Thoughts on using prime to help lower nitrates?
I like Seachem products . Great stuff. But Prime is used to dechlor and de nitrite water. I believe it only bonds the precursors of nitrate like ammonia and nitrite to short circuit the bacterial production of nitrate. unfortunately that starves out the good bacterial cycle that is needed to make a balanced cycle in the tank’ its artificial control. and Prime does not affect exzisting nitrate.
if you want to detox nitrates, a better product seems to be Amquel Plus. it bonds nitrates also into an inert compound. but it too does not solve a long ter problem of the nitrate cycle. if you stop, the nitrate problem starts again. I have used amquel plus to elminate ammonia, nitrite and nitrate in rotifer and and brine shrimp cultures. but it is short term type of solution until you do a majore water dump, change. because rotifer and BS culture systems dont have full nitrogen cycle filtration systems . you just need to grow some food, short term and then change the tank water.
+1 to Ken. It doesn’t remove them just help make “less” toxic. There is really no good substitute for a good old water change. Having used a few things to try to deal with nitrates, I find the money is better spent on salt mix. This is the quickest way. Some products like bio pellets are good but take a while to be effective. In the case of high nitrates that your tank is in a few large changes are in order.
I did a water change the other day and plan on doing another this weekend. I am going to keep up with the water changes every few days to help bring them down. This weekend I will also be converting my sump into a fuge and running the de nitrate and carbon. So hopefully they will come down soon. I was looking in my tank last night and remembered I had a feather duster but it is no where to be found. So not sure if it died or not but may be part of the problem.
Do you work at Premium? I believe I saw you in there.
Feather dusters can stress easily and the can “pop their crown” if really stressed out. They can also abandon their tubes and move / take up residence somewhere else but if that’s the case, you can almost write them off. If they pop their feathers it’s so tough for them to bounce back.
It may be in there somewhere, but given your nitrates are so high, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s passed on. Btw, how are the rest of your inverts doing with the nitrates?
everything seems fine but a few of the corals. The frogspawn, hammer, xenia all look good. The duncans are ok looking. The gsp wont come out at all and the edges of the zoas are all turned up. The sympodium(i believe that is what its called) is turning white and brown
[quote=“nerak, post:4, topic:6859”]
Do you work at Premium? I believe I saw you in there.[/quote]
If you call talking about aquariums all day “work” I guess so. ;D
lol…yeah I was in there last Monday afternoon getting my water tested. I had the two screaming kids that wouldnt stop running around.