High reef-tank nitrate levels..Any quick advice is appreciated!

[FocusFin]

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[ymh1253]

Thx. I'll try and get some pic's posted soon.

[Bob P]

Don't think you need to spend money on a bigger powerhead.

[ymh1253]

I had tested my nitrate levels again tonight and they were still reading between 40-60 ppm, It's been a couple of days since the first 25%water-change so I'll change another 25% tomorrow, and hopefully that brings it down some more. I had decided to hook up the seaclone skimmer so hopefully that also helps get rid of some impurities in the water. The 100 seaclone skimmer I am using didnt come with a manual so I was wondering if I should begin using it with the valve(full open), or start of at maybe valve (half open). Any advice? Thx

[Darth]

when I used it, it took a lot of adjustments, but open it till it looks like a cyclone of bubbles in the chamber you want a good opaque bubble colum inside and give it about 3 days to `break in`and adjust as you need to.

[ymh1253]

I'm getting a good cyclone motion at both half and full open, but It's creating micro bubbles like crazy full open. Do these bubbles decrease then go away after the break-in period?. It's only been running for a couple hours now. I heard using a skimmer will reduce my number of top-ups by reducing the evaporation time, that's a good thing.

[salvini55]

if anything it will increase the evaporation, not to mention the water it skims out of the tank... Who told you that?

[Hookup]

skimmers will remove water.  They remove salt-water so you will not top-up with fresh (ro/di) but mixed water... maybe that's the difference?

evap = ro/di used to replaces
skimm = salt mix used to replace

[Darth]

adjust it so there are no bubbles, if I remember the micro bubbles do dissapate after a while, but make tiny adjustments as needed

[ymh1253]

I was told a skimmer will reduce water evaporation by someone who apparently doesn't know what their talking about when it comes to skimming lol.  Anyways when I woke up this morning the waste cup was already full of waste bi-product, so I imagine it's doing it's job. The color of the waste was yellowish green. I'm gonna do another 25% w/c this afternoon to try and lower those nitrates a little more.  I had removed the foam pads and biocubes from the fluval and am just running carbon now, so I hope the tank, and its occupants adjusts to the new filtration method without incident.