high nitrates with 4 drawer trickle towerdrawer trickle tower?

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clayton1985

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Apr 11, 2011
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uk
Just need some info guys, i was wondering if there might be something wrong with my trickle tower.
Here is some background info, the tank is 150g (this tank will be changing on sunday to a 275g but i still would like to use the tower and an fx5 is being added)
residents are a 8inch jag, 6-7 carpintis, 3-4 trimac and a 12inch clarias.
my nitrates are'nt high as i keep doing water changes, so they are about 10ppm but im changing the water every other day (50%wc) which seems alot. Its a four drawer tower, top drawer filter floss, all other drawers are pot scrubbers and i think there are about 50 of them in each drawer. Only other filtration on this tank at the moment is a aqua one filter meant for a 55g tank but its only to polish the water as i thought the tower would deal with biological filtration. The pump for the trickle tower is a 300g and its sat 35g rubbermaid tub and the water in the tub is up to the second drawer. If i didnt change the water the nitrates would be high in no time. is there not enough media in the drawers? (i cant fit anymore in) is the water to high in the tub? the water seems to be trickling all over through the plate. Just a bit puzzled if there is something wrong, i may as well get rid of it and get another canister filter at this rate...Any help would be greatly appreciated....thanks guys
 
Nitrates are the result of your filter doing it's job. To reduce your nitrates you can do a few things, make an alge scrubber, add some pofos vine- would probably take at least a dozen or so, or make a coil de-nitrator. I am sure there are other options but these came to mind first. Just keep doing your w/c's and you will be fine.
 
I would say your feeding to much.
 
Bderick67 said:
I would say your feeding to much.
Click to expand...

Number one reason, other than seriously overstocking and not cleaning the tank/filters well.
Often a dead fish can be hidden away, as well.
 
well i did some investigating and it looks like my filter had come off one of the platforms so when i opened the second drawer the drip plate was only spraying water on one half of the filter media. the other half was dry (my booboo) anyway iv packed as much spare media as i had into the drawer and replaced the platform so all the drip plate is now being used. on a second note i try to feed sparingly but i have been rushing the last two weeks as iv been a bit busy so i may well have been contributing to the problem. thanks for the help guys
 
Your drip plate problems would not explain high nitrate levels.
You`re probably aware of this, but just incase....
 
clayton1985 said:
well i did some investigating and it looks like my filter had come off one of the platforms so when i opened the second drawer the drip plate was only spraying water on one half of the filter media. the other half was dry (my booboo) anyway iv packed as much spare media as i had into the drawer and replaced the platform so all the drip plate is now being used. on a second note i try to feed sparingly but i have been rushing the last two weeks as iv been a bit busy so i may well have been contributing to the problem. thanks for the help guys
Click to expand...

Biological filters consume Ammonia and break it down to Nitrites then Nitrates. Hence Wet/Dry filters being know as "Nitrate factories".

Your first drawer is filled with filter floss. This is catching all of the debris and holding it for the bacteria to break it down. I change the filter pads in my sump once a week. Hence I remove the debris BEFORE is is broken down to Nitrates. That is the beauty of my sump, I can easily change the pad and remove the debris BEFORE it becomes Nitrates.

My canister filters serve the same function... it filters out the debris and holds it to be broken down into Nitrates by the bacteria. The negative for the canister filters is they are a pain in the rear to pull and open up to change the mechanical filter material and get rid of the debris before it becomes nitrates.

As mentioned above normal bacterial filters are never going to remove the Nitrates from your tank. To remove Nitrates you have a few options (as stated above):
1) Water changes
2) An oxygen deprived anaerobic bacterial filter that cultivates strains bacteria that don't consume oxygen and breaks Nitrates down to Nitrogen gas. (Coil filter as described above or deep sand bed filter)
3) Chemical filtration, Amino chips that absorbs the Nitrates and have to be replaced periodically. (Pricey!)
4) An algae filter which cultivates a farm of Algae which consumes Nitrates to grow... and has to be harvested periodically.
5) Aquatic plants... Which have to be kept healthy... as soon as they die they put Nitrogen back into your tank as they decay.
6) Terrestrial plants... They use the Nitrates as food to grow and are pretty maintenance free.

Number 6 is my preferred approach and I like Pothos plants as mentioned above.
 
Hence I remove the debris BEFORE is is broken down to Nitrates. That is the beauty of my sump, I can easily change the pad and remove the debris BEFORE it becomes Nitrates.



Just so we are all clear on this, I`ve never come across media that removes all the waste that biologically becomes nitrate.
Even with as conscientious a cleaning schedule as mentioned, there is still going to be waste in the system being converted into nitrate.

Just as an idea, the thought of having a tank which filters ALL waste is an interesting thought.
Not anything that even an advanced aquarist would try.
Just too costly to put together and maintain
Kind of like the “boy in a bubble”.
An environment that is constantly scrubbed through an array of filtering.
 
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