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Innovative Marine Aquariums

Raising nitrates/phosphates


Aurortpa

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One of the guys at one of my LFS’s is recommending marine snow or maybe oyster feast for my tank.

 

One of the reasons is that I am having a bit of a challenge trying to maintain a trace amount of nitrates and phosphates for my corals.  My levels have been undetectable for weeks, even without any chemical filtration.

 

I have been feeding zoo every night, feed pellets or fresh everyday, and have even reduced my water changes to 10%/week.  I used to be a conservative feeder and count the pellets but now I just throw pinches in there. Most recently I’ve tried even adding another fish!

 

Part of it I think is thanks to the macroalgae I keep. However, I am concerned long term my corals will be stripped of food they may otherwise benefit from. 

 

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A Little Blue

Do it in a way that all benefit from it. 

Add extra feeding every other day. 

Mix of phyto/pallets/frozen/reef-roids and supplements such as “Fuel”. 

Mix it all together in RO water, turn off your return pump feed your tank. 

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@A Little Blue  Love it, buffet galore! Yeah hoping adding this fish will also help me feed more during each feeding.

 

I’m trying to keep it simple, so I am leaning towards a liquid food or anything I can simply broadcast like phyto or reefroids like you mentioned.  

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A Little Blue
1 minute ago, Aurortpa said:

@A Little Blue  Love it, buffet galore! Yeah hoping adding this fish will also help me feed more during each feeding.

 

I’m trying to keep it simple, so I am leaning towards a liquid food or anything I can simply broadcast like phyto or reefroids like you mentioned.  

You don’t have any fish? 

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A Little Blue
55 minutes ago, Aurortpa said:

I have 6 fish 🙂

Good. So you could use that formula of additional feeding (perhaps twice per week to start) and see what happens. 

You can always increase or decrease feeding as needed. It doesn’t have to be heavy, just filled with variety of food for all occupants of your tank. A bit of fish waste is also form of nutrients/food for your corals.  So, it’s a win/win as long as you don’t overfeed and make things worst by pushing your filtration system over the edge. 

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29 minutes ago, A Little Blue said:

Good. So you could use that formula of additional feeding (perhaps twice per week to start) and see what happens. 

You can always increase or decrease feeding as needed. It doesn’t have to be heavy, just filled with variety of food for all occupants of your tank. A bit of fish waste is also form of nutrients/food for your corals.  So, it’s a win/win as long as you don’t overfeed and make things worst by pushing your filtration system over the edge. 

Thank you for the aupport @A Little Blue! Yeah, you are right, I will just slowly change it and just see if modifying this one variable works over a period of a few weeks first.  Slow and steady!

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A Little Blue
1 hour ago, Aurortpa said:

Thank you for the aupport @A Little Blue! Yeah, you are right, I will just slowly change it and just see if modifying this one variable works over a period of a few weeks first.  Slow and steady!

No rush. It took me 6 weeks to raise my nutrients levels. Since I run my Alk on the high side, higher nutrient level was needed. I was also increasing light intensity over that period. So all factors had to be carefully balanced. Slow wins the race. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I still have no phosphates or nitrates! 😫

 

I wonder if it’s my skimmer?  I always ran skimmer’s 24/7...I’d hate to put yet another thing on a schedule—should I just raise the cup maybe?

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On 9/14/2018 at 5:37 PM, Aurortpa said:

I still have no phosphates or nitrates! 😫

 

I wonder if it’s my skimmer?  I always ran skimmer’s 24/7...I’d hate to put yet another thing on a schedule—should I just raise the cup maybe?

With both skimming and macroalgae it may be difficult to maintain levels.

 

It may be a case of over filtration.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Clown79 said:

With both skimming and macroalgae it may be difficult to maintain levels.

 

It may be a case of over filtration.

 

 

Yup, I’m going to try to feed a bit more, see how that goes for a couple weeks. I can’t stuff anymore fish in there 😌

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3 hours ago, nicholc2 said:

Turn off the skimmer for a while and see what happens. The macro will help with nutrient export. Fish poop is a great nitrate food. LOL

^ this.

 

Over feeding can bite you in the butt later on.

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1 hour ago, Clown79 said:

^ this.

 

Over feeding can bite you in the butt later on.

Yeah not interested in the butt biting lol. Hmm, what do you think of reducing frequency of water changes, perhaps to bi weekly to start?

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I'm new to reefing but have seen this low nutrient issue crop up and based on what Ive read it seems like a result of undetstocking and/or overfiltering. It seems that unless you are striving for an ulns, you usually shouldn't really have to worry about nutrients bing to high or low as long as you follow basic aquarium guidelines . 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldnt just a reasonably stocked tank, with a light feeding, and adequate filtration/WCs result in low but detectable nutrients? 

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2 minutes ago, MrObscura said:

I'm new to reefing but have seen this low nutrient issue crop up and based on what Ive read it seems like a result of undetstocking and/or overfiltering. It seems that unless you are striving for an ulns, you usually shouldn't really have to worry about nutrients bing to high or low as long as you follow basic aquarium guidelines . 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldnt just a reasonably stocked tank, with a light feeding, and adequate filtration/WCs result in low but detectable nutrients? 

It's most likely the amount of macros in my tank yes.  My concern is lack of nutrients may starve off coral in the long term.  My tank is actually heavily stocked, heavily fed, and has no chem filtrants and only 10% wc a week.  So most definitely probably over filtration, naturally by macros.

