All the wonderful ways to reduce nitrates!

[johnmaloney]

Don't starve your poor fish! I always have fed at least once a day and never have nitrates after the first spike plus one week. Get more liverock, more macro, more mangroves, they will get the nitrates out eventually. Also what do you have to eat the detritus, and the leftover food from the fish? You have to find a way to keep converting waste into energy to mimic a natural filtration method. If you let the fish waste just dissolve in the tank, you are going to have problems. You may also need more filter feeders if you are dosing that kind of stuff, it is too small for anything else to bother with but will still turn into nitrates in the water column. A feather duster might be a great investment.

 

I only read the first page before the first post, those are great tips SPS20

[Withers]

I've never intentionally given my tank a sandstorm, I'll have to start trying that out

[HankB]

I feed the living crap out of my tank, and have never had detectable nitrates, except for the first month or two after setup. I really think you can only overfeed relative to the ability of your tank to consume the food.

 

In my experience:

...

- Stir your sand frequently if you use sand. The cloud of detritus this releases not only feeds your corals, but allows your filters a chance to grab some of the detritus.

...

I hope you find these tips helpful.

 

- Josh

 

Hi Josh,

 

All of your tips make perfect sense to me except for this one. I'd like to hear more discussion.

 

I thought that eventually denitrification took place in anaerobic regions or pockets in the sand. I think this may be a much bigger factor with a DSB, but I wonder if it makes a difference at all with the depth of sand typically found in a nano. It seems to me that stirring the sand could work against this.

 

How deep do you stir? Are you attempting to disturb just the surface or are you trying to disturb all of the way to the bottom?

 

Do snails and other animals that burrow through the sand figure into this? Do they stir the sand enough to make that kind of difference?

 

I also wonder if stirring sand that has not been stirred for months or years might release more than is desirable if done too aggressively. It seems to me that this practice might be more beneficial if performed consistently from the time the tank is first set up. (In keeping with the philosophy that sudden changes are a bad thing for reef tanks.)

 

I'd appreciate hearing more detail and experience regarding this practice.

 

thanks,

hank

[vangvace]

Hi Josh,

 

All of your tips make perfect sense to me except for this one. I'd like to hear more discussion.

 

I thought that eventually denitrification took place in anaerobic regions or pockets in the sand. I think this may be a much bigger factor with a DSB, but I wonder if it makes a difference at all with the depth of sand typically found in a nano. It seems to me that stirring the sand could work against this.

 

How deep do you stir? Are you attempting to disturb just the surface or are you trying to disturb all of the way to the bottom?

 

Do snails and other animals that burrow through the sand figure into this? Do they stir the sand enough to make that kind of difference?

 

I also wonder if stirring sand that has not been stirred for months or years might release more than is desirable if done too aggressively. It seems to me that this practice might be more beneficial if performed consistently from the time the tank is first set up. (In keeping with the philosophy that sudden changes are a bad thing for reef tanks.)

 

I'd appreciate hearing more detail and experience regarding this practice.

 

thanks,

hank

 

Stirring sand that has been left for the most part untouched for months/years is generally not a good thing. A variety of things can happen from a minicycle to large kill-off to nothing. It kinda depends on the depth of the sand bed and if it's reached an oxygen deprived state. If done relgiously from day one though it shouldn't be a factor in causing negative effects.

 

Nano DSB isn't all that affective either other than looks from what I've read, but that may be outdated information. It's been a while since I read up on the subject.

[Izzue]

Clams

 

Izzue

[rhunter513]

Lots of good stuff said here but i will add my 2 cents.

 

Low nitrates are all about good husbandry. Water changes are a must but remember they only dilute the water they don't remove the source of the nitrates. Remember nitrates only happen as the second to last step in the nitrogen cycle. So prevent nitrients from converting to nitrates should be your goal. Avoid using any mechanical filter media unless you can remember to keep change it or clean it a couple of times a week. The CUC is your best mechanical filter. Protein skimming prevent nutrients from coverting to nitrates. Chemical media, like chemi-pure and purigen that are all the rage right now are just band-aids and don't get to the source of the nitrates. Its my opinion the fuges are not necessary also - esp in small nano's. So now what do I do.

