80 ppm nitrates in 125 gallon

[Irecruitfish]

Hello; The impeller assembly can go for years. They can continue to push water even when they start to rattle. The rattle (noise) is sometimes a reason to replace the assembly, especially if the tank in n the living area of a home. If it is still pushing water and you can stand the noise then it is still useable.


Hello; With fish other than fry it is OK to have "fasting" days each week. By that I mean no food at all for a day or two each week.
I get the desire to "grow out" fish to a maximum size. That may be somewhat defeated when the nitrates get as high as you have reported.
May I also suggest some snails in the tank. If you are overfeeding or, as is often the case the fish are messy eaters, the snails can find the excess food.

Hello; More likely you will need to keep up with the WC (water changes) and may have to do more volume and/or frequency as well as keeping the filters cleaned out.

Thanks for the note on the impeller. I do have several MTS in the tank. I grabbed a bag full from the LFS to help with the sand.

 

[tiger15]

To help reduce the impact of less frequent cleaning you can use probiotics, same stuff used in septic tanks. Lots of members use that. You still need to do filter maintenance but it is suppose to help significantly with build up.

I would not add stuff without knowing what it is, specially stuff for septic tanks. For FW tanks, water change is a lot cheaper and safer. It's scary that people would do anything just to avoid WC and filter maintenance.

 

[nzafi]

tiger15 its actually very common and there are a bunch of threads on it. It should not be used to reduce water changes. It’s sole purpose is to help reduce the build up of waste and excess food in the system, aka improve the cleanliness of the water.

 

[skjl47]

do have several MTS in the tank.

Hello; The MTS are in my tanks. The MTS can become problems in two ways, both related to the issue of overfeeding. One is there can get to be lots and lots of them. That is a sign of too much food for them. Took me a decade or few to figure that.
The other is they can make it into the guts of an impeller assembly. I think the tiny newborns crawl into the filter and grow. Their shells are so tough and when they are big enough they can damage an impeller. Sometimes when an impeller gets noisy it is because of an MTS in the assembly.
Sand also will erode an impeller pretty fast.

Hello; Also the RID-X is not to replace WC or other procedures. I think the idea is to introduce "good" bacteria so they can replace/outcompete some other bacteria. But tanks can be run without it.

 

[clm08k]

Hello; This adds to the total nitrate load in at least two ways. One, of course, is the food that he fish eat becomes waste products from their metabolism. The other is the bits of food that do not get eaten. This decays and eventually adds to the nitrate load.



Hello; Duanes likely called this one. I clean out the filters more often than this with a very much lighter bio-load.
The filters should have at least two types of media. One is to physically trap stuff like excess food and other things often called detritus or mulm. Some like to "rinse it gently in tank water" and re-use it. I just replace it with new stuff and throw out the old.
I am not familiar with the FX6 so do not know if it has more than one chamber. If it does then a strategy can be to replace one part now and the other later.

Behind the trapping media can be other media that allows water to pass thru and can function a place to have the beneficial bacteria (bb). This can be rinsed out and re-used.


Hello; I think 40 ppm is considered high for nitrates, with the goal to stay at no more than 20 ppm and better below.



Hello; This.

This was super informative. Thank you for posting.

Gently rinsing the the sponge and the ceramic media, is good for how long? How often should it be replaced in your opinion? Any thoughts about carbon?

 

[Irecruitfish]

Quick update that nitrates are back to 20ppm. The cleaning of the canister and a large 60% water change yesterday worked. Thanks everyone!

 

[skjl47]

Gently rinsing the the sponge and the ceramic media, is good for how long? How often should it be replaced in your opinion? Any thoughts about carbon?

Hello; The sponge and ceramic media are good to house bb until they get clogged up with detritus. If the trapping media is too thin or the trapping media is too porous then the bits of tank trash (detritus) get by and into the bio-media

(bio-media = solid surfaces often in filters meant to give a place for the bb to colonize. My take is bio-media can be pretty much anywhere there is some water flow. The greater the surface area equals more surface for the bb the form a bio film. That way more can be packed into the available space.
Seems to me that the porous nature of some bio-media will likely get clogged up over time with fine detritus. I used some carbon back in the 1970's that was not very dense meaning it was porous. I would bake it in my oven in the erroneous notion I was re-activating the carbon. I have since learned a home oven does not get hot enough to re-activate. It did however bake away a lot of the organic stuff that had clogged up the spaces in the carbon. That made the carbon a decent bio-media that was a bit more cleanable and I could reuse it several times.
I suspect ceramic media that is only gently rinsed off from time to time will lose some of the available surface. Not sure how to go about cleaning the clogged spaces.
A sponge can be simply squeezed a bunch of times in water to clean out a lot of the detritus. Likely should be squeezed out fairly often)

Ceramic bio-media ought to be useful as long as it is in good shape. I have not used it so cannot say how long it stays in good shape. Back a few decades ago when none of the current choices were available I used small glass marbles. Not porous but they packed fairly tight and allowed good water flow. They were also easy the rinse.

Another thought - The bb make a sticky bio-film which clings to a surface. It is my understanding a simple rinsing does not wash it away. I suspect a scrub brush will get it off exterior surfaces. I think the term is sessile to describe how it sticks to surfaces. The bb can and likely will be on surfaces thru out the tank.

On carbon. Activated Carbon has the property of adhesion rather than absorption. That property makes it useful for only a brief time. It is good for removing chemicals such as medicines after a tank treatment.
In adhesion a chemical molecule is picked up by the carbon and bound very tightly. The carbon can only pick up and bind so many molecules and then it is "full" so to speak. This could take only a few hours or days and the carbon is full.
I think of it sort of like carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide being picked up by the hemoglobin in our blood. Red blood cells can pick up CO2 in our bodies and carry it to the lungs where the CO2 can be released. However when a red blood cell picks up carbon monoxide (CO) the cell cannot release it at all. That red blood cell will become useless and will circulated thru our bodies until it dies and is replaced.

 

[duanes]

I agree about the MTS, 1 tiny snail can ruin an impeller in no time, even destroy the volute .


This is good reason enough to use a sponge , although if not squeezed regularly, a clogged sponge will burn out a pump. I would usually squeeze out sponges at least once per day, if not every time I entered the fish room.
The snails can also clog plumbing, and I found I had to use a long wire brush regularly on influent, and effluent piping (especially 1/2" inner diameter PVC and venturi apertures).

 

[Irecruitfish]

I agree about the MTS, 1 tiny snail can ruin an impeller in no time, even destroy the volute .


This is good reason enough to use a sponge , although if not squeezed regularly, a clogged sponge will burn out a pump. I would usually squeeze out sponges at least once per day, if not every time I entered the fish room.
The snails can also clog plumbing, and I found I had to use a long wire brush regularly on influent, and effluent piping (especially 1/2" inner diameter PVC and venturi apertures).

Well I'll be canned. I have a severe overload of MTS. Any advice on how to get rid of them? I'm thankful I only saw two snails in the fx6 but it seems risky.

 

[skjl47]

Well I'll be canned. I have a severe overload of MTS. Any advice on how to get rid of them? I'm thankful I only saw two snails in the fx6 but it seems risky.

Hello; for the long term reduce the feeding amounts or times. Too many MTS is a sign of overfeeding.
Short term suggestion I have read is to put some lettuce in the tank at night and in the morning it likely will be covered with them for removal.