Extremely frustrated, can't lower nitrates on established reef. Massive water changes, bacteria supplement, carbon dosing, chaeto...NOTHING WORKS!

NanoDJS

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Thats why Im saying to get it up to around a 16:1 ratio if its not high enough and light not strong wont you wont uptake no correctly which wont lower your no
 

amazongb

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po4 dropped overnight from 0.05 to 0.03

Based on the test I have a healthy range of p04 but I still feel it's the limiting factor atm.

Test every 24 hours, in between feedings, and dose accordingly to maintain the desired range.. I have a feeling if you do that, you'll see your N03 go down over time.. but it will take some time.. You'll also see your chaeto start to grow again..
 

DirtMcGurt

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From what I've read, and my personal experience, you need to get that P04 up. Otherwise carbon dosing (nopox) won't drop your N03. Brightwell offers a P04 supplement but there are others out there as well. After dosing and testing for a few weeks, my N03 came down and corals colored up. Then everything balanced out and I no longer have to dose P04. I still keep an eye on it tho.
 

Dr. Dendrostein

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I have an established reef about 4 years old. Primarily SPS; about 2 months ago I had a nitrate spike of about 60 after I used Vibrant to get rid of some hair algae in tough spots (it killed algae within my two week dose of 30ml once per week). I typically run the tank anywhere from 5-10.

Nothing has really changed; I never did major water changes in the past. My livestock is fairly low for a 300G tank. 96x30x24

Livestock: 3 yellow tank, 1 sailfin tang, 1 blue tang, 1 powder blue, 2 clown, 1 anthias, 1 diamond goby, 1 green wrasse, 1 melanaurus. (No fish death in the last 2 years, ammonia is 0/nitrites are 0)
Skimmer: Lifereef oversized 36 inch rated for 400-600
Salt: instant ocean with 5 stage RODI. Water tests 0 no3.
P04: 0.05 according to hanna ULR and 0 according to salifert (junk/useless)

I have tried vinegar dosing, currently been using 50ml of nopx every day for the last month and it has done NOTHING. At this point I am so desperate I don't care if I wipe my tank and tried using AZ-NO3 and nothing. I am also dosing 50ml of microbacter7 daily. Chaeto in my algae reactor is not growing at all and starting to die.

I have always vacuumed my sand bed daily; it's only 1.5 inches at best and I have tons of rock in the tank.

Over the last two weeks I have changed out over 500G of water doing 50-100G a day and nitrates are still 50+. Has my tank reached the age where it's just destined to die? I am tooth grind mad right now over this crap.
I think it's time for old school technology, sulfur denitrator, 3 months ago I was at 40ppm, took out denitrator, in two weeks down to 5ppm . Right now at 5ppm, it's been 2 months since stop using denitrator. Again sulfur denitrator

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Reefcowboy

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If the chaeto is dying, try chaetogro from brightwel. I've had them die before even though nitrates were high.

How do the corals look? I'm running an sps tank now with a large refugium where chaeto and caulerpa grow like weeds, I feed my fish once a day and my nitrates are 20. Sps color are awesome and growth too. I dont test anymore, just go by how the corals look
 

Pete_the_Puma

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Here is my guess at what happened:


Cheato is incredibly efficient at lowering Nitrate and phosphate. When you dosed Vibrant you probably killed/injured (for a plant? not sure what the word is here) the cheato and now that it is dying it is not up-taking your nitrate and to a lesser degree phosphate from the tank.

I would wait a little bit and try to introduce some new Cheato?

Not sure that would fix it but might be worth a try.
 
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2Wheelsonly

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Here is my guess at what happened:


Cheato is incredibly efficient at lowering Nitrate and phosphate. When you dosed Vibrant you probably killed/injured (for a plant? not sure what the word is here) the cheato and now that it is dying it is not up-taking your nitrate and to a lesser degree phosphate from the tank.

I would wait a little bit and try to introduce some new Cheato?

Not sure that would fix it but might be worth a try.

