phosphates and nitrates

[Leo_ian]

so i have a 20 gallon cube... once a week i feed copepods, the rest of the time i split a cube of mysis between my three tanks...i feed once a day... my phosphates are at 1, no not 0.01 its literally 1ppm, my nitrates are 10ppm, how do i lower them? i will be creating an in tank refugium later today. I have five fish, a chromis(will be giving her away), a spriger's damsel, lubbock's fairy, royal gramma and a red stripe cardinal(i will be moving this guy to another tank after my exams)

[jcreefer]

You’re importing more nutrients than your system (biological + mechanical means) is exporting.  Since you didn’t mention your setup, I listed a “generalized approach” below that assumes you’re not using any chemical means right now (GFO/Phosguard/NOPOX/ChemiClean, etc).

 

First off, I would do a 30-40% water change to dilute out the excess nutrient.  You don’t want to remove all at once to shock the system.

Here then are a few thing you can try after the water change, if you do not wish to resort to chemical means.  It can be one or a combination of any of the three:

 

1)cut back on feeding

2)Increase biological filtration (live rock, bacterial population)

3)Increase mechanical filtration regiment; change filter (floss or sock) more frequently, skim wet(ter) if you’re using a skimmer. And more frequent water changes, whether it be smaller but more frequent, or larger water changes during your normal reef keeping cadence.

-Jeff

[Leo_ian]

THANK YOU!!!

[Clown79]

1 really isn't that big of a deal. Some of us have had much higher phos with no issues.

 

Even 10 ppm of nitrates isn't a concern.

 

Waterchanges are the best solution and don't go crazy chasing numbers

 

If the tank is healthy and everything is good, the worst thing is doing a bunch of stuff to reduce the  nutrients and end up with low to 0 nutrients

 

[Tired]

Yeah, that's actually good parameters. The phosphate is a bit higher than most people run it, but that's fine. Phosphate is not toxic at any reasonable level, nitrates have to be really high to be toxic.  All that high phosphate will do is potentially encourage algae growth. Unless you have a huge algae problem you're trying to get rid of, your phosphate being at 1ppm is perfectly fine.

 

0 phosphates and/or nitrates will kill your corals. Don't try and chase yours any lower, you might put the nitrates too low. 

[Murphs_Reef]

Mine are 0.25 phosphate (not so high anymore but used to be about 1) and 10 nitrate in fact my nitrate goes as high as 15 just before water changes. My coral are pretty happy with that

[Leo_ian]

ooh ok, i ended up lowering them bcs all the sps i got just kept dying 

[jservedio]

1 hour ago, Leo_ian said:

ooh ok, i ended up lowering them bcs all the sps i got just kept dying 

Phosphates and nitrates aren't why your SPS would be dying. My nitrates are higher than yours and phosphates just aren't toxic - all it'll do is cause new skeleton to be brittle as all hell - but they are perfectly healthy.

 

If you are losing SPS, alkalinity is the #1 culprit. Any spikes of more than 1 dkh in a day and any newly added SPS is pretty much going to be toast. As your SPS become bigger colonies, you can get away with a small swing here or there without losing a bunch of stuff, but you need your alkalinity to be perfect, and stay perfect indefinitely to keep SPS long term.

[Leo_ian]

Ok thank you!!!