Nitrate at 80

We have a tank that has been sitting for a year with live rock in it. We recently purchased the following:

- 1 foxtail
1 frogspawn
1 finger leather
1 cabbage leather
1 neon green plate coral
1 bubble coral
2 clown fish

I tested the water today and my amonia and nitrites are at zero, but my nitrate is at 80, ph is at 8.4.

Can someone advise me if this is okay? I read that there should be a spike when new coral is introduced, but I am worried about my coral and fish.

Please advise! Thank you. Also, those with reef aquariums - what do you like to keep your ph at?

 

You best option would be to do a water change. However, I would not attempt one so soon after adding corals. Buy some purigen and a poly-filter pad. This should remove a lot of the nitrates. After a few days you should be safe to do a water change.

I keep my pH at 8.3 or so and my salinity at 1.025

 

How big is your tank? How often and what do you feed? Most of the time nitrate issues are caused by overfeeding and lack of maintenance. Also what kind of filtration are you running? Alot of media can become a trap for nitrate if not cleaned regularly. As for your other question we keep our reef tank right around 8.3 for ph.

 

a water change really wouldnt do that much unless it was a massive i think. my reasoning if you did a 10% change, it would only drop the nitrates by the same , so by 8? i might be totally wrong in this way of thinking. but yes as said, what is your feeding schedule and how much? and nitrates shouldnt spike when a coral is added. i keep my sg at 1.025 , ph 8.2

 

Vodka

 

I wouldn't mess with vodka dosing. Are you running a skimmer? If not you should look in to getting one

 

+1 on not vodka dosing. Unless you know what you are doing don't mess with all the home remedy things.

 

A large water change is a sure fire way to bring down the nitrates in your tank but, understanding why you have elevated nitrates is very important. Keeping excess nutrients out of the aquarium water is one key element in reducing your NO3. As you may know, dirty bio media become a nitrate factory, most people don't use any additional bio media besides live rock in their tanks. There are many other things that can add excess nutrients into your tank like some commercial foods which may contain undesirable things like nitrates, phosphates etc and overfeeding the tank is also another factor. Using , RO/DI water, a high quality salt with no NO3, phosphates etc like Tropic Marin or similar good quality salt should really help too.

 

I much more concerned about the tank being empty for a year, then adding all of that livestock. The coral wont' add to the bio load too much but the fish will, and being that it was empty, the bacteria population will be very low. This can result in a new cycle and the death of all of your livestock. You should not add that much livestock at once, especially on a "new" tank. The nitrate is probably from you overfeeding too much. You've put yourself in a difficult position. If you do a water change, that will probably lower the nitrate (unless the water you add already has nitrates in it), but that could delay the potential cycle and result in major continuing issues. Hopefully, I've read this your post wrong and you did have something in the tank besides just the LR to keep the bacteria pop up. At least, I would cut back on feedings.

 

beat me to the punch, i was going to say also state that since there was no bio load the bacteria is probably little to non existent.