another rookie with high nitrates what a surprise. i am trying to figure out why i got it all of a sudden. my skimmer wasnt skimming consistently for the past few days. also i just cleaned off some various algal growths from my front and back glass. i feed my tank every other day or two. i feed frozen formula one and mysis shrimp and bloodworms. also pellets and nori sheets. i have a yellow tang a coral beauty angel and 2 yellowtail damsels. i have some snails for algae and detritus. i have a green millepora bali slimer (ithink thats it) xenia green star polyps a kenya tree and one other i cant remember what it is. i have 240lbs of live rock and 200 or so lbs of live sand. i have a coralife superskimmer 220 for a short time. thats it for filtration until i get a bulb replacement for my uv. if i forgot something im sorry but i wanted all the info available for a more accurate answer. oh yea i did a water change of 10 gallons a week ago and i change it every two weeks

What size tank is this? Do you feed all that at one time? I too have had problems with my nitrates. I am going to try another test kit to make sure my readings are correct. Have you tried another test kit or have the LFS test for you? Also depending on your tank size you may need to do bigger water changes. I do 5-10 gallon weekly water changes on my 24 gallon AquaPod. Maybe someone else can suggest other methods.

its a 125 gal. i feed either the pellets or i mix a cube of mysis and formula one or bloodworms and formula one.

You might want to bump the water changes up to at least 10% a week to see if that helps. I seem to recall that your tank is pretty new so you may need an extra push. For what it is worth I change 5-10 gallons a week in my system.

the nitrates went back to 0 after 3 or 4 days so it must have been the algae i cleaned off the glass.

That's great!

i had to break down my tank because i thought it was leaking and i found my copperbanded shrimp dead. my first saltwater death. so that might have been the cause also