Nitrate at 60. Diatoms Blooming.

+1.....the phosphates are gonna be the biggest issue down the road with Tap water. I take it you don't have a skimmer, or else you'd see it going nuts every water change you did. The dechlorinator makes the skimmer go crazy. The diatoms on the other hand are a good sign. They mostly feed off of silicates in your tank, and are a natural phase of your start up. So far it seems you're on par with most new folks, which is in No way an insult. Learning is what makes this hobby fun, and you're on the right track. Keep asking questions around here. You'll do fine. But, go buy you a few 5g buckets, and get some RODI water from the LFS, it helps out in the long run. When I was buying it, it cost like 50c/gallon, nothing really.

 

Given the price of coral and the price of salt fish yeah 50 cents is nothing!!!

 

Thanks guys, instead of going to the lfs I am probably going to get a RoDi unit. What ones would you recommend. I do not want to spend over 120 bucks.

 

Although you can not argue against RO/DI water and if possible that would be best, I use tapwater and have no issues in my tank but my nitrates were never above 20. Has a lfs test for phosphates using seachem and it read a 0 but who knows how accurate these liquid phosphate test are. For the first few months I had minor algae growths that have all gone away on their own, my fish and corals are all healthy and growing, and my nitrates have actually dropped without water changes to almost nothing. I also do not run a skimmer or sump but have a very light bioload and feed sparingly.

Im not saying everyone can have success because your water will vary depending where you live, maybe Im just lucky, but tapwater is not always as bad as people make it to seem. With that said when I do upgrade to a larger tank and get into more expensive corals and fish I will use an RODI just for piece of mind.

Your nitrate issues can be due to many things, what kind of substrate and rock did you use? Sometimes certain sands and rock can leech nitrates into a tank

 

Live sand and Reef Saver Dry Rock from bulk reef supply

 

There are some commercial dry foods also contain excess nutrients and other undesirable things like nitrates, phosphates etc so I strain/rinse my fresh/frozen foods before feeding my tank. You may want to consider feeding your fish less often. Be sure to use a high quality salt with little if any NO3 like Tropic Marin and RO/DI water. Doing large water changes is the quickest way to get your nitrates down in the short term, but you need to examine what factors are causing them to go up if you want to keep nitrates down in the long term.