 

-Start out with high quality live rock that is fully cured and is only out of the water a short time. Curing rock in your tank will cause an on going nitrate problem for many months

-Use RO water

-Stock sensibly - most people over stock their nano's with fish.

-Don't over feed

-Use a very small sand bed or none at all and from day one (after the initial 4 weeks) vacuum the sand bed with each water change.

-Don't use any mechanical media

-Only use light chemical media - carbon only - and keep it rinsed weekly

-With my AIO nanocube - vacuum out the rear filter chambers weekly.

 

That is what works for me - 0ppm from day one.

 

Reef filtration:

mechanical - CUC

Bio - live rock/sand

Chemical - protein skimming

[KEdwards]

This is a great thread

[Ryan_H]

add this:

 

-big clean-up crew

-lots of water flow

-having a 1" or less sandbed that you vacuum every water change (nassarius snails are practically useless in my experience, and there is no other sand-sifting animal that will survive long term in a bc14).

 

 

the clean-up crew will eat everything your fish can't get too. when every crab you have frantically begs for food when you feed, you know you have enough cuc. with higher water flow, more food will be swept away behind your rock before your fish can get it, so it's important to have something that can get back there and eat it.

 

the water flow will keep detritus in suspension to be pulled out by your skimmer or eaten by your corals

 

the shallow, clean sandbed will prevent detritus from accumulating and breaking down into nitrates and phosphates.

 

on that note:

your cyano is probably coming from poor water flow.

[SPS20]

Hi Josh,

 

All of your tips make perfect sense to me except for this one. I'd like to hear more discussion.

 

I thought that eventually denitrification took place in anaerobic regions or pockets in the sand. I think this may be a much bigger factor with a DSB, but I wonder if it makes a difference at all with the depth of sand typically found in a nano. It seems to me that stirring the sand could work against this.

 

How deep do you stir? Are you attempting to disturb just the surface or are you trying to disturb all of the way to the bottom?

 

Do snails and other animals that burrow through the sand figure into this? Do they stir the sand enough to make that kind of difference?

 

I also wonder if stirring sand that has not been stirred for months or years might release more than is desirable if done too aggressively. It seems to me that this practice might be more beneficial if performed consistently from the time the tank is first set up. (In keeping with the philosophy that sudden changes are a bad thing for reef tanks.)

 

I'd appreciate hearing more detail and experience regarding this practice.

 

thanks,

hank

 

I don't generally advocate the use of DSB's in small tanks, but I have always kept a .5-1" layer of sand for aesthetic reasons, and to accomodate certain animals like conches, nassarius, some types of gobies, and fungiids. If you have a DSB that has been undisturbed for months, don't disturb anything but the surface layers.

 

Since I keep a relatively shallow layer of sand, I like to seriously mix it up, blasting it with a turkey baster and mixing it with a long-handled spoon. Sand-sifting/burrowing creatures certainly help, but they don't keep the sand totally clean. (The goal should not be totally clean sand, IMO, but rather sand that doesn't tend toward putrefaction, slime algae, etc.)

 

The benefit to stirring, IMO, is to re-suspend detritus that has settled out to feed corals and filter-feeders, and allow mechanical filtration and the skimmer another whack at removing it before it resettles. On a natural reef, absolutely nothing is wasted, one critter's poo is another's lunch. In a reef tank, the same is true, but you have to make some effort to pick up the slack through filtration and push things along, helping the cycle to close. Always be thinking of ways you can remove detritus and dissolved organics, and stay ahead of the inevitable decline in water quality rather than trying to play catch-up. No reef tank is a closed system. You must aggressively remove as much goo as you can, and help the system to process the rest naturally.

[Deleted User 6]

your cyano is probably coming from poor water flow.

