Lowering Nitrate Levels in the Tank

Yes you can is the good news I would say, nitrates can be removed. OTOH you will need to treat the water forcefully with NoNitrate till all the nitrates are out of the water and no undesirable algae appear. This may take changing the compound 3 or 4 times before you reach that stage and then a maintenance dose of NoNitrate which gets changed at certain intervals. I will explain this a little later.

What you would do is order about enough NoNitrate to treat 6 times the size of your aquarium and you would use it as follows:

• Divide the batch up in 5 equal parts by weight
• Use batch 1 and place it in an area where the water goes through it forcefully. Leave it there for 5 days and take it out. Dispose of it.
• Use batch 2 and do as above and remove it after 5 days and dispose of it.
• While you are doing this siphon out any brown algae you can, and do so every day.
• No use batch 3 and to the same thing.
• Again siphon out whatever dies or looks like you can siphon it out
• Now use batch 4 and leave it five days and then remove and dispose of it. By now all your brown algae should be gone and they should have died off or have been siphoned out.
• If there are still undesirable algae you need to continue the above regimen for one or maybe two more treatments but it is unlikely as IME after this kind of intensive removal treatment all the diatoms will be history.
• While all this is going on keep the skimmer running and use your additives as you would normally do.
• After you have used batch 4 we are going to perform a yes/no type test on the tank with this next and 5 th batch
• Place it in the same fashion and leave it in there. Now wait. Let the tank run as it normally does without interference.
• What we are trying to figure out is how long it will take for the first brown algae filaments to appear on the glass or the acrylic. Of course you can perform a Nitrate test and multiply the result by 4.4 to get to total nitrate (that is if your test measures in Nitrogen Nitrate and not in total nitrate but it is a good idea to perform the test anyway just to make sure).
• When they appear we know we have not changed the compound soon enough. Say that it took 29 days for the first ones to show up the tank's panes.
• We have learned that if we wait that long, undesirable will reappear, meaning we have learned that in that particular tank we need to change the compound sooner than 29 days. Note that this result is specific to the tank we are dealing with and that this cannot be generalized.
• Since algae grow when the levels are just slightly elevated the fact that they reappear is an indication that we need to do something: namely change the compound before that first growth appears. A good method would be to take 3 days off so that in our hypothetical case we would change the compound on day 26.
• Note that to avoid algae growth you also need to control phosphate and silicate (see other articles in our Library on the web page http://www.athiel.com

In other tanks the results will be different of course but the reasoning and the method remains the same. Only the last number will change. In some cases it will be longer and in some shorter depending on the amount of nitrate added to the tank from various sources and perhaps also leachings from sand and rocks.

I hope this explains how to use NoNitrate to eradicate diatoms in more detail. If you have any further questions feel free to send me an email.

Albert

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