Chaeto reactor was offline during vibrant and cleaned, two weeks after vibrant ran it's course I hooked it back up with new chaeto in it. I'm not worried at all about the chaeto, that stuff can be replaced easier than dirt. What worries me is that it wont grow with "supposed" nutrients in my tank. If my test kits are not telling the picture then i'm flying blind. I can only react to what my test kits tell me but something is limiting. My massive water changes should have replenished trace elements. If my chaeto wont grow then most likely my corals wont either as I don't dose any coral foods and rely on the nutrients in the tank. My large green acro colonies are starting to STN and change color with no PE. I assume my others will eventually follow suit if I don't get this figured out.
 

Reefcowboy

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Chaeto reactor was offline during vibrant and cleaned, two weeks after vibrant ran it's course I hooked it back up with new chaeto in it. I'm not worried at all about the chaeto, that stuff can be replaced easier than dirt. What worries me is that it wont grow with "supposed" nutrients in my tank. If my test kits are not telling the picture then i'm flying blind. I can only react to what my test kits tell me but something is limiting. My massive water changes should have replenished trace elements. If my chaeto wont grow then most likely my corals wont either as I don't dose any coral foods and rely on the nutrients in the tank. My large green acro colonies are starting to STN and change color with no PE. I assume my others will eventually follow suit if I don't get this figured out.
Now we can understand better. If sps are starting to stn, yes nitrate is doing damage.
I would feed the fish less per feeding and only feed every other day for now. Do not feed pellets, only frozen.

How long did you run your chaeto reactor for? When my nitrates were too high, increased ON hours to 14-15 hrs a day.
That will help. Like I mentioned before, if your tank is deficient on iron it will not grow chaeto even if phosphate and nitrates are high. Lots of salts dont have enough iron. In my current set up I have to constantly dose iron or the chaeto will stop growing.

If things start stn or rtn, keep reducing feedings and stick to the plan. Too many water changes will accelerate the losses. I've had colonies lose almost all tissue, to the point I had to reduce flow so the flesh would fully detach from the skeleton with nitrate spikes before. Kept the tank as stable as possible and they recovered.

Dose a macro algae fertilizer and follow these steps. It will work
 
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Tom Casperson

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I would stick to water changes. Keep it simple for quite a few months. Did you try a 100% water change? And test? If you simplify it, you have excess nutrients. Just stay the path on water change. Good luck
 

OrionN

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Chaeto reactor was offline during vibrant and cleaned, two weeks after vibrant ran it's course I hooked it back up with new chaeto in it. I'm not worried at all about the chaeto, that stuff can be replaced easier than dirt. What worries me is that it wont grow with "supposed" nutrients in my tank. If my test kits are not telling the picture then i'm flying blind. I can only react to what my test kits tell me but something is limiting. My massive water changes should have replenished trace elements. If my chaeto wont grow then most likely my corals wont either as I don't dose any coral foods and rely on the nutrients in the tank. My large green acro colonies are starting to STN and change color with no PE. I assume my others will eventually follow suit if I don't get this figured out.
It is not trace element depletion, but you have something bad in the tank,a toxin that is toxic to certain living things. That is what Vibrant is, combination of toxins that inhibit algae and cyanobacteria. These toxins are also toxic to other living things to a lesser degree. Changing the water only remove whatever in the water. If these toxins are bonded to the surface of the rock, or seeped in the sand bed, changing water isn't going to remove them very easy/effectively.

One of my friend used Vibrant. Initially it really clean up his tank, and make it look nice. Long term, the fauna and flora of his tank really suffer and the tank did not do well, like your tank. A lot of water changes, and reseeding of the rock and sand eventually get his tank doing better.

IMO, "cure in the bottle" like Vibrant will never work and optimized anybody's tank long term, because after all, "cure in a bottle" are poisons that are toxic to a certain segment of your tank's population, and these toxins are toxic to the rest of the population to a lesser extend. I would treat animals in QT or HT, but I would never treat the whole tank with any toxin.
 

LC8Sumi

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It is not trace element depletion, but you have something bad in the tank,a toxin that is toxic to certain living things. That is what Vibrant is, combination of toxins that inhibit algae and cyanobacteria. These toxins are also toxic to other living things to a lesser degree. Changing the water only remove whatever in the water. If these toxins are bonded to the surface of the rock, or seeped in the sand bed, changing water isn't going to remove them very easy/effectively.

One of my friend used Vibrant. Initially it really clean up his tank, and make it look nice. Long term, the fauna and flora of his tank really suffer and the tank did not do well, like your tank. A lot of water changes, and reseeding of the rock and sand eventually get his tank doing better.