 

I have an MJ1200 pump moving water - what else can I do?

[SPS20]

I have an MJ1200 pump moving water - what else can I do?

 

A tiny patch of cyano in a corner of the tank is not something you should get worked up over, IMO. How bad are we talking about here? Is it a few tiny patches or an amoeba-like monster eating all your corals?

[Deleted User 6]

It was starting to form a carpet over my sandbed - it wasn't tiny patches and it wasn't a monster. I vacuumed out what I could get to. I think I can control it by just fixing my nitrate problem and figuring out how to get my skimmer to work better.

[masterbuilder]

SPS20 said it all.

 

I have a ton of corals for the size of my little tank and its very lightly stocked with fish. For a year I had only one small (1.5") blenny. I just added two tiny (.5") green banded gobies, but I am about one month from moving everything into my new 30G. I have never been able to measure any nitrates since my initial cycle.

 

The whole trick for me...20% water changes EVERY week and light bio-load. Thats really all there is to it.

 

Mark

 

p.s. I sure dont want any nitrates...but... we all make them out to be so bad...in reality.... some level of nitrates are not that bad and MAY be useful too some extent.

[Ryan_H]

p.s. I sure dont want any nitrates...but... we all make them out to be so bad...in reality.... some level of nitrates are not that bad and MAY be useful too some extent.

 

seriously. i've noticed that this site and others are up in arms about nitrates. our coral tanks at work are connected to fish tanks and consistently have about 20-30 ppm nitrates, and all corals, including sps, are colored up and growing (when they have a chance to sit in the store for a while, that is). we have no cyano, no hair algae, no sick or dying fish, no diseased corals. in fact there are VERY few people whose water i have tested at 0 nitrates, like less than a dozen out of hundreds. all their tanks are healthy as well, from pictures i've seen (trust me, i would have heard if there were even the slightest thing out of wack). ideally nitrates should be less than 5. but don't beat yourself up if its not.

[SPS20]

seriously. i've noticed that this site and others are up in arms about nitrates. our coral tanks at work are connected to fish tanks and consistently have about 20-30 ppm nitrates, and all corals, including sps, are colored up and growing (when they have a chance to sit in the store for a while, that is). we have no cyano, no hair algae, no sick or dying fish, no diseased corals. in fact there are VERY few people whose water i have tested at 0 nitrates, like less than a dozen out of hundreds. all their tanks are healthy as well, from pictures i've seen (trust me, i would have heard if there were even the slightest thing out of wack). ideally nitrates should be less than 5. but don't beat yourself up if its not.

 

This is truth. It would be a mistake to think that any nitrates at all are a bad bad thing. You should *aim* for zero, but understand that only a small percentage of tanks will ever reach truly undetectable levels. Many successful reef tanks have some detectable nutrient levels.

 

That being said, the lower you can get them, the better. You just aren't ever going to reach actual zero without a very aggressive denitrifier, which you really shouldn't be using on a nano reef anyway. You can reach undetectable levels with good husbandry sustained over the course of months, but you will never be able to reach actual zero. Somebody above mentioned that some amount of nutrients are neccessary for good coral health. This is true, however, it would be nearly impossible to actually eliminate nutrients to the point that your corals will be stunted as a result.

 

Just aim for zero, and be happy if you get below 5.

[fewskillz]

Yeah, my 125 (softy reef) stays around 8-10. It's perfectly healthy. No algae problems at all.

 

Water changes work the best. A little ball of chaeto goes a long way too. Even if it's just in a soap dish in the display.

[smedge]

10 Gallon display

No skimmer

No mechanical filtration

No chemical filtration

No sand vacuuming

Daily feeding (free feeding not spot feeding)

Sensible patient stocking (crammed with corals and inverts, no fish)

10% weekly water changes (RO/DI)

5 Gallon fuge with chaeto, LR and an 4" Oolitic DSB.

 

Never registered a single nitrate since day one, now about a year in.