Water change and still the same levels?

What/how often were you feeding before you decreased the amount of food you were putting into the tank?

Have you looked into adding a denitrator coil to the tank?

 

Covey;
How old is the sandbed?In tank 1 year only about 1" thich, in refugium 1 month3-4" thick It should be bubbling like a airstone with that much nitrate in the tank.no bubbles Is it hardened or extra dirty. all soft white sand, when i do a water change i vacum the sand bed in tankDo you have any black pockets forming in it?no black pockets

Amcarrig;
What/how often were you feeding before you decreased the amount of food you were putting into the tank??What feeding mysis, krill, formual 1& 2 and seaweed?How often: once a day one cube each m/w/f/s mysis and formula 1; t/t/s krill,formual 2 and seaweed once a week also adding in cyclopeez for my sun coral and DT's every other day, and iodine once a week. Now only formual 1 m/w/f/s formual 2 t/t/s nothing else not adding anything no cal, no DT's, no iodine, no nothing

Have you looked into adding a denitrator coil to the tank? ?Just started reading about it but finding instructions on DIY hard to follow. I know 2fish has units that would work the same way would like to do diy though

 

Wow, that's a heck of a lot of food for the amount of animals in your tank. I understand the need to feed the sun coral and the mandarin fish but you were feeding way too much regardless of those two animals.

I'm not sure what DIY instructions you're reading but from what I've seen, they're not that complicated to put together...at least the one that my fiance built for me isn't.

 

A 1" sandbed won't be doing much denitratification. Shallow sand bed are basically detritus traps. You vacuum but what ever makes it to the sandbed between vacuuming rots there. If your added enough sand to get it up to 4" you would start to get the anoxic and anaerobic areas needed to support denitritification. This would take a month or more to cycle but would seriously knock down your on going nitrate problem.

I also second Amcarrig in that you could cut back on the feeding quite a bit.

For reference I feed my 150G about a 1/3 of cube of mysis a day and probably even less on the days I feed cyclopeeze.

An actually functional DSB is more capable and generally more user friendly than the coil.

Add some sand.

 

Add Bio-Spira for quick nitrifying. Feed less.

 

What does your green carpet look like?
Is it still expanding like normal?
Are you sure that nothing is dying in your tank?
Are you getting alot of algae from the nitrate levels?
Are you using any kind of cleaners for your tank that contain ammonia?
Just some things to think about. For what its worth.
Good luck

 

Covey, what kind of sand do you suggest? I don't think it needs to be live sand since i already have that. Could i get away with Play-lot sand?

morjongg,
Carpet is expanded and hosting a Seabae clown very nicely.
not sure about dying everything looks good, maybe something hiding?
Algae on my glass like you would not believe!
cleaning solutions, none what so ever.

 

Anything in the 1mm-2mm range. I would stick to Argonite. Something like this stuff.
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/Prod_Display.cfm?pcatid=7326&N=2004 113554
but anything the local fish store carries in that size range.
Shooting for a depth of 4".

 

I'm having a hard time believing it's a problem with Nitrogen export. With a reading that high and a water change of that amount there should have been a reduction and then a build up again. if it was a problem with export.

I wonder what the max limit is of the test kit. Could you be well above the max of the test and that is why it appears to not be moving? Have you regularly been testing and it just shot up one day. have you been performing regular water changes?

I don't think we are looking at this the right way. Just have to figure out what the right way is.

J

 

Jason, Prior to this past month's spike I was not changing the water as often for the reading was coming out fine. About a month ago i noticed my cleaner shrimp went belly up and did a test and saw that I was at 80 did a 20gal change and did not see it go down. 3 days later i did another 20gal and instead of going down it rose to 140. I one weeks time i did a 25, 20 and 20 and still nothing moving. At first i thought it was my water "nope RO", then the salt "nope I/O", the food is still a very big possible.

My next plan of attack is 50gal water change and adding the sand Covey suggested! If that does not help I might just have to tear it all down and start over. Any one want to watch my fish and coral for me?