ive been running my 55 gallon reef for one year and my nitrates are still to high 40 to 60 any ideas?
If water changes aren't fixing problem then its possible feeding schedule is an issue. Also give a little more info on set up and water parameters.
Just a little info and I think we can take care of ya! Sand bed? Depth of said sand bed? Amount of rock? Fish/critter/coral load? Foods fed? How much/often?
55gl 85lb rock 2in sand bed 4 powerheads 2 emperor hobs 1yellow tang 1 6line wrass 1 blue damsel 1 clown 3 big hermits(2inchs or more)3small hermits 2 turbos 8 small snails that are mia polys zoos and 3 leathers i think my lfs steered me wrong he said tap water here was good im slowly switching back to distilled my 10 ran for 2 years water was perfect i only used distilled in it all my other tests came out good cal. nitrites ammonia everything good must be the water. oh yeah i only feed 3 to 4  times a week
Re: Re: nitrate probs Ok the biowheels will cause a little more nitrate than you would like. You also didn't mention a protein Skimmer either. You can get a 5 stage 75 gpd R/O DI filter shipped to your door for 160. Which store? Slowly take the bio-wheels off your tank and you should see a difference in your nitrate levels. I know when I took the wheel off at my job our nitrate went from 80 down to 20 . Raffle grabber
Your snails that are MIA were probably snacks for your hermits... You don't seem to be too overloaded. But tangs are messy fish, eat a lot, burn lots of cals, and thus poop a lot. Anyway, in my opinion, if you were to add enough sand to bring yourself up to somewhere between 3 and 4 inches of sand, you should begin to see those nitrates drop off some. It will give you some anoxic (little oxygen) areas in your sand bed to help finish out the nitrogen cycle. Also, don't worry about disturbing the sand bed. If you stir up part or all of it your tank won't crash. That usually happens in tanks that have ridiculously deep sand beds in the 6ish inch range. Those tanks have anaerobic (no oxygen) areas. These are the areas that make hydrogen sulfide gas that everyone screams about when it gets released. Those people don't realize that the gas gets released all the time anyway. Bubbles of it rising to the top of the water doesn't make the gas instantly dissolve into the water column. It just gets released I to the air. Sorry about that rant there Just don't make a ton of changes at one time. You won't know what helped or hurt your situation.
