Rising Nitrates All Of A Sudden

in the space of a week my nitrates have risen to between 40 - 60ppm and i have not idea whats causing the rise.

i have no dead fish or inverts. All fish and corals are doing fine and showing no sign of stress and the same goes for my inverts. And i have knowtised a number of dark patches appearing on the sand aswell.....it looks like diatoms but i fort they were only present in a tanks forst cycle??

i can only think of 2 possible causes.

1: in a previous post i shew a picture of my trumpet coral which a few of the heads are on there last legs would this be causing the rise??

2: my mechanical filter not being man enough to cope...the filter itself is a fluval 2 plus with filter wool inside as the media and i must say it gets very clogged up over the course of a week between water changes.

If it is the filter i have looked into buying a external fluval 105 would this be man enough to handle the filtration of the tank???

Sounds to me like it could me a combination of all the above. An internal filter with wool is not recommended for a marine tank as they are known to be nitrate factories ie. get clogged up and cause nitrates. IMO get rid of it and instead use a external filter filled with LR rubble. If you wish to keep it then you should be cleaning or replacing your filter wool everyday or every other day if it looks clogged and dirty!

Secondly the dieing candy cane may well be the cause of the nitrates so have a good look at it and decide if it is dead or not and go about with it accordingly. I do not have any experience with candy canes so cannot really give you much advice on how to go about seeing if it is worth keeping it in the tank or not!

And finally what test kit do you use? There have been many reports of nitrate tests kits giving dodgy readings eg. the nitrate test in API saltwater has been known to give extremely high readings even though everything in the tank looks fine so people have questioned it and when water was re-checked using another kit it showed normal or 0 levels! Might be worthwile taking a water sample to yur LFS and getting them to test it also, so you have a second opinion! especially since all you corals and livestock seems to be showing no signs of stress!

If the nitrates are in fact high then I would recommend doing several small (25%) water changes everyday until the levels go back down to normal or 0!

Rising nitrates and diatoms indicate increased nutrients.....from excess feeding....something dying.....something uncleaned somewhere...or....?adequate water changes. SH

...or nitrates from contaminated input water and/or salt mix. Have you measured freshly mixed saltwater (after at least 24 hours) for nitrates? Should read 0, if not, there's your problem.

Also, not mentioned here, do you vaccum your sand bed when you waterchange? Could be built-up detritus there finally rearing its ugly decomposed head

Well i think i will go out and buy an external filter as by the sounds of things its causing problems.

I do a 14 litre/ 3 gallon water change every week and the water comes fresh from an RO filter but i have not tested to see if any nitrates are present do i will that and let you know the results. And i use tropic marin salt is there any known problems with using this salt???

The candy cane i realy dont know what do with it as its only 2 heads of 6 thats are dead.....can i try and break off the dead heads from the frag???

And for peace of mind i will try get a water sample to my lfs and get them to test the water and see what results they show. i can think of the name of test kit i use off the top of my head as the tank is at my dads and ime visiting my mum for a day.

When you say about vaccuming my sand i have not done so as i wold of fort the sand would of all got sucked up and taken out the tank??? prehaps this is where my problem is then???

Well, 99% of the time, most aquarium salt mixes do not have nitrate problems, however every now and again a bad batch is made, so it's a pretty simple matter to just check it out just to make sure.

As for the Candycane, if the flesh is allready gone from the dead heads, you can leave it.

good idea on the piece of mind with having the LFS do it. Verification is never a bad idea. Remember, just ask them to test for nitrates, dont tell them what you expect. you don't want to give them pre-conceived notions

Vaccuming the sand bed is a little tricky. What you have to do is stick some 1/4" flex tube on a smaller vaccum designed for say a 10g tank or so. The smaller diameter tubing slows down the waterflow enough so that you only suck up detritus and not sand. You have to sort of "probe" the sand bed for a little, can't just bury it and leave it. Make sense?

ive got to buy some more salt today as ime gettin a little low no but this time ime gunna get something in a tub with a lid on as the tropica marin is in a cardboard box with no resealable lid which equals lumpy hard salt where the moisture has gotten to it.

ill have a look at my lfs today for a smaller vaccum and i get what u mean about probing the sand i understand u cant just shove it in 1 place an it will clean it all.

with the candy cane can i try break off the dead heads as it doesnt look pretty with them on???

going to be buying my external filter today aswell. and for media i was thinkin along the lines of bagged carbon, some sort of phosphate remover and 1 compartment with broken up live rock???

Sure can break off the heads. Try and use like a hammer and chisel.

Sounds good on the filter to me

Yep LR rubble in 1 compartment is a good idea along with some rowaphos or phosban and some carbon.

Also IMO you should consider getting some sort of fine sponge/wool as part of the mechanical filteration to collect any large pieces of debris/detritus! But make shure you clean/change this sponge/wool often as it can end up becoming a nitrate factory causing your nitrates to rise!!

well ive been out and brought exactlly what i said i was gunna which was a fluval 105 external filter, 1kg of live rock to break up some fluval phosphate remover and bagged carbon which comes with the filter.

ime not sure about using filter wool anymore as i think this was part of the cause for my nitrates being so high as i was using it in my internal filter.

As for the phosphate remover how exactly do i use it?? as the instructions say to use 1 gram per 7.56litres and for reef aquariums to use 1 gram for every 18.9 litres which i will have to do as i have a reef aquarium. However it says that a 25 gram dose will remove 3.2mg/l in a 189litre aquarium.

So do i follow the instructions to put 1 gram per 18.9L or do i work out how mush i want to remove and go from there??? this is all very confusing and also once i have finally worked out what i have to add to the filter do i leave it in there all the time or do i remove it once the phosphates have gone down???

I'd use the higher dosage of phosphate. What color is the phosphate remover? White or rust brown?

its a rusty brown colour.....doesnt look very nice at all. what dosage would u reccomend then??? and do i leave the bag in the filter at all times then??? and do i have to change it at all?

think ive finally found the route to my rising nitrates.......my RO filter.

done my water change tonight and took samples from the new bucket of water with salt added, RO water from the containers i store it in, and then water freshly from the RO filter and the picture below shown my problem.

So in the picture u see 3 test tubes. starting from left to right its the bucket of new water i added to the tank with salt added then RO water from the container its stored in and finally the water from RO filter itself. Ime not a happy bunny atm when ive only had the filter in about 2 1/2 months and the filter has packed up already.

bump

Hummm, somethin doesnt sound right there.... Do you have a TDS meter, and if so what does it read on RO water? Could be a faulty test kit?