High Nitrate and Nitrite Levels

[bpat09]

The nitrate and nitrite levels in my small quarentine and display tank are higher than usual. The nitrate levels are 15ppm and the nitrite levels are about 3.5ppm. The display tank is 65 gallons, twin emperor 400 filters and no skimmer at the moment. the quarentine tank is a small 10 gallon tank with some small penguin 100 filter. Im not really sure why the levels in the 10 g are so high but i recently put about 50 lbs of dry rock into the 65 g and i was told that my tank would cycle for about a week or two which is not a problem because i have no current fish in it. My question, is how do i lower these levels? Any imput would be very helpful and i would really appreciate it.
thanks
-ben

 

[naturebatslast]

Maybe small, daily water changes over the course of a week or so. A protien skimmer would help tremendously, but it sounds like your still cycling with your rock and things may need a couple/few weeks, IMO. If the emperor filter is a filter you've been using for a while, that could be the source of your nitrates if your running some type of bio-media. If that's the case, you could slowly remove the biomedia over the course of a couple weeks, coupled with small, daily water changes, IMO. Maybe replace the media with carbon.

 

[Jocko]

If you have nitrite then the tank is cycling. Just wait. If you hadn't changed anything then I would think the cycle was caused by something that died, but since there is a good reason for the cycle, then you have nothing to worry about.

 

[bpat09]

how much longer do you think this cycle will take?

 

[JohnK]

The initial cycle period takes a month - past that you should not see any nitrite unless there is a sudden increase in waste (large fish dead and rotting).

The nitrate will accumulate unless you have some means of denitrification (a DSB, refugim with good algae export, OR if you have a VERY low bio load and a good amount of LR, there may be enough low O2 areas to allow sufficient denitrification)

Using a skimmer will help a lot as it will remove a lot of waste before it's broken down to nitrate. Getting rid of any bio media in your conventional filters will help to keep nitrate in control also.

As has been said, water changes will be good to get things in check to begin with, but unless you already have any delicate livestock (which you shouldn't at this point) you might as well save the water changes for when the initial cycle finishes (when ammonia and nitrite consistently measure at 0).

 

[fanaglethebagle]

Yeah, all the dieoff from the dry rock is doing that...

you should have soaked it...