Water changes.

Great info here!

 

Thank you for these awesome answers! I am going to divide my tank into thirds and clean out each part of the sand on different days every other day. Then see which day has the biggest change to see where the nitrates are. possibly dead inverts or something somewhere.

 

Dr. Tim's Waste Away has done amazing things for both our tanks.

 

Do you think the waste away would improve my quest to lower nitrates?

 

why don't you just pull the sand and add new? It's expensive but not too crazy expensive. You do that and rinse your rock with SW and I think you would be much better off than you are now. Have you ever thought of doing that?

 

It seems like a lot of work. I know that sounds lazy but I actually recently just cleaned the rocks and sand. I just got a bunch of sand sifting snails so Im hoping they will release the cause of the nitrates from the sand. On top of that my sand cleaning strategy

 

Daniel, I didn't know if you were talking to BMX or me....I know that someone gave me that recommendation a while back, to remove the sand and actually tear down and start again. My sand is so full of life, I would hate to get rid of it. For BMX, his nitrates are not that high starting off - I think he said they are like 50 or so....mine were about 160 when I started this process......his should be a relatively quick process overall.

 

Oops, I was talking to you. Here's the deal, I'm sure your sand is full of life but it's also full of phosphates. Although I don't really believe in "old tank syndrome" as some do, I do believe in the fact that poor husbandry can catch up with you in the form of never ending phosphates. One thing I would be concerned about, if I were you is the fact that you will at some point get your nitrates down but chances are, that sand is going to leech phosphates for quite a while. I know, anytime I move tanks, I get new substrate.

 

You think that phosphates is what is contributing to the nitrates? I seem to be able to control the phosphates better (I don't have a lot of nuisance algae)......I always think algae goes with phosphates?