? on phosphate and nitrate

[sadie]

I got in this hobby about 20 yrs ago with a 12 gal tank.  Did tons of research and went slow and had an amazing tank for years.  Then life got crazy, my tank had a crash and with each move (2) I lost more coral.  The last 10 years I have kept what little coral I had alive and had my clown fish for 7 years.

 

Now I am trying to get my tank amazing again and things have changed.  I keep reading about NOT having phosphate and nitrate at 0 and how bad it is.  I don't really understand why this has changed. For years I had a great tank with no losses, everything growing, multiplying and having babies (not my fish) and all with 0 nitrates and phosphates.  I had sun coral, frogspawn, candy cane, ,mushrooms, yellow polyps, GSP, acans, ricordeas.

 

My nitrates and phosphates are still 0.  I added fish a few weeks ago and thought the feeding would raise my levels, but as yet, it has not.  Part of me wants to raise my levels (not sure how though) and part of me thinks if I did it before with all 0 readings I can do it again.

 

Can someone explain this to me and feelings of how important it is to raise my nitrates and phosphates.  I have a coral order coming Friday.  (candy cane and 2 acans)

 

Thanks

 

 

 

 

[A.m.P]

My .02 and reading
0 nutrients in younger tanks can cause outbreaks of plague algae and/or leave coral susceptible to illness. Plenty still run ULNS with insane success, but without tightly-controlled regimens it can actually hurt long-term coral growth. WWC runs a display tank full of SP with something like 80-100 Nitrates and phosphates they don't bother checking, there's been a bit of a return to older-german methods which seemed to produce healthier animals and more resilient-tanks through biodiversity (achieving this seems to require more nutrients in the system).
Some established tanks with a low bioload will likely use all available phos and nitrate rather quickly and routinely test-0, this isn't always a problem (though in my case it meant most of the cooler types of algae never really thrived). You could try manually dosing seachem nitrate and phosphate to get your levels detectable again, take it slow and see if your tank responds well to it. There's not usually a pressing need to fix something which seems to be working imo, if your nutrients stay low and you feed your corals frequently you could always cut back some on waterchanges and see if that "helps" too. 
Long bit there and I'm probably missing allot, but I'm far from the first person to ask or listen to for that matter lol.

[Nano sapiens]

If your fish and corals are colored up and growing/reproducing, but your test kits show '0', then that means that all the phosphate and nitrate is been used by organisms in the aquarium with nothing left over to add to the water column.  This would be considered a balanced system and what I had going for many, many years in my 12g.  Issues arise when/if the nutrients become more limited (for whatever reason; faster coral growth, more animals to feed, not enough food, more efficient nutrient export, etc.) and not all reefers would notice the early signs of the nutrient deficit in their livestock.  This lack of nutrients would then lead to system starvation, a reduction in biodiversity and then the possibility of a dinoflagellates bloom.  Hence the current recommendations to keep PO4 and NO3 at least at hobby test kit detectable levels.

 

Hope that makes sense  :)

[sadie]

7 hours ago, Nano sapiens said:

If your fish and corals are colored up and growing/reproducing, but your test kits show '0', then that means that all the phosphate and nitrate is been used by organisms in the aquarium with nothing left over to add to the water column.  This would be considered a balanced system and what I had going for many, many years in my 12g.  Issues arise when/if the nutrients become more limited (for whatever reason; faster coral growth, more animals to feed, not enough food, more efficient nutrient export, etc.) and not all reefers would notice the early signs of the nutrient deficit in their livestock.  This lack of nutrients would then lead to system starvation, a reduction in biodiversity and then the possibility of a dinoflagellates bloom.  Hence the current recommendations to keep PO4 and NO3 at least at hobby test kit detectable levels.

 

Hope that makes sense  🙂

okay, that makes perfect sense.  I didn't want to blindly do something.  Thanks for explaining.