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HELP


Kimberlee

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So I'm currently tank sitting a 40B that was moved to my house well over a month ago. Nitrates are 80 and no matter what is done to get them down they bounce back to 80 with in a day. I have had them below 15 just to see them at 80 inside 24hrs. Ammonia is 0-.25 Phosphates are 0 and nitrates are back at 80. Tested my make up water and those levels are A 0-.25 (think this may be the test) Ph 0 and nitrates 0. I'm making up water now for the tank I'm caring for and will test that make up water as soon as I can. Fish all look good BTA's both look good the only thing suffering is the sps. I think something died during the tank move but its been a month so any ideas would be great.

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I understand determining the reason is most important, but the easiest way and the quickest way to reduce them is water changes, but I am sure you realize that.

You dont have some dead fish in there by chance?

 

It'll be interesting to see who chimes in with some idea of what causes that spike in such a short time.

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My first suspect is the sand bed. IMO, rock can be reused, but reusing sand somehow leads to the problem you're having. I have known/spoken to a lot of people who have moved their tank, any almost 100% of them that reused the sand bed had continued nitrate problems until it was removed/replaced. Something happens when sand beds are moved and it's not a good something.

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My first suspect is the sand bed. IMO' date=' rock can be reused, but reusing sand somehow leads to the problem you're having. I have known/spoken to a lot of people who have moved their tank, any almost 100% of them that reused the sand bed had continued nitrate problems until it was removed/replaced. Something happens when sand beds are moved and it's not a good something.[/quote']

 

This is good to know, worse than a dead fish (scary)

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Just so ya all know this is my tank. Kimberlee and I have been trying to figure out what has been going on for two or three weeks now.

 

probably should have posted about it sooner (scratch)

( it was Kimberlee's idea to post it to the forum)

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Nitrates of 80, while undesirable, are by no means something to panic about. Four 50% water changes over next week or so, will get you down to 5. The trick is to not wait to long between WC's and let them build up again. A couple summers ago, my 180 had nitrates above 160 due to being in Asia for most off the summer. When I came back, I did five 50% changes over the course of a couple weeks and they've never risen above 5 ever since.

 

Also, re-using a sand bed is perfectly fine as long as the sand smells like the beach and not rotten eggs. IF it smells like rotten eggs, toss it. If it smells like the beach, go ahead and re-use it. This advice was given to me by Jason, formally of Coral Reef, someone who we all respect and trust with the advice he provided while he had the shop.

 

A spike of what you are seeing, IMO, points more to either the kits being bad or the method of testing not being consistent. It is possible for two kits to give bad readings.

 

Good Luck

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I agree with the sandbed theory, but if you dry the sand, rinse it, re-dry it, the sand should be usable. I would go buy a small bag of live sand from your LFS and add it to the system somewhere. You need a LOT more denitrifying bacteria in there, or get some of that quick start additive. Move the sps until the system stabilizes.

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