nitrate reactor?

My 300 litre tank has been up and running for 3-4 months now and i am having trouble with high nitrate levels,well 40 -60 ppm to be exact,no matter what i do i cant seem to get the nitrates down below this level. I am running a 300 litre tank with 6 inch deep sand bed made up of top 2 inch of live sand,about 50kg of live rock,my external eheim filter is running 12 hours a day and my boyu protein skimmer is running the other 12 hours.I have a yellow tang,dwarf angel,5 chromis and a algae blenny plus numerous hermit crabs and snails with a sand shifting starfish. Do i need a nitrate reactor to keep the nitrate level down or could i somehow incorporate the nitrate guard bio cubes that go into a nitrate reactor and fit them to the skimmer or filter?
Any help would be great as im wanting to add corals and shrimps but not until the nitrate is under control.
thanks

 

The obvious answer it to try to find the source and eliminate it. A good place to look is the external filter that you have. Filter pads collect detrious and quickly become nitrate factories. You may be better off eliminating the filter and just running your skimmer full time. Do you have a sump? Adding a refugium with cheato or other algae may be something to consider.

 

Shrimp will die with a nitrate level of 60ppm? I didn't know that.....

 

I'm not 100% on the shrimp but adding anything with high nitrates is difficult at best. Many things can slowly get used to bed conditions over time and survive but it's hard to add something into that environment.

Are you cleaning your external filter minimal once a week? I know filter pads need cleaning ever three days or so or they become nitrate factorys

 

Run protein skimmer 100% of time, remove external filter(or clean it once a week for the rest of the time you have it). Do a 25% water change. Report back with results.

 

Why are you running the skimmer for only 12 hours? That seems a bit counter productive to me since it seems to take a skimmer a few hours, at minimum, to really get started skimmer. I think this may be part of your issue. I'm honestly not sure why anyone would run their skimmer on any sort of time. I would begin by kicking that thing on for 24 hours/day. Second, your tank is still very young to have such a large bio-load. Angels and tangs both contribute heavily to bioload. Since your tank is only a 300 Liter/80 gallon tank with a 6 inch sand bed, you don't have that much water volume. So in essence, your bio-load is too large for such a young tank and you should be skimming more than just 12 hours per day.

 

+1 to advice above

 

removed the external filter which i was running to keep the water clear as with running the protein skimmer wasnt keeping the water clear for some reason,i dont really have the space for a refugium and dont have space for a sump.I have done a 20% or so water change and am running the skimmer 100% of the time now.The nitrate has dropped to about 40ppm

 

Keep up the water changes and running the skimmer. I remember when I was struggling to bring my nitrates down, someone on here posted that the percentage of your water change will reduce nitrates by that same amount - 20% water change, 20% reduction in nitrates.

I run biopellets now but I know that someone mentioned the bio cubes on one of my threads. I've cut and pasted the information here fyi.

 

I just been measuring up and reckon i could fit a ahang on refugium to my tank,do you think this would be a much better addition to my tank than a nitrate reactor,i dont know much about what to use in a refugium but will look into it.