Added two new fish and my Nitrites are starting to rise?

That's OK, it can be confusing. Live rock just means that stuff is living on it. Any rocks that you put into the tank will turn into "live rock" once bacteria grows on them. $8 bucks a pound or whatever from the lfs is crazy, IMO. Your base rocks will be live rocks within a month of placing it in your tank. Clean base rock also does not come with undesirable hitchhikers.

 

20 ppm is not ideal but its not terrible unless you have sps corals. If you want to lower your nitrates try removing the bio balls and replace them with a filter sock for the drain line and get some cheap lights and grow algae in their place. It is like a phosphate and nitrate, nitrite and heavy metal remover that never gets full. Plus it grows insects your fish will eat and try putting a poly filter pad some where and change it out every two or three weeks.
Bioballs do nothing to remove nitrate only nitrite. to get ride of nitrates you either need water changes, live sand, live rock, or an anarobic bacteria canister called a nitrate remover. Or you could grow algae and do everything in one and balance ph and help o2 levels.
Just a thought anyways...
also raising your salinity will increase the performance on your protein skimmer just like how protein skimmers do not work on fresh water tanks. if your worried about disease, be careful of the fish you buy or do quarentine, and maybee get a uv sterilizer, or run O3/ozone but that can be dangerous even to you.

 

if i may make a recommend Instant Ocean - Bio Spira
used it in my tank and i have had good test's since i started my tank

 

Aaahhhh, that makes sense. Thanks for explaining that...Jeff

 

I will keep these ideas in mind, thanks...Jeff

 

,,, My Nitrites are back down to zero! I am a happy camper. Thanks to all that helped out and gave my ways to get them down. I ended up doing what the LFS recommended which was take out the filter pad and let the bio-balls do there job... Jeff