Finally found my source of ridiculous nitrates

After seeing my Nitrates in the blood red color, and completely off the charts, I have found what was causing it. I was thinking the nitrates were in 200ppm range, when they were probably in the 300+ range. It is finally down in the 80ppm range as of yesterday, along with 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites. I pulled up one of my pieces of LR and saw 5-6 clear worms that have died. I siphoned them out where they just disintegrated in my bucket. I decided to hunt some more in my other rocks to see if there were any more dead hitch-hikers and found the shell of a little crab inside my branch rock, maybe a large sally lightfoot or something, I don't know. There was a lot of waste under the rocks too, so who knows what else may have died and liquified. But at least the mystery has been solved. So if anyone may have high nitrates, check for die off deep in the rocks that may not be so obvious. I'm shocked the crab stayed in the rock when I did the initial curing and cleanse of the rock 4 years ago though.

 

Lesson learned. That is why I heeded advice of trusted LFS and when I set up the tank I put rock on bare bottom and then sand around the rock.

 

What is weird is that this is a 4 year old system. I stopped the tank when I had a black algae problem. It was stopped for about a year without any pumps or filters being run and no top off water added. I'm guessing the hypersalinity drove the worms out of the rock and died sometime when I drained the water and started over when they were shocked back to normal SG. As for the crab, well he should have made his presense known sooner, or he would have been out into my QT tank and survived. Maybe he stayed hidden out of fear of the puffer and rays that were in the tank. My rocks' coralline algae completely bleached over the last year and are now showing signs of pinking again, woohoo. I figure I have about another month to go before my tank is fish safe. Like you said, lesson learned.

 

I have had the blood red nitrates for a month now i will check my rocks nice post K+ for sure

 

I've heard of people when doing water changes setting up say 3 or so 5 gal buckets in sequence, and when doing the W/C only filling the buckets maybe 3/4 of the way full. Then, take out rock piece by piece, and dip in first bucket and swish around for awhile. You will notice detritus coming from the rock. Then proceed to dunk the same rock into the next two buckets, you will see the water in the buckets will get progressively lighter. The first bucket being the "dirtiest", then the second and so on. You don't need to do this to all the rocks at once but over the course of a couple w/c's you should be able to "clean" most if not all of the rock. This technique works great for older, dirtier tanks, personally I don't let my rock get to that point. What I do right from the start of a tank, is when I do a w/c I blast the rocks w/ a turkey baster to blow the detritus out of the rock, I then siphon it out, eliminating it right from the bat.


Good luck and Happy fish keeping!!

 

alaikum salaam!!

Nice find, I have 0 nitrates to begin with but sometimes i see crud build up the rocks and I just blast it with a turkey baster, works like a charm!

 

I like to do the turkey baster blasting (or even using a powerhead) right when I'm about to do a water change. Also it's amazing what comes out when you stick the turkey baster in random holes in rocks.

 

I just did a 30gal water change I will be posting infor a pictures in a few

 

I also use a PH as Well, they will blow all kinds of stuff out of the rock. That's how I found the dead crab. The worms crawled out of the holes and were just laying on the sand under the rock. Hopefully that will help lower your nitrates too Hackem.

 

Thanks the water change is done now I used my korala to blow the rocks wile i was working im going to do as set of thest some time tonight will post results on my 100g thread