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Originally Posted by leahski  no problem jadefox! and thanks for your sympathy for my shrimp!
well, i have a biocube, so there are three chambers in the back. origionally the first had a filter cartridge, the second had bioballs, and the third was the pump. i removed the filter and the bioballs, and replaced them with LRR and filter floss. i'm planning on moving about half of the LRR to the first chamber and putting the chaeto in the 2nd with some LRR and a submerssible light that is on its way. if it fits with the power cord, i'd love to keep the drip tray and filterfloss on top of chamber 2. we'll see. |
Nice--sounds like a good lil set-up. Regarding your nitrates, you say:
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Originally Posted by leahski nitrates have been hanging around 20ppm for quite awhile now, i'm hoping my comming-soon fuge will take care of that. |
While I am a big fuge fan, I would try to address the nitrate issue sans fuge before installing it. With your current bioload, you should be able to drop those nitrates w/out NEEDING a fuge (although I think you should still have one). I would do a few large water changes (like up to 50%) and then be religous about future water changes (I'm doing a 10% water change on my 135 as I type!).
Then practice really good husbandry, especially with a nano (the smaller the tank, the harder it is to get stability). Also, increasing flow can help. Low flow areas trop waste that decomposes and leads to higher nitrate. Do you have accumulated detritus on your LR? You probably already said this, but I assume you are using RO/DI water and not tap.
You may also want to make sure the filter floss is not full of detritus--organic waste stuck in the filter floss gets broken down aerobicly and will produce nitrate.
Having said all of this nitrates, out of all of the toxins, are fairly low on the toxicity scale compared to nitrite and ammonia. Nonetheless, you should not need a fuge on that tank with your current bioload to get the nitrates to zero.
Does any of that make sense? I need more coffee.