High Nitrates Please Help?

I have an emperor 400 and a fluval 305 canister filter on mine and I have my filter media in the 400 with no problems.

 

I don't see any reason to remove them. You may want to keep an eye on how much you are feeding. There is a reason why the nitrates are high and though the water changes will bring them down you need to figure out what is making them so high. Also keep in mind that you want to keep things stable for the fish that are in there.

Are you feeding flakes or frozen food?

 

Nope. If you were stupid you wouldn't be here asking questions.

Just my 2 cents--although it's too early in your game for this to be contributing to your high nitrates, that crushed coral won't help any in the future. You see, the large, oxygenated pockets created by CC is the perfect environment for detritus to collect. Once it does, it decomposes, and once that happens, more ammonia, quickly turned into nitrite, subsequently turned into nitrates.

It's a vicious cycle. Back in the day when I pulled my hair out over algae, I lost the CC and replaced it with sand. The aragonite variety will help buffer the water.

Good luck!!

 

the cheato will make a difference if you have enough you could try vodka dosing it worked very very well for me you skimmer will start to make a black sludge thats how you know its working

 

I am feeding both frozen and flakes but I have just started to really feed them. The fish have only been in there since friday.

 

I'd ask why did you remove the bio wheels from the filter ? and do you know what nitrates are and where they come from and why they show up ? May want to do some research on them..

 

which kind of test kit you use for nitrate, make sure youre test type is giving you correct reading , normaly nitrate showing 5ppm .