Nitrates are still to high

I'm still having trouble with my nitrates being to high. I have lost all but one of my peppermint shrimps and my emerald crab and yesterday I noticed aptaisa on one of my rocks . I have been buying my water from petland in tyler, has anyone ever bought water from them???. I still have a film on the top of my water ever though I have plenty of power heads and doing a 10% water change every week.... I have cut way back on feeding but now my fish are going crazy trying to eat the mirco bubbles. Has anyone ever used az-no3? or any other chemicals and if so do they work???. I made a fuge out of a HOB filter. I put in the chaeto that matt gave me, thanks again matt and yeti for getting it to me. I put a clip on light over it and it seems to be doing good. My skimmer is working fine. I have no idea what elese to do......

I really want to replace the soft corals I lost some day....

Are you testing the water from petland, it could be loaded with nitrates? Why not invest in an ro unit and make your own water then the quality is left out of the equation? The only way you will get rid of the film on top of the water is to use a surface skimmer, not a protein skimmer but a surface skimmer, it extracts the water from the surface and pulls the film into the filter. Somehow you need to install a surface skimmer on your HOB filter to draw the top water into it. I don't know what type HOB you are using but there are surface skimmers out there to work with most HOB's. Picture a corner overflow and how the surface water falls over the top of the corner filter, this is extracting the water from the surface and sending it to the filter, you need to do the same. If you have a bad film it can cause the water to not interact with oxygen and this could cause several problems, the surface needs to be clean to absorb oxygen. I would try to stay away from chemicals! Below is just one example of an add on extractor, there are others, even some DIY ones. Also put a link to a decent ro-di unit fair priced, its the third unit down on this page.

Surface extractor

$160.00 - OCEAN WAVE+ FIVE STAGE 75 GPD RO/DI

Thank you Donnie for the advice. I have tested petlands water and its good. I think I will look into the ro unit, it will be cheaper in the long run... I bought a bak pak pre skimmer to go with my bak pak protein skimmer, I thought that would help but now I see what you mean about the surface skimming. I also have (2) sub current wet/dry filters with carbon media. I left out the ball bio media. I guess I will get a ro unit and start making my own water. Thanks again.

Does anyone vaccum their DSB? I was told to lower my nitrates to 0 I should vaccum?

TluvsT wrote:Does anyone vaccum their DSB? I was told to lower my nitrates to 0 I should vaccum?

How deep? Mine was about 4 inches and I never vacuumed it but I've been vacuuming it when I do water changes for the past several months and I'm glad I did. I would vacuum any sandbed that's less than 6 inches or so, (you'll find lots of different opinions on this), and any sandbed deeper than 6 inches I would run in a refugium so if any problems arise you can easily remove it/replace it.

Try not to vac too much of the bed at one time . 10% of the bed's total surface area with each water change should be fine.

Not knockin anybody with a DSB, but myself I have little to no sand in the bottom because I feel they do more harm than good. I know guys that have them and have had great success. I just never did.

Thank ya'll for the info.