I don't get why my nitrates and phosphates are still at zero

[paulsz]

Hi all,

 

I had set up a 35G cube about two and a half years ago with dry rock. It had one small clownfish, one yellow clown goby and one bicolor blenny. Unfortunately I ran into the issues of dinos a few months in (likely due to 0 phosphates and nitrates). And such, I tried to beat it by dosing nitrates and phosphates. Many months later, algae was all over the place and it helped with the dinos. But every couple of months, it would come back (even though i had plenty of algae growing). I started getting lazy with maintenance and decided to take the tank down and start fresh with a new tank.

 

So, I bought the evo 13.5 three months ago. I cycled the tank with live rock that i picked up from a local hobbyist. It took a little more than a week for everything to hit 0. I decided to move the fish from the old tank into the new one. I did it one fish at a time over the span of three weeks or so. Then I dipped the corals and moved them over too (just some GSP, mushrooms, blue sympodium).  I thought for sure 3 fish (well 2.5 if you consider the ycg as half a fish lol) would be nutrient overload for the new tank, given it's got maybe 10-12 gallons of water. But for some reason, now, 2 months into a full tank, i am getting readings of 0 nitrate and phopshates.

 

I am doing a 10% water change every weekend and siphoning the poop off the floor (the tank is bare bottom). I feed flakes once or twice a day. Not a large amount, but all of the fish seem to have nice round bellies at the end of the day. I only have 3 hermit crabs in there at the moment as  CUC. 

 

I went through the ugly phase, with algae on the walls and rock, but that is gone now. There's a bit of fuzz here and there on the rocks, but no green hair algae.

 

Not sure what to do to increase nutrients naturally. There are a couple of bristleworms that pop up here and there. I feel like if i overfeed, that would cause them to multiply like crazy. Should i leave the poop in and let it decompose? Would that help? I could start dosing nitrates and phosphates again, but was hoping to take it more "natural" this time around.

 

Sorry for the long post. For those who want a summary - three fish in an evo 13.5g (3 months old) and I still can't get phosphates or nitrates to show. Scared of running into dinos again, like what happened to old tank. How can I increase nutrients naturally?

 

thanks,

 

Paul

 

 

 

 

[Thrassian Atoll]

I have to dose phosphate daily in my Waterbox 130.4 with 8 fish.  Hopefully adding a few more will keep the nutrients up.  My filtration is just socks, a skimmer and I run have recommended dose of carbon.  I feed 3 times a day.  

[Clown79]

I've struggled maintaining nutrients in my tanks.

 

At first it was phosphate, once I started dosing phyto, I finally got phosphate and it's never dropped to 0 since and I rarely dose phyto now.

 

Nitrates have been a bigger challenge. I have reduced frequency and size of waterchanges, increased bioload, feed twice daily including frozen a few times a week, and feed reef roids.

 

I have had to start dosing nitrates to keep it at 2.5 because the above didn't work.

[paulsz]

I guess I'll have to start dosing then. Thanks for the info!

[Tired]

The most natural way to increase nutrients is to feed more food to everything you have that eats food.

[jservedio]

Remove filtration, feed more, clean less. As long as you are testing and not letting things get out of control the other direction, they should start to rise. If they don't, you may have to dose for a while.

 

I had to dose nitrates for long time, but was able to stop when I stopped cleaning out my sump. I've got about 1/4" of silt and detritus covering it and it provides a huge source of nutrients, even though I feed twice a day. If my phosphates creep over 0.1ppm, I clean a small section and continue heavily feeding.

 

By really dirty, this is what I mean (that's not sand)

[mcarroll]

On 7/4/2020 at 12:55 AM, Clown79 said:

Nitrates have been a bigger challenge.

The good thing about that, speaking at least for the corals, is that they tolerate low nitrate conditions with relative ease compared to what can happen in low phosphate conditions.