Not sure, but based on your story I think you mis-read Nitr-I-ite for
Nitr-A-te.

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 15:44:26 -0400, kryppy kryppy@. wrote:

On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 21:36:13 GMT, "David Burton"
wrote:

All,

Okay, Nitrites should ideally be 0.0 mg/l but at what stage do they start
becoming a problem or possibly fatal to fish and corals in the tank alike?

I would be very grateful for some kind of reply as I am getting alot of
conflicting points of view on the subject.


I have a 120g tank with a large grouper, a few varieties of coral,
xenias, a yellow gorgonian.and two killer mushrooms that eat anything.
3 emerald crabs, 5 blue legged hermits about 4 varieties of snails
totaling about 40. 3 common steamer clams, 3 flame scallops and pink
gulf shrimp that come and go. Usually 4 in there.
Let me not forget the largish horseshoe crab in a section of the fuge
which has all sorts of things going on. 95% of the tank consists of
things from the Florida waters.

Anyway, the moral of my story is the nitrates have been 200+ for years
with no ill effects on anything in there. Great growth on everything.
0 nitride, 0 ammonia 8.2 PH 1.025 -6 SG 1400 MG. That is all I test
for.

I recently (over the last six months) added a series of 5 gallon
buckets with 2 - 3 foot mangroves, 15 smaller ones, grape calarpa and
the famous chetomorphia. I threw a few halimadias in the tank.


They have dropped to 60 - 80 now. I kinda hope they continue down, but
I don't think so. They seemed to stabilize there.. Just this morning I
noticed a small weird looking coral on the halimada!! It now has its
polyps out. Very cool.

I'll tell you what, I believe the high nitrates are causing the
mangroves and cheeto to grow like mad. I suspect you could have
problems with algae if you didn't have sufficient creatures to consume
it, but by in large I wouldn't freak out if they are 5 - 10!!! Hahaha