Adding snails / high nitrate water

[Amber]

I'm having a problem with high nitrates that I'm working to correct.. theyre about 100 ppm right now. Needless to say my tank is becoming overrun with algae. Do you think if I bought more snails or a few crabs to help control the algae would they live in my water or would the high nitrate level kill them quickly??
~Amber

[Doug1]

Get a couple second opinions why the nitrate level is so high if it really is. Then figure out why its elevated. # things cause hi nitrates as a rule
#1 nitrate in tap water used for SW mix or top off(RO/DI will eliminate this)
#2 Overfeeding, by this I mean more food than the biofiltration and detrivores etc can effectivly reduce biologically
#3 overstocked tank, usually too many fish that eat and produce more waste than the system can handle
Cheap hobby test kits are not that reliable, Nitrate levels like 100 would lead to Rampant algae growth which tends to cause the levels to drop on test kit due to nitrate being locked down in the cells, Thats why frequently you see the aglae runnning amok but the nitrates read low posts

[Amber]

In response to above:
1 - I use tap water but I mixed it with instant ocean and ran all my tests on it (ph, nitrate, ammonia etc) and everything was fine. Nitrates showed zero..
2 - I only use 2 pinches of flake food a day and my fish seem to eat it all..
3 - I have a 75 gal tank with 3" sand bed, 1 approx 5" sailfin, a small powderblue tang, a snowflake eel and a damsel. I don't think this would be overstocked would it?

I used my test kit (it is cheap like you said, 17 bucks at petsmart) but I took my water samples to the LFS as well, they have a nice kit and they told me the same thing. I have no way to get RO water around here since they don't sell it and I can't afford a RO unit right now. Any suggestions? Could I be missing something because I have no idea why they are this high.. I thought I had good water quality because I have all kinds of small creatures (shrimp, sea squirts etc) that are growing in my tank.. I've had this same tank set up for 2 years now and only within the past 2 or 3 months have I had this problem..

[bpugh1975]

I guess I would continue to do water changes, but definately don't vacuum your DSB. You can siphon off detrius on the live rock, but don't mess with the DSB. Be VERY cautious of using tap water...like my other post said....especially this time of year. Maybe you could try a product in a mesh bag, like Nitra-Zorb as a temporary fix.

Ben

[Doug1]

In answer to #3 yes thats a lot in a 75
I had a sailfin about that size and they are great producers of waste if fed well
not even going to address the issue of 2 tangs in a 75 but if your nitrates were really 100 I suspect that the tangs would be suffering major ich episodes and possibly severe HLLE (head lateral line erosion)
If your new SW mix reads 0 nitrate you can try a series of 25% water changes and see if that brings levels down
How long have all these fish co existed and what type of filtration are you using?
With a fish load like this I would really recommend a skimmer that kicks serious @** to keep waste leves down

[seahawkjohnny]

Originally posted by Amber
In response to above:
1 - I use tap water but I mixed it with instant ocean and ran all my tests on it (ph, nitrate, ammonia etc) and everything was fine. Nitrates showed zero..
2 - I only use 2 pinches of flake food a day and my fish seem to eat it all..
3 - I have a 75 gal tank with 3" sand bed, 1 approx 5" sailfin, a small powderblue tang, a snowflake eel and a damsel. I don't think this would be overstocked would it?

I used my test kit (it is cheap like you said, 17 bucks at petsmart) but I took my water samples to the LFS as well, they have a nice kit and they told me the same thing. I have no way to get RO water around here since they don't sell it and I can't afford a RO unit right now. Any suggestions? Could I be missing something because I have no idea why they are this high.. I thought I had good water quality because I have all kinds of small creatures (shrimp, sea squirts etc) that are growing in my tank.. I've had this same tank set up for 2 years now and only within the past 2 or 3 months have I had this problem..

do you have a grocery store close by?, check out the bottled water section, look on the 1 gallon jugs, and it should say on the bottle if what method they use to filter the water, most of them will use RO, I go to this chain of stores called "Purified Water to Go" they filter their water with RO/DI, and Ozone, its a 12 stage system, a lot more than what we need for aquriums, but its only 40 cents a gallon, you just bring in your container and they fill it up.....

[FLHT]

bpugh,
nice to see a new member in the DM area.
send me an e-mail, maybe we can visit.
FLHT