[fatman]

Nitrate is the natural product of an active bio system. You have an active system that has developed well enough to convert organic wastes into nitrite and then nitrates. That is good. However you say you are also using a wet/dry filter. They are great at converting ammonia to nitrite then nitrate, actually to good for most reef tanks, and are therefore only recommended in fish only tanks or tanks with lots of big fish and predator fish that contribute huge waste loads to a tank. Wet/dry filters turn an ammonia into nitrates faster than the live rock or live sand, basically depriving the beneficial bacteria there from the food needed for their reproduction and even survival. Wet/dry filtered tanks nearly always run high nitrates. If you are planning on keeping invertebrates , coral or others such as shrimp, star fish, clams etc. I would seriously consider increasing the amount of live rock and removing the filter media from the wet dry. If your main desire is to keep fish then you do not need to worry a lot about high nitrates as fish are very tolerant of high nitrates. If you decide to keep the filter media in the wet dry I would seriously consider the use of a remote deep sand bed for denitrification or you will have a constant battle with high nitrate readings, even with regular water changes, as most live rock is not that efficient at denitrification, and all the fish will either poop or die of starvation, meaning feeding them is a necessity. However, most people feed their fish much to much food, so feeding every other day is a pretty good idea. Also do not feed dried/pelleted/freeze dried and thaw all frozen foods and feed only the particles and not the liquids. Once you get usedto the effects feeding your fish have on the tanks water parameters you can the consider try out dried food again, but expect more nitrate (anfd algae) problems with dried foods. A remote deep sand bed is much more sane than fish on a starvation diet or frequent large water changes. A remote deep sand bed is easy to set up as you probably already have an overflow if you have a wet/dry filter. If you have the capacity to do larger water changes they are more effective, however you water parameters (temp, Ph and salinity) have to more closely match when doing larger changes. Remember also, that protein skimmers actually remove waste before it breaks down into ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates, where as wet/dry and live rock and live sand just change the fish wastes into other compounds but do not remove them. Well the live rock will denitrify to a small extent. A thin live sand bed will do no denitrification at all, nor will a wet/dry filter. Personally, if I had to choose between more live rock and a skimmer (if you do not have one yet) I would definitely get a skimmer.