Nitrates Finally Gone!

[Clownguy]

My nitrates have been around 40ppm for about the last year and the hair algaw finalyy got out of control so I decided to go with no sand and the algae came back and the nitrates were still high. So, I decided to cook my rock in two batches. I started the first half las week and I tested my nitrates tonight and they are O:shock: I was just curious if people thought it was because I moved the rock with nitrates in it or if less rock allowed more flow to stir up any detritus? Let me know wha you Think.

Chris

 

[NaH2O]

Chris - how many pounds of live rock and what size tank? I wonder if we can have too much rock. Are you still without sand?

 

[cwrenge]

Chris....... i had a sudden increase in my 55 Reefr after i had to catch a fish in my tank..........The Nitrates Spiked , and i relized it was because i disturbed the tanks Live Rock by moving the rock out of the tank to catch the fish...... so Water changes seemed to not Effectivly correct the problem.....( i tested everyday for over a week ) so i added a Nitrate-Remover additive to my via aqua cannister filter..... after a few days the readings started to go downward.... ( Yaaaaaaaaaaa... ! ) so i learned from that exp too........ cw. ps..... cooking your Live Rock , turns your Live Rock into Non-Live- Rock..... now the balance is upset...... so please keep a close watch...

 

[Krish]

WTG Chris! Glad you atleast got it down to 0. Let's just try and maintain it there...Best of luck!

 

[NaH2O]

ps..... cooking your Live Rock , turns your Live Rock into Non-Live- Rock..... now the balance is upset...... so please keep a close watch...

That really depends on the method of cooking. Boiling the live rock will certainly void the rock of any life. Cooking it, in the sense of putting it in a dark container with water, circulation, and proper temp will not kill off the bacteria. It will allow the rock to shed detritus, and the algaes will die off.

 

[Clownguy]

I am doing the in he dark type of baking and It is amazing to watch. I didn't see much happening until tonight after about a week and a half into it. Almos all of the hair algae is gone and there isn't hardly any detritus on the bottom. I am still going to let it bake for three or four more weeks.

Chris

 

[Clownguy]

Well for all the time I have been having problems with algae I always thought that maybe it was a problem with phosphate. AHHHHHH, wrong answer. I bought a test to see and I tested four times and it every time it came up 0.
The search goes on.

Chris

 

[fishermann]

Chris remember you can only test for organic and not inorganic or visa versa, I'm no chemist but I have seen post by Mike and others on this.

 

[Scooterman]

Chris - how many pounds of live rock and what size tank? I wonder if we can have too much rock. Are you still without sand?

I wondered this at some point also, I think maybe since I had very little bio-load algae grew because I had a very large amount of lr. Now I wonder what would of happened if I just went ahead & loaded the tank if the algae would of gone away.

 

[Clownguy]

I never answered your question nikki about how much rock and what size of tank. I have a 125 gal pentagon with 250lbs of rock. It was stacked in there pretty tight so that could be par of it. The flow may have never had a chance to pass over the rock and remove the waste.

Chris