IMO, "cure in the bottle" like Vibrant will never work and optimized anybody's tank long term, because after all, "cure in a bottle" are poisons that are toxic to a certain segment of your tank's population, and these toxins are toxic to the rest of the population to a lesser extend. I would treat animals in QT or HT, but I would never treat the whole tank with any toxin.
That kind of contradicts what the mfg says about their product. Why is your info more valid then theirs?
 

BloopFish

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That kind of contradicts what the mfg says about their product. Why is your info more valid then theirs?
Here's my two cents. The makers of Vibrant claims that the bacteria culture cannot sustain themselves long term in the reef tank. This highly implies that this bacteria has no place in a reef tank. We also know it is a heterotrophic bacteria and we can assume it attacks algae in some way - it is a predator in a way. If you know anything about ecosystem biology, you would know that introducing a species that has no natural place in the food chain - perhaps they have no predators- ultimately negatively disrupts the food chain. In this case it is a predator with no natural predators in the reef tank. It also seems to be a VERY unsustainable organism in the reef aquarium environment because it apparently doesn't reproduce well in it. This means you are introducing an organism with the sole purpose of disrupting the food chain and ecosystem of your tank - perhaps this means the algae will be wiped out, but more likely you will damage your tank's biodiversity and tank maturity. I think Vibrant is a cop out solution, there are methods that can handle algae problems much better. For exampls, dinos can usually be handled by silicate dosing and nutrient dosing.
 

OrionN

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That kind of contradicts what the mfg says about their product. Why is your info more valid then theirs?
It really does not matter what they say to sell their product. They don't list their ingredients. Their product wipe out one or more living organism (undesirable living organism) when added to your tank. At the very least Vibrant wipe out various algae. That is what it used for. That means it is toxic to that organism therefore a toxin.

I don't use Vibrant so I don't do much research into it. Categorically, I don't add chemical that wipe out things in my DT. I do use medication to treat various ailment of fish, coral, anemone and clam in QT or Hospital tank, never, ever in my DT; "not in a million years."
 

BloopFish

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It's not a stretch at all. There are bacteria that release compounds that will cause algae cells to die in a process called apoptosis. Using bacteria that produce algaecides that are essentially toxins to algae are a known thing - it has been used to control dino blooms in the past in lakes.
 

Dan_P

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I have an established reef about 4 years old. Primarily SPS; about 2 months ago I had a nitrate spike of about 60 after I used Vibrant to get rid of some hair algae in tough spots (it killed algae within my two week dose of 30ml once per week). I typically run the tank anywhere from 5-10.

Nothing has really changed; I never did major water changes in the past. My livestock is fairly low for a 300G tank. 96x30x24

Livestock: 3 yellow tank, 1 sailfin tang, 1 blue tang, 1 powder blue, 2 clown, 1 anthias, 1 diamond goby, 1 green wrasse, 1 melanaurus. (No fish death in the last 2 years, ammonia is 0/nitrites are 0)
Skimmer: Lifereef oversized 36 inch rated for 400-600
Salt: instant ocean with 5 stage RODI. Water tests 0 no3.
P04: 0.05 according to hanna ULR and 0 according to salifert (junk/useless)

I have tried vinegar dosing, currently been using 50ml of nopx every day for the last month and it has done NOTHING. At this point I am so desperate I don't care if I wipe my tank and tried using AZ-NO3 and nothing. I am also dosing 50ml of microbacter7 daily. Chaeto in my algae reactor is not growing at all and starting to die.

I have always vacuumed my sand bed daily; it's only 1.5 inches at best and I have tons of rock in the tank.

Over the last two weeks I have changed out over 500G of water doing 50-100G a day and nitrates are still 50+. Has my tank reached the age where it's just destined to die? I am tooth grind mad right now over this crap.

One thing you need to determine is the nitrate level. Saying that it is 50+ is like having a speedometer that reads no higher than 30 mph when you are driving on a road with a 55 mph speed limit. Useless. How would you even know that any of the methods you are trying are starting to work If all you know is 50+?

Dilute your tank water sample to determine what the nitrate level really is and monitor it at least once a week while you try things.

By the way, the PO4 starvation can slow down or stop any nitrate reduction from carbon dosing.
 
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