High Nitrate Levels

[Garf]

What's your pH and phos levels, out of curiosity?

[Floyd R Turbo]

Ah, ok. So it was working well at one point (which makes sense, considering the growth). The LEDs might not have been the proper spectrum, proper strength, or positioned wrong, too many possibilities to go into there.

So how long has it been since you switched back to CFLs and started getting good growth again?

[jfenton954]

Its been at least 2 months with great growth thats what worries me. I also am worried because I have 3 watannabe angels and one is changing into a male.

[jfenton954]

There's also no algae growth in the tank other than coraline.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Hmmm...ok, might be a dumb question but how new/reliable are your test kits? (worth asking...you never know)

If you are getting good growth for 2 months, and the last PWC you did was also a couple months ago, and 40%, I would consider another 40% PWC, followed by one more a few days later to try and 'reset' the system back closer to the lowered levels.

If you were feeding 8 cubes/day and it was handling it well, then it was balanced. When it got out of whack, it can only handle the 8 cubes/day but not the excess built-up N. Get it back down with PWCs and feed 4 cubes/day until you see the N dropping on it's own.

Sounds like you may have had a nicely balanced system, should be able to get that back.

[jfenton954]

My ph 8.1 phos. 0.25ppm

[jfenton954]

My test kit is a year to year 1/2 old

[Floyd R Turbo]

Test kit could be expired. Might be giving you a bad result. But, it's probably not that far off.

I would do another PWC, test N and P a few hours later (call this "day zero" - more below), then let the scrubber grow for a week. Try to get the lights pointed more directly at the screen.

When you clean the screen, don't remove it all. Try to leave enough on there to get continued filtration. Clean enough off so that you are not getting shading, but not so much that you end up with a 'gap' in the filtration period, which would allow the nutrients to start ramping up again. you might consider cleaning one side at a time, every 3 to 4 days. You want the growth to continue, but not get so thick that the screen starts to die at the lower layers and feed nutrients back into the water.

Test the water at 3 days after the PWC, and then again at 7 days. More often if you like. If you don't see a drop from day 0 to 3, and again from 3 to 6, do another PWC on day 6.

[jfenton954]

I will try all of that then give you an update. Also I've been trying a different way to clean the screen to get the turf algae to grow better it seems to be working. Instead of scrubbing one side clean I take the sink sprayer at full blast and spray both sides off the thick turf algae gets thicker and seems to grow better, I do check the bottom of the thick patches and it seems to do fine and grows pretty fast.

[jfenton954]

I did a 36g water change, by volume that was about 60%. I got the nitrates down to 10-20 ppm I think that's a lot more manageable than it was. But will continue your step through until til water is at 0 ppm like before thank you for your help.