high nitrates and PH, little high phosphates. help.

I'll be honest, I havn't tested my water for about a week, very bad very bad.

I did however make a water change two days ago, but I still read high numbers.

These were my readings as of 3mins ago.

Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nirates: 30 (ouch)
Phosphates: .5 - 1.0
alk: 9
PH: 8.8 (?!?!)
Temp: 79.1 (little high)


It's a 125 gallon tank, with a 25 gallon sump.

All I have in there are 5 chromis, a foxface, and 2 firefish thus far.

I do not have a skimmer as of yet, just a few sponges to catch crap.

Water flow is good, and no dead spots anywhere.

I feed very little twice a day, so I don't think it's overfeeding. I have very little algae on the glass, nothing really on the sand. I just don't know whats going on. Other than my water change two days ago, my last one before that was 5 days prior. Is that too frequent?? Maybe it was that?

Any thoughts on this? Biggest worry is the nitrates and phosphates, but I have no idea why my PH is so high when alk is only 9...

Thanks in advance.

 

P.S. I tested mid afternoon while lights were on if that makes a difference. Theyve been on for a good 4hrs so far.

 

Is this tank still in the nitrogen cycle? How long is the tank been up?

 

6 months or so. It's not going through a cycle.

 

get a good skimmer,do water changes, or setup a refugium.

 

PH values will tend to be different from daytime to nighttime since the process of photosynthesis halts when the lights go off, unless you run a reverse daylight lighting scheme.
Your alkalinity level is fine 8-12DKH
I would try to reduce the pH level of your water as that high pH reading causes ammonia(NH3) to become that much more toxic than at lower levels when the ammonia is reduced to ammonium(NH4).
Reducing the pH levels slowly is optimal. Ph levels are determined on a logarithmic chart/scale in units of ten based on the level of hydrogen ions in a solution. So the dropping of a pH level from 9 to 8 is a drastic reduction that can kill living animals if not reduced in small amounts. Temperature also affects the pH values in your tank.

Perform a water change and your nitrates will go down and you may want to look into investing in a phosphate reactor, which is great for carbon and phosphate resins used to remove nutrients from tank water.

 

Is your alk value in dKH or meq/L. If its in dKH then pH shouldn't really be that high. If it is in meq/l then your alkalinity is too high. I had an issue with my alk doser and alk shot up to 6.5 meq/L which is off the scale and my pH was 8.6. If you have a high alk then I suggest frequent small (approx 25%) water changes every couple of days to slowly lower it. If alk is in dKH then alk is fine and would suggest double checking your pH test result by repeating the test, if your second result is the same get a friend or LFS to check your pH in case your test kit is dodgy.

Regards NO3 and PO4 a skimmer would really help export nutrients. Also feeding low PO4 feeds like specific marine flakes/pellets. Frozen food is known to have associated PO4 and NO3 coating from water the shrimps were previously in or preservatives that may have been added. I would therefore make sure that you are soaking any frozen food in RO water and then draining it prior to feeding to remove any PO4 or NO3.

When cleaning the tank, I would recommend vacuuming the sand to remove any detritus build up using a standard gravel cleaner.

 

Do a water change every week for a month or two then things will come back to normal.

Supplement what your salt lacks or what is taken out from the water change.

*********Get a real good skimmer*********

Also invest in a couple TLF Phosban reactors , they are not much money and work great.

Basically what everyone else said!!!