a 20% weekly water change to keep them under control using just water changes alone. If they go up by 50%, then you'll need to be doing at least a 50% water change every week just to keep them 'stable'.

I'm a big fan of 90-100% water changes on small systems. Rather than messing with water chemistry, they let you just reset it completely. I ran my pico like that for months and it thrived, and plan on running it that way again now that it's set up.

[JmeJReefer]

that sand bed sound suspect. DSB's have inherent problemo's.....