Nitrate question

[Patman1]

Hello all,

I have a 75g reef that is 17 months old. I have 100 lbs of live rock and 150 lbs of live sand making up my DSB. The tank is doing very well, Xenia and colt coral spreading too fast to control.....other than 2 small problems, I would be thrilled:

1) Nitrate: I can't get it below 20 ppm. I mean, I see the nitrogen bubbles in the sand bed and everything seems to be doing well....but my Nitrate is always 20 ppm. I feed the fish once/day with primeReef or Brine soaked in SelCon...so I'm wondering, should I get rid of the huge biowheel in the Tidepool II sump? The problem is, unlike Bioballs....I can't do it slowly and take some out every week....I would have to take the whole thing out at once. Do you think thats my problem......causing inc nitrates, and do you think I can pull it out?

2) HLLE...I have 2 percs, an arc-eye hawk, a yellow head goby, a yellow tank and a coral beauty. The Coral Beauty has very bad HLLE...and I don't know why.......diet should be good (Nori a few times per week and Selcon soaked brine shrimp/prime reef every day)...thought it might be stray volatage, so I just put in a titanium groud probe.....any other ideas?

Thanks

Pat Welch

 

[Shelby1317]

How often do you do water changes???

 

[Patman1]

75G, and I chance about 15-20 gallons once/month

 

[Shelby1317]

The only way i got my nitrates down was i did 3 water changes in a week, they dropped to 5ppm. They have stayed there since, what do you have in your sandbed, any bristleworms or things like that, I would read an article by Dr Shciemek, On reefs search sand beds.

 

[esmithiii]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

should I get rid of the huge biowheel in the Tidepool II sump?

Definitely. They are a nitrate trap. You can slow the amount of water going over the biowheel gradually and then take it off completely.

Brine shrimp are not very nutritious, even when soaked in selecon. I believe that variety is important when feeding. I would be happy to e-mail you my feeding schedule if you like. I would suggest trying mysis shrimp instead of the brine shrimp, and also try spirulina flakes. My fish love them, and they are a nutritious food.

Ernie

 

[monkeyboy]

With 100lbs of rock and a DSB in a 75, you should be able to remove the huge bio-wheel (which screams NITRATES!) w/out any noticable effects to the system. The bacteria in the rock and sand should be more than sufficient to keep the nitrogen cycle going full steam. As a precaution you could cut back on feeding for a week or so.

Check out the section on removing a trickle filter from an established reef in TRA volume 1, Julian Sprung says go for it.

 

[Patman1]

Thanks for all of the help, I think I'll try and remove the wheel, since its the only reason that I can think of for the 20 ppm nitrates..

Thanks

Pat