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Does anyone know how long it should take for nitrates to go down?

J

jtravapd

hello all, i recently tested my water which i hadn't done in months as i started to get lazy with my tank. well not surprisingly my nitrates were at like 60!!!!..Nothing was dying in my tank, but if i added anything to it, it usually would die. So last week i took some steps to try and get my tank back and running good.. My tank looks better then it ever has, but my readings are what worrys me.

The first thing i did was take all the live rock out of my sump (i being a newbie thought i was supposed to pack my sump with as much as possible for filtration). So i took out all the live rock rubble rock and i vacumed out all the muck and stuff from the bottom. Next i did a 25 gallon water change (tank is 180 gallons, sump is about 30 gallons. Two days later i did a 10 gallon water change and two days later (today) i did a 15 gallon water change and added the following to the sump where the rock used to be: All media bags are 6 X 10......: two bags filled with matrix carbon, one bag filled with PhosGuard, and five bags filled with nitrate sponge.

Does anyone know when i should test again? and when i should start seeing some results? I think i read it takes several weeks for the nitrates to drop down, so i figure ill just keep up on the water changes and now that the sump is nice and clean im hoping this will be enough.


Is there more i can be doing? or at least can someone tell me if the steps i took were alteast in the right direction?
 
C

calaxa

Didn't we answer this before in another thread? Your small water changes won't be as efficient as one massive water change unfortunately.

Simple math (will assume water volume is 200G for simplicty):

60 ppm Nitrate
100G water change (50%) = 30 ppm

Your method:

60 ppm Nitrate
25 gallon water change = 52.5 ppm
10 gallon water change (5%) = 50 ppm
15 gallon water change (7.5%) = 46 ppm

If you do a 50G water change now you're still left with 34-35 ppm Nitrate and you changed the same 100G of water albeit over several small changes.

Yes it's unwieldy to do 100G but you asked best way to get that nitrate out of that system.
 
C

calaxa

Supposed to work after 48 hours? Why not just test? Only takes a few minutes. Remove sponge afterwards to prevent it from leeching back into system.
 
J

jtravapd

i did test, and it is exactly the same, thats why i was wondering if i was just getting ahead of myself or does it take a couple weeks before the nitrate sponge starts to work.
 
mikem

mikem

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
No, they do not work over night.
Another idea would be to add cheato algae to the sump.
 
mikem

mikem

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Hang in there, keep up on the water changes, and don't add anything new to the tank.
I had high nitrates when my sump was full of rock too. It took a month later for my perimeters to get down to normal after removing most of the rock.
 
redfishbluefish

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
paintman27 said:
why would rock in the sump add to your nitrates? Isn't it the same as having it in the display?
Click to expand...


It’s really dependant on your sump setup. If you have too much rock / not enough flow / rock that is too small / too much crap coming down from the DT / who knows what…detritus builds up in the rock causing nitrates to rise. You could still have rock, just make sure it’s not becoming a nitrate factory by excess detritus buildup.
 
R

reeferwanabe

no its not the same as display tank it can be as bad as bioballs rocks in your display should be cleaned also. run a powerhead into them or vacuum them. better off with no rocks in display or just a couple that you can clean easily.
 
J

jtravapd

turns out, my test kits were crap...i had two of them, but both the same brand..my nitrates were reading 60-80....i had the water tested by a water testing website..and it came back 9..
 
C

calaxa

Just sharing a story from my chemistry days:

So I'm taking Analytical Chem and if you don't know, you're graded on how accurate/precise you are with your results. You get several unknown samples and must come back with the purity of the sample. So, I'm very good at this and I usually get 90% or above on all my labs. I decide to "cheat" a bit and take a portion of my sample to send out to a lab to analyze my result as a way to validate what I am getting. Every week I compare what I get with the lab's and it always came back matching very well. One day, I missed a lab session, so I decide instead of making it up, I'll submit the results from the professional lab company. I get a 36 on that week's lab. TA writes on there.....not even close. I explain to her, I missed a class and she says, it's ok....you can redo it. I redid the lab and she was right....the professional lab messed up the result...not sure why. Anyway, I never sent a sample to them again and wound up getting an A- in the class. I still blame that one week mess up for that grade.

Don't read too much into the story but I'm just throwing it out there for you guys to interpret as you wish.
 
J

jtravapd

calaxa said:
Just sharing a story from my chemistry days:

So I'm taking Analytical Chem and if you don't know, you're graded on how accurate/precise you are with your results. You get several unknown samples and must come back with the purity of the sample. So, I'm very good at this and I usually get 90% or above on all my labs. I decide to "cheat" a bit and take a portion of my sample to send out to a lab to analyze my result as a way to validate what I am getting. Every week I compare what I get with the lab's and it always came back matching very well. One day, I missed a lab session, so I decide instead of making it up, I'll submit the results from the professional lab company. I get a 36 on that week's lab. TA writes on there.....not even close. I explain to her, I missed a class and she says, it's ok....you can redo it. I redid the lab and she was right....the professional lab messed up the result...not sure why. Anyway, I never sent a sample to them again and wound up getting an A- in the class. I still blame that one week mess up for that grade.



Wait, you confused me. LOL. The lab results matched your results every week. So your saying it's good? Or your saying it's bad because of the one bad week?
Don't read too much into the story but I'm just throwing it out there for you guys to interpret as you wish.
Click to expand...
 
J

jtravapd

jtravapd said:
calaxa said:
Just sharing a story from my chemistry days:

So I'm taking Analytical Chem and if you don't know, you're graded on how accurate/precise you are with your results. You get several unknown samples and must come back with the purity of the sample. So, I'm very good at this and I usually get 90% or above on all my labs. I decide to "cheat" a bit and take a portion of my sample to send out to a lab to analyze my result as a way to validate what I am getting. Every week I compare what I get with the lab's and it always came back matching very well. One day, I missed a lab session, so I decide instead of making it up, I'll submit the results from the professional lab company. I get a 36 on that week's lab. TA writes on there.....not even close. I explain to her, I missed a class and she says, it's ok....you can redo it. I redid the lab and she was right....the professional lab messed up the result...not sure why. Anyway, I never sent a sample to them again and wound up getting an A- in the class. I still blame that one week mess up for that grade.



Wait, you confused me. LOL. The lab results matched your results every week. So your saying it's good? Or your saying it's bad because of the one bad week?
Don't read too much into the story but I'm just throwing it out there for you guys to interpret as you wish.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...


sorry i messed up that last post trying to quote...this was my inteded post.lol..


Wait, you confused me. LOL. The lab results matched your results every week. So your saying it's good? Or your saying it's bad because of the one bad week?
 
J

jtravapd

calaxa said:
Not trying to say anything.....just a story.
Click to expand...

well i know whats going to happen...i bought a new brand test kit...Saifet(sp?) and it will probably give me a completely different result then my first test kit and the online testing site...giving me three completely different results...lol...then i think ill try ignoring the problem...i hear it seems to help most peoples marriages..hahahaaha
 
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