Kessil

Nitrate Spike

Jeff Rehling

Jeff Rehling

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Went from 0 to 10 this week. no changes other than issues with my skimmer. cleaned it two weeks ago and it's putting off tons of bubbles and the skim mate doesn't make it to the cup unless i totally remove the air screw.

Why would nitrates spike? I'm doing a 15 gallon water change tomorrow and the tank is 75 gallons.

Any advice? Thanks
 
Nitrates can spike for a lot of reasons, but fundamentally it boils down to two things. You're not exporting enough and/or you're adding too much. You could be over feeding, the tank could be overcrowded, the tank may not have (pick one or more) a large enough skimmer, other methods of export such as biomedia or refugium, etc. Perhaps you're not performing adequate water changes or performing maintenance often enough.

We'd need more info to make an educated guess.
 
Jeff Rehling said:
i would wager it's the skimmer not skimming as i mentioned. No other changes
Click to expand...

I think we use skimmers as a crutch to blame the real issue on all to often. Even the very best skimmers can only pull at best about 30% of the organics from your water and most do much, much less especially if you're not running them at peak efficiency (correct setting, water level, cleaning, using them with an ATO, etc.) If there's too many Nitrates it's normally because too much is going in. There's quite a few successful reefers that don't use any skimmer at all.

Also a Nitrate spike doesn't indicate that something changed. It may have simply just reached a position of saturation.
 
Die off is like adding too much food, and certainly would explain it.

Testing variability also could explain it, since the difference at those low numbers is tricky to tell on some kits.
 
In my opinion having nitrates between 5-10 is pretty good. There’s other Reefers that let it go well above that. I remember Rich Ross saying his tank is at 40.

With your skimmer, if nothing is going in the cup then nothing is being removed from the water. It still may be benefitting you by allowing more gas exchange but it won’t be providing any nutrient export unless it gets to the cup. Skimmers can be finicky and adjustments usually don’t produce immediate results.
 
How old is the tank?

You could have gotten a small bacterial bloom from the strain that likes to eat detritus and this would result in a nitrate spike while the rest of the tank looks cleaner (had this recently).

Or double check your test kits.
 
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