Attempted to change filtration

I have a 29 gallon tank I have had up and cycled for several weeks. I was using a fluval 404 canister filter (I know this is a huge amount of filtration but it was just to get me started) but now I am using a marine land bio wheel filter. Both were running for several weeks before I removed the canister ( to lower nitrates which were running at 40 PPM). After just one day I jumped to .5 PPM nitrites while my ph, amonia, and nitrates remained the same.. So my question is what should I do? This is not my main tank but I have not ever run into this before.

 

1stly 0.5 ppm Nitrate is not something that many would worry about

was there a nitrate removing or absorbing chemical in the cannister ? such as Purigen ?
thats no longer present in the HOB filter and that could be accounting for the nitrate increase

Steve

 

The nitrifying bacteria will take a day or so to populate the biowheel. Then your nitrites will drop to zero. Unlike freshwater tanks, Nitrites aren't dangerous to marine fish at the levels most people think they are. (I.e., they can be in the hundreds safely). Nitrite and the Reef Aquarium by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com However, you do need to make sure your biowheel is colonized to make sure the Ammonia "eating" bacteria are in sufficient numbers. if you have some living animals in your tank, this should happen in a day or two.

 

Nitrates can sometimes be good actully but depends on what you have in your tank...Low nitrates(around.5ppm-0ppm)are good for SPS and what not....A little nitrates(around 5ppm-10ppm) are good for softies and LPS(most LPS like a little dirty tanks)

I have ran my 29g reef with 15-10ppm nitrates the entire time....LPS,softie growth was great while it was running and stable.

 

Like others mentioned, an NA of that little should be ok, anything under 20ppm is ok IMO. I would look into a skimmer if you didn't already have one. Most of the time those filters can become Nitrate factories by trapping debris within filter pads, etc. A skimmer is all you need + lots of good Live Rock for filtration. I run my 55g reef solely on an HOB skimmer, Live Rock, & 2 powerheads, it does great.

 

He's worried about Nitrites, not nitrates

 

oops read the OP post to quick, a 40ppm of NA is too high, and the .5 of NI is because your cycle is not complete as others posted, my bad.