Nitrates are up to 40ppms now

your salt mix is going to add your calcium and other supplements for your reef tank...the only time you add anything to your tank unless its salt water or top off water, is when us reefers have soo much coral that its hard to keep our calcium and stuff unless we a do a water change every other day..so we add what our tank uses the most...

def take it slow, do a water change, and make sure your using rodi water..you have an ro unit, so now you can buy the additional di filters to make the water 100% 0 tds, so we dont have to battle with bad algaes, you dont have to use get it but its better for your tank..

 

Darn! I do not have a DI unit on my RO filter. Here is mine. This is ok to use though, right?


Frog...

 

What's on the top Frog? DI is usually mounted above like what oyu have -- is that a TDS meter as well?

 

I agree! lol

 

The top part is the RO membrane. The gauge is just a pressure gauge so you know if you have the correct minimum operating pressure, and so you know if you need to clean or replace the RO membrane.

The two canisters are:

Left: Sediment Filter
Right: Carbon Filter

I have used this before and measured the TDS, pH, and EC.

TDS = 0-20ppm's
pH = 7.0
EC = 0.0

Tap water before being filtered:

TDS = ~750ppm's
pH = ~8.0
EC = ~1.0

These also take out all Chlorine, Calcium and Magnesium I believe.

Frog...

 

Update on 40ppm Nitrate:

I took a sample to the fish store, and found that it is only between ~5-10ppm's. Still way too high for my liking though, as just three days ago it was 0.0ppm's.

Now I am really scared to feed my invertebrates anything.

How often should I feed them the 'Algae wafers'?
How much should I feed them at a time (35 invertebrates total)?
Should I crush up the wafers, or just leave them intact?

Thank you so much!

Frog...

 

Here are some pics of my tank and the sump below it in the cabinet.

Another one:

And the sump below:


Frog...

 

No one said this, because it seems obvious, but for water changes it needs to be salt water, not just RO. For top offs, just RO is fine.

You'll definitely want to stop using tap water or you're going to be fighting algae big time, especially with 750 TDS.

5-10 ppm nitrates is not that bad until you start getting SPS corals, then you want it as low as possible. You can get some chaeto algae to put in the sump and it will take up nitrates.

What size is the tank & how much rock is in it?

 

150 gallon tank
I think I have between 120 and 130lbs of live rock in there.