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8 hours ago, Aurortpa said:

Yeah not interested in the butt biting lol. Hmm, what do you think of reducing frequency of water changes, perhaps to bi weekly to start?

I've reduced my waterchanges to every 2 weeks and I don't run a skimmer nor have macro.

 

My nutrients are low and I feed my corals and fish, not lightly nor heavily.

 

 

This is the reason many believe skimmers aren't necessary and should be added if needed because not every system needs it.

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This has been the case with my tank as well.  Mine is an 18.1 gallon display with a modified standard 10 for the sump.  The middle chamber of the sump has cheatomorpha and the other two chambers are just heater, pumps, ATO.  I've found that, even if I feed a cube a day of frozen along with about 1/8th tsp reef roids, my macro still pulls everything out of the system.  When my red sea nitrate test begins to read 0 nitrates, my largest montipora begins to bleach in spots.  If left to go further, all the corals begin to loose color and eventually bleach.  The only way I've found that works to raise nitrates in my tank is to dose a trace amount of KNO3 in my ATO water.  With this approach, the Red Sea kit still reads basically 0, but my corals don't bleach and everything seems super healthy.  I still feed as mentioned above...  Absolutely amazing how well cheatomorpha does at removing nitrogen compounds from the water!

 

Also, as for my water change schedule, I typically do an ICP test every 3ish months to check where everything else is at and change water accordingly (typically about 30-40% over the course of a week after receiving the test results to bring potassium (from the KNO3), boron (from food?), and silicates down).  Since my system is running so borderline on the zero nutrient end of the spectrum, even with my feeding routine, I find a water change a liability without having a good reason for it since it further reduces the nutrients in the tank.  The only drawback is needing to dose Kent Lugol's Solution by hand once a week, which isn't really a drawback since that is easier than a water change! 🙂

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2 hours ago, empresto said:

This has been the case with my tank as well.  Mine is an 18.1 gallon display with a modified standard 10 for the sump.  The middle chamber of the sump has cheatomorpha and the other two chambers are just heater, pumps, ATO.  I've found that, even if I feed a cube a day of frozen along with about 1/8th tsp reef roids, my macro still pulls everything out of the system.  When my red sea nitrate test begins to read 0 nitrates, my largest montipora begins to bleach in spots.  If left to go further, all the corals begin to loose color and eventually bleach.  The only way I've found that works to raise nitrates in my tank is to dose a trace amount of KNO3 in my ATO water.  With this approach, the Red Sea kit still reads basically 0, but my corals don't bleach and everything seems super healthy.  I still feed as mentioned above...  Absolutely amazing how well cheatomorpha does at removing nitrogen compounds from the water!

 

Also, as for my water change schedule, I typically do an ICP test every 3ish months to check where everything else is at and change water accordingly (typically about 30-40% over the course of a week after receiving the test results to bring potassium (from the KNO3), boron (from food?), and silicates down).  Since my system is running so borderline on the zero nutrient end of the spectrum, even with my feeding routine, I find a water change a liability without having a good reason for it since it further reduces the nutrients in the tank.  The only drawback is needing to dose Kent Lugol's Solution by hand once a week, which isn't really a drawback since that is easier than a water change! 🙂

No wonder I couldn't keep chaeto.

 

I figured with nitrates between 7-10 I'd be fine but I'm seeing now through others who feed more and have more fish that it's very obvious macro needs more nutrients.

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12 hours ago, Aurortpa said:

It's most likely the amount of macros in my tank yes.  My concern is lack of nutrients may starve off coral in the long term.  My tank is actually heavily stocked, heavily fed, and has no chem filtrants and only 10% wc a week.  So most definitely probably over filtration, naturally by macros.

Are you having any issues you suspect are caused by low nutrients?  Just because nitrates and phosphates read 0 doesn't necessarily mean your corals aren't getting what they need.  In fact it may just mean you aren't adding more nutrients than your corals need. 

 

Think of it this way. Do you have excess fish food floating around and available all day in your tank?  Of course not...but that alone doesn't mean your fish aren't getting the nourishment they need, right?  The only way to determine if the fish are getting enough food is by watching for signs of starvation/distress.  Same should go for your corals.  

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If your tank is doing fine, I would not worry about chasing any particular numbers. It might do more harm then good. We all like to experiment with various methods or anecdotal silver bullets and that’s OK as long as you go about it slowely and with some sort of contingency plan. 

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@empresto very useful first hand information, thank you—absolutely crazy that a cube a day with a broadcast is taken care of by your macros. Clearly I may still be underfeeding!

 

Yet I feel I should heed @specore,  @Clown79, and @A Little Blue‘s advice and at least make very slow changes. If I change too many variables at once I may not find which one actually triggered a result, especially dependent on if it’s a good or bad one. In the past I used to take drastic measures to effect changes and it only led to complications...like over correcting a car to avoid something on the road.  

 

I think I’ll try reducing frequency of water changes first. The fish are definitely not starving, quite the opposite lol.  My LPS seem to be growing and budding but my SPS altho coloring up are growing at a snail’s pace—like a very lazy astrea snail pace to be clear lol.  My macros are absolutely flourishing so there is clearly competition here. 

 

 

 

 

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It can takes months before SPS start taking off. Especially sticks. Montis, caps and few others might be an exception. 

Unless you're killing them, you should not worry a whole lot. Be patient. 

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