Nitrates and Phosphates

Hi Again!
I have really high nitrates like 140 ppm and my phosphates are at 2 ppm.

I have been doing 30% water changes every 2-3 days for the last week and it does not seem to be helping here.

I just added Seachem Purigen to the sump yesterday in hopes that this will help me out a little bit here.

I tested my tap water and it has 0 ppm phosphates. I use RO/DI water for all my water changes.

I am going to continue the water changes every 2-3 days for as long as it takes here.

My question/questons is/are can I buy anything else to add to the sump to help reduce both the nitrates and phosphates? Also can you add it along with Seachem Purigen....something like a nitrate sponge or phosphate sponge...
Can you add them all at once or is there one that will do it all? How long to they take to start to working?

Thank for any help.

 

Are you sure it's 140 and not 14? 140 is extremely high! If it really is that high, I'd probably be doing 50% water changes every single day until it got a lot lower.

We use seachem denitrate and phosban in our tanks and have no troubles maintaining 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates with regular water changes.

 

Its red in the test tube....its bad!

Can I use Seachem denitrate and phosban along with the seachem purigen? What is the best combo to beat this?

I just need all the help I can get along with the water changes I'm doing.

 

You can use chemi-pure elite. I would clean ALL of my equipment THOROUGHLY to remove any accumulated gunk. Check for dead and weak spots in your flow. Blow off rock with a powerhead to remove any detritus. You mostly likely need to feed much less than you do now.

 

I agree with cleaning your equipment. I recently changed out my sump, which had TONS of junk at the bottom, and noticed a drastic decrease in my nitrates. Give any mechanical filtration a good cleaning. Try blasting your rocks with a turkey baster before your next water change. While all the crud is in suspension in the water column start removing the water.

 

go get your water tested at 2 other LFS tomorrow. My nitrates read 20-40ppm at home. but at 2 different LFS they read 5ppm and other 15ppm.. so go triple check!

I was at 80ppm+ 5 weeks ago before vodka dosing and a couple small WCs. but 140 is super duper high!

 

I need to remove my sumps asap....they have so much crap in the bottom.
I am trying to find one and move to a one sump system...

Hopefully that will help too.

Can I run the chemi pure elite with the seachem purigen?
What other things can i add to suck up the nitrates here?

 

Those can all be used together. We recently began experimenting with purigen, but weren't very impressed. I'd personally recommend just using phosban or rowaphos for phosphate reducion, seachem denitrate for nitrate reduction, and carbon to clear up the water. At this point though, it doesn't matter what you use to filter the water, it won't be enough. The posts above are dead on, you need to do major water changes and thoroughly clean your filtration, rock, etc. Once it's all cleaned and the nitrates are 20 or below, that's when I'd put in the phosban, denitrate, and/or carbon to bring it down that last little bit.

 

+1 on all said above

I have never had nitrates that high in SW (got to 60ppm on a previous set up and that was due to lack of maintenance on a cannister filter)

I am a Purigen fan, but would not put my faith in this product to be able to work miracles
with nitrates that high, its not going to cut it

I was around 10ppm in my 5ft and decided to try purigen - within 2 weeks I had reached 0 and have remained there since
but with numbers like you have you need to get them down to a reasonable level and then look at chemical media to maintain them there

Steve

 

Along with all the water changes do you think I should pickup a Kent Marine Phos Reactor?
Kent Marine Phos Reactor
You can apparantly put other media in there also, like nitrate sponge i believe.