Help Big Time!

[N1z]

Ok my nitrates have just gone through the roof to 50-100mg now i use ro water but when i tested it i get a reading there is nitrate in the water still like 12.5mg per lt.
So far ive done 10% water change last night and about to do another 10 hoping as only got 1 bucket,heater and air pump.

Now straight away your thinking what about the fish and corals/inverts well they all seem fine as they eat well and are all healthy looking so not too much to worry there.

How and what is the best way to get rid of it?
i was looking at a aqua medic nitrate reactor but could you put it onto my eheim filter?

 

[Donya]

50-100 is in the range where I know snails start getting miserable and generally acting ill...not had experience with other inverts in bad conditions but if the inverts are acting normal, then something is odd. Have you double checked your nitrate readings with another test kit brand or with another LFS?

 

[N1z]

well yer i did, but they used same test kit so wot ill do is on sat use a diffferent test kit see wot happens but still.

 

[Donya]

It could be a false positive. With nitrates that high somebody is pretty much sure to be unhappy in the tank. I got some whacky false positives from aquarium pharmeceuticals kits once...it happens sometimes. I've also gotten garbage color readings from a nitrite kit brand that was reacting with some other chemical in the water. On a scale of cyan to magenta/red, it turned gray within seconds and then went to brown after several hours. After that I decided the more test kit types to verify the better lol.

 

[andywg]

First thing to check would be the RO, what is the TDS reading of the RO water?

Next up check the test kit. I have had API nitrates test RO water off the scale above 160ppm when it was 0. I no longer bother using the tests for numbers, but look to see if it has actually changed from last time, to see if it does detect any upward trend.