Smh i know...come over and install it....coronas and burgerd on me lol
240G with 75 sump, WHY do I still have high nitrates?
- Thread starter VRWC
- Start date
I'll have to take a cold soda! Had to give up drinking. I don't seem to have the moderation thing figured out! I'd definitely do it if you were just a tad closer. Really shouldn't be all that hard to do. I spliced right into my home plumbing for the drain. Ran 1.5" pvc right to the sewer line. Another option is to buy a large stock tank and try to remember to pump it out before it floods!
There is another thread with this idea. Just run an ato switch to empty the stock tank
My drip system runs to 2- 35 gallon brute trash cans siphoned together. I have a utility pump with float switch installed in one of the cans. When the pump goes on it waters my outside flowers and vegetable garden.
According to my math based upon your tank size, your stock and your limited feeding, you are adding 1 ppm of nitrate a day. So nothing is adding up.
If you started with a perfectly new tank, and never changed your water it would take 5 months to reach 150 ppm. Otoh, if you were changing 50% of the tank with 10 ppm water, it would never get over 40. (The above is ignoring the plants by the way.)
Imo your tests aren't right. Test again and make sure to shack the heck of the bottles for 3-4 minutes and re-test.
It's possible that if this is a really, really old tank with tons of plants and that if the plants are dying that could cause releases of fixed-nitrates (in the same way that burning trees releases fixed carbon), but I don't think you'd be unaware of a massive plant die off.
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This is why I suspect organic waste is getting trapped in all the unnecessary bio in the sump. It's the missing factor in your equation. A build up of organics will decompose and produce nitrates. I've experienced it myself and have changed my sump designs because of it. It made a drastic improvement. That is why I never recommend using scrubbies, large amounts of foam, lava rocks, or any of those DIY bio filters. K1 is by far the best option to keep a sump pristine and functioning at max efficiency.
Total fish = 63
total weight = 247 grams
assumed daily feed to weight = 3.0%
assumed dry wgt food (90% dry) = 6.2 grams
assumed grams of protein per day = 2.4 grams
calculated ammonia = 311 mg
calculated nitrites = 841 mg
calculated nitrates = 1134 mg
estimated water volume ~ 1,136 liters
calculated ppm ammonia = .27
calculated ppm nitrites = .74
calculated ppm nitrates = 1.00
1) Assuming no WC ever and no effect from plants and no water replenishment, it would take 160 days to reach 160 ppm.
2) Assuming 50% WC, with 10 ppm nitrates, every 15 days, the average nitrate level would be 25 ppm with a peak of ~38 ppm.
Ill update this thread after I finish a slow transition to K1. Thanks!
This tank has been up and running for only a year, so never. Only because in over 25 years of keeping fish, having roughly 15 sumps in the past 10 years and at one time having almost 2000g in tanks up and running, I have never cleaned a sump (unless to resell). I have never experienced this problem but have never had this big of a sump nor have I used scrubbies or this matting that I have in the bottom. I typically used wet/dry 35g sumps on tanks from 90g to 265g and if there was sludge/waste in it, I left it, assuming it eventually becomes harmless. Certainly I couldn't have gotten lucky for this long...right?
No worries, anything relative helps!
I agree.
The tank is only a year old and while I have had a substantial amount of plant waste in the process of finding what works and what doesn't with this mix, like you said, it would have to be massive and I wouldn't consider close to that.
Im going to remove one of the Matala mats today and suck all of the sludge/ waste etc out of the bottom...and so it begins
Great breakdown!
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to help figure it out!
