Thanks Brian for that abnormally sane response to a question on this forum - so its the spike thats the main issue...the ol' nothing good happens fast in a SW tank.

I'm gonna post some pictures of my tank on the forum once I have taken out all the rocks and scrubbed them...and shooed all the fish to the back of the rocks... ...cause then you guys (apart from two in HN) won't know patience isn't one of my virtues!

However this cuttlefish guy must have something else in his tank or management that is removing the nitrate,

He has a skimmer ect - (all the normal stuff), its just that the term "nitrate factories" seems a little over the top.

This guy has a massive bioball tower too - a 40 inch tall 8x8 inch box.

Bio ball towers and Wet/dry filters or filter wool systems are fine for fish only systems with minimum rock. They convert the Nitrite and ammonia ok, but just dont deal with converting Nitrate to gas very easily.

The anearobic bacteria in large amounts of rock are what is needed for reef systems otherwise nitrate will be too high.

You can safely run a reef tank with soft corals at about 20-30 nitrate without too much of an issue as long as you control phosphates using vodka or phosphate remover......

Blah, blah, blah........

so true. and filter wool is still GREAT to use every now and then to take out solid (larger than skimmable) matter from the water column. i wrapped a stocking fill of carbon in a piece of filter wool and my water is the clearest it's been in ages.

This is true as long as the debris is removed often, otherwise it just releases DOCS back into the tank......pointless. (Every day really).

I too have a bioball tower, in my case it's a big heap of bioballs in my overflow. This is because my nitrates were so close to absolute zero that stuff including corals couldn't grow, the bioball tower is to try to get some nitrates, although they are still undetectable, salifert.

However this cuttlefish guy must have something else in his tank or management that is removing the nitrate, it would not be possible for him to still have zero nitrate with a bioball tower and nothing else, unless the bioball tower was running anaerobically.

I still think you're running you ZEO too strong!!!

what do you mean by take them out and scrub them??? do you mean that you'll just take them out of the tank and scrub them in a bucket of tank water?? thats ok but it wont acheive much other than remove whats loose on the surface, rocks will clean them selves up when the water quality is right

Brian, just taking a few tips from Jimmy on how to wind you up.

Nah, wasn't serious about scrubbing the rocks (it's taken far too much effort to build up the crap that they have on them) but it would be a great way to make my tank more photogenic, if only for a few hours! :lol:

lol.

well i can never be sure, paul was always talking about water blasting his rocks, not sure if he did it in the end