[lilmommy412]

my nitrate levels are CRAZY!!!
what can i do to lower them?? My corals are slowly dying, my clam is dead, and some of my fish are acting strange. Please help, i haven't ever run into a sudden level crash before! thanks!

[RyanG]

Describe your tank, setup, etc.

[lilmommy412]

I have a 220 tank. However, we are still using our skimmer from our 110 because the guy who is supposed to install our skimmer is procrastinating... and now everything is dying! Are there any chemicals or anything that can level our nitrates and stuff out until the guy comes to install our skimmer?

[jimw369]

Water changes! 200 gal tank start doing 30 a day for 5 days. This should drop your Nitrates in half and buy you a little time.

DO you have a place to put corals and fish besides your own tank if they continue to decline?

PLease post water parameters as well as what you are testing for and your tank set up.

Lets try and get it worked out!

Make sure that skimmer is working as good as possible!

[e_baer]

Where in PA are you located?

[Dr. Clyde]

Skimmer shouldn't be the problem unless you have a huge bioload for your setup.

[spanko]

There is no info here or in your profile to help with your problem Nikki. In order to develop a real solution we need to know some things.
How much rock and sand.
What type(s) of other filtration.
how many and what kind of fish.
how often and how much are they fed.
What does CRAZY nitrate levels mean to you, actual reading.

[unclejed]

I will suggest that when you post and are asking for help or for ideas, please include all basic information. Basic information should include; all water parameters(Calcium,Magnes ium,Alkalinity,Ph and Nitrate and Phosphate levels) along with Temp. of your tank and Sg (specific gravity).Size of tank and complete set up meaning, filter type (sump, canister etc.), if you use a skimmer,lighting (what type and total output)plus what type of lighting are you using and what is your lighting schedule (how long a period are your actinic and daylights on) and if you have fish only with live rock and if you keep
corals. Also how long the tank has been up. I know some of this is in
your bio but many bios don't contain this info. How many times has someone posted and then there is this list of postings addressing the above. If you give the most info you can to give us a good profile, it will cut down on response time and mis-diagnosis or answers that don't
fit and we will all benefit.

[CyberJester]

I am with Jim, the best why to deal with this situation at the moment is to start doing water changes as often as possible to get the Nitrates down.

After you get them to a resonable level. Then we can start trying to diagnose why they got there and the prevention of this happening again.

I would go as large as you can on the water changes to begin with. Try to change out 50 Gals at a time. This is less the 25% of the total volume. So it should not cause problems changing that much.

[unclejed]

And, what if it is the test kit or operator error?

[jimw369]

Originally Posted by unclejed

And, what if it is the test kit or operator error?

In Nikkis first post she says everything is dying. I dont care what her test kit says. Do a water change. It can only help the situation till we can find out more like you mention the test kits being off.

I dont not agree with the catchey slogan, "dilution is the solution to pollution". Thats not true...but dilution will buy you some time and thats what IMO we are looking for here untill we get more info.

In the meantime waterchanges can only help and certainly will not hurt anything.

I would suggest that Nikki check all her pumps and heaters to make sure nothing has shorted out and may be sending electrical current thru the water.

Hope Nikki gets back to us soon!

[unclejed]

Nikki still has not responded to spanko's query "what does crazy mean to you" and thus she may also think things are dying. She only has 3 mo. experience and in my sound opinion it is way too early to be into corals.
I posted before about a tank "seasoning" or settling in and getting real stable over a period of 6-8 mos.
You could give me all kinds of cases where people jump head first after a couple of months but in the long run and over all it just seems to end in discouragement and failure.
Here we are trying to help with virtually no info and some are stubbornly sticking to their assumptions. Water changes? What if her nitrates are 20 and she heard all the obsession about zero and thinks "they are crazy" and now starts doing a bunch of water changes and dilutes the chemistry and bacteria levels and throws the tank into a (for lack of a better term ) tizzy.
No one has addressed her inexperience and and she is not providing specific info to make an intelligent assessment of her tank.
Nikki, please provide all the info we have requested and try to describe why you think things are dying. No one has asked "what things are dying". Are the corals shriveling or closing or what?
Describing things in detail will help tremendously and pictures of your tank will also benefit.

[jimw369]

You are absolutely correct when you say we need more information. I asked for that info as did others. Its up to Nikki at whatever level she is at to get back to us with that info as soon as possible.

In the meantime changing out half the water in a 200 gal tank over weeks time is not going to send the tank into a "tizzy" IMO.

Yes we do need to hear from her.

[spanko]

Nikki, I am gonna sound harsh here but please take it constructively as that is how it is meant.

As I look back at the posts you have and the threads you have started I see a lot of HELP! type messages. When I look at the content of the messages I see things that may have been circumvented by some up front detailed study on the husbandry and maintenance of a marine tank.

My question to you is have you done any study on what it takes to have a saltwater tank? If not may I suggest you start out with some of the stickeys in the getting started\setting up forum. Many questions are answered there and will help you to learn more of the dynamics of the tank. If you are unable to post the information asked for to help with your problem, perhaps you can find some answers there.

[CyberJester]

Originally Posted by unclejed

And, what if it is the test kit or operator error?

Yeah, so what if it is test kit or operator error.

Are you saying that water changes are a bad thing. How would doing large water changes cause any problem? I do a 20% water change on my system every week or two. I suffer no problems from it.

[spanko]

Hmm.....Looks like we may have scared her away huh?