Low Nitrates?

[Chris O]

Hi All,

 

First off I want to say thank you to the whole community. I've found this forum to be really helpful from the day I began in this hobby over 2 years ago.

 

I noticed over the course of approx. 1.5 months that my green star poly has been slowly doing worse. It used to open full bloom, but now it rarely opens. I've notice it opens less and less frequently. At the same time, most of my other corals are doing fairly well (Birdsnet, frammer coral, Zoas, Nuclear Palys, zoas, pandora palys). This past week, I noticed the birdsnest growth slowing and the polyps not quite fully extended. I suspect the culprit is low nitrates based on how the the GSP was impacted first and by the way it has reacted over time. Before I make any changes, I wanted to see if other folks agree.

 

Here are my parameters:

 

API tests

Ammonia: 0

Nitrates: 0

Nitrites: 0

pH: 8.4

Salifert tests

Calcium: 430

Alkalinity: 8.6

Other

Salinity: 1.0275

Temp: 78 f

 

I've included some pictures of my tank and GSP for reference. I presume that white thing growing on it is a sponge of some sort? Nitrates make the most sense to me as the problem as it's a nuvo fusion 20g tank. I run an eShopps nano protein skimmer, do 30ish percent water changes weekly, change the filter pads twice a week, and only feed my fish every other day. Livestock includes 2 clowns, 1 coral beauty angelfish, 1 bangaii cardinal, 1 cleaner shrimp, and 4 snails.

 

Thanks,

Chris

[Thrassian Atoll]

I suspect low nutrients.  Get a low range phosphate checker as well.  Take the skimmer off line for a while and see how that does.

[MrP]

Have you tested for phosphate? 

[Clown79]

Low phos and low nitrates is not beneficial and eventually you will see a decline in corals growth, color, and over all health.

 

Some corals will last a while before you start noticing the effects whereas others it can be fairly quickly. 

 

Your salinity is also a tad high.

[Chris O]

So I just checked phosphates (using an API test) and got 0. 0.25 ppm is the lowest amount the test can register though. Salinity is high, so I will slowly walk that back. Also going to turn my skimmer off and see. Anything else I should do to get nitrates up? I know some people dose but honestly not sure how I feel about putting stump remover in my tank.

[Clown79]

Ya, api phos is pretty useless for reef tanks. You need a good low range kit. 

 

Stump remover isn't the only nitrate dosing products.

[Thrassian Atoll]

I dose with brightwells neophos and neonitro to keep my nutrients up.

[DevilDuck]

GSP doesn't do well in my tank either, meanwhile I pull out handfuls of pulsing xena every couple of months. 

 

I have been feeding the tank heavily and dosing nitrate, in the form of stump remover and occasionally phosphate from bright well neophos. I've noticed a little better grown all around once nitrate and Phosphate are not zero.

I stopped using the API phosphate test and replaced it with the Hanna ultra low range tester.

 

I had some odd GSP disease a couple of months back. A portion of the frag stayed closed, that portion also has some dust like growth on it that glowed under blue lights. I had to cut away that section before it spread to the rest of the frag. The gsp has recovered and started growing, albeit slowly. 

 

It looks like you have some pineapple sponges growing under your gsp. I would remove it as it will probably grow faster than your gsp and choke them out. 

[Chris O]

This is all very helpful, thanks everyone. I'm going to order some neonitro and neophos to dose for nutrients. I think I'm going to cut back on water changes too, and I will remove the pineapple sponges. Sorry to hear about the GSP disease DevilDuck. Doesn't look like I have that issue and fingers crossed I don't get run into that issue in the future.

[mcarroll]

On 3/20/2021 at 3:22 PM, Chris O said:

pH: 8.4

Salifert tests

Calcium: 430

Alkalinity: 8.6

Other

Salinity: 1.0275

These all seem fairly high.   IMO, bring down your salinity by doing a small water change with RODI water...about a gallon would do it I think (calculator).  

 

Or you can break the salinity change down into your normal water change routine of you want by using this calculator.

 

I would handle this ASAP.

 

On 3/20/2021 at 3:22 PM, Chris O said:

I presume that white thing growing on it is a sponge of some sort?

Yes.  Very nice!!  👍

 

(I wouldn't mess with them....they aren't hurting anything...and are a nice sign of a maturing reef tank)

On 3/20/2021 at 3:22 PM, Chris O said:

Nitrates make the most sense to me as the problem as it's a nuvo fusion 20g tank.

I'm not sure I follow on this.

 

On 3/20/2021 at 3:22 PM, Chris O said:

Livestock includes 2 clowns, 1 coral beauty angelfish, 1 bangaii cardinal,

That's a crapton of fish for 20 gallons.

 

The Coral Beauty is a small fish, but with a BIG personality....they are recommended for anywhere between a 30 and 70 gallon tank or larger, depending where you look.  

 

The other fish are nominally better choices individually (ie 1 clownfish is suggested for 25 gallons), but they are each sharing the tank with three other good sized fish!

 

The Bangai is the only one really tuned for the long haul in a tank of this size.

 

On 3/20/2021 at 3:22 PM, Chris O said:

I run an eShopps nano protein skimmer, do 30ish percent water changes weekly, change the filter pads twice a week, and only feed my fish every other day.

Sounds like you're overcompensating because you know it's a crapton of fish, but this isn't a productive way to do deal with it.  Keep the skimmer, but you can X out the rest of that plan.  Water changes only as needed.  Eliminate the filter pads.  And feeding too little can increase stress more on your fish since they are fairly overcrowded.  

 

Feed your fish at least once a day, consider feeding them more frequently than that.  Consider raising the overall volume of food you're feeding as well, but try to be controlled and conservative about the amount of the increase.  If you wanted to double the amount of food, for example, consider making that change gradually over a week or two at least.

 

On 3/20/2021 at 5:37 PM, Chris O said:

So I just checked phosphates (using an API test) and got 0. 0.25 ppm is the lowest amount the test can register though. Salinity is high, so I will slowly walk that back. Also going to turn my skimmer off and see. Anything else I should do to get nitrates up? I know some people dose but honestly not sure how I feel about putting stump remover in my tank.

0.25 is fine....you just don't want it to register zero, which should be a different color.

 

Leave the skimmer as it is surely helping with the oxygen demand from all those fish, et al.  Already mentioned the things to stop.

 

Low nitrates with a decent amount of phosphates present isn't usually that big of a deal – corals can almost always deal with that pretty well.

 

Personally, the only thing I would ADD to the system at this point is more food, as already mentioned.  See how that goes for at least a week or two...or a few months.

 

Along with the other suggestions (especially the salinity correction....that is significant), that could be all it takes.

 

In this case I wouldn't be in a hurry to dose liquid nutrients.....although having them on hand isn't the worst idea.  They don't go bad.

[Chris O]

Mcarroll, this is all helpful. Yes, I was definitely overcompensating because I do know it is a crapton of fish. The last 2 weeks I've gone without the skimmer (added a powerhead aimed at surface to promote gas exchange to compensate) and only done one gradual 10% water change (left water level slightly low to maintain old salinity, and gradually added diluted salt water to lower salinity over the course of a week. Still have some headway to go to get it to a desirable level). I've noticed GSP isn't completely recovered but certainly opening daily now, which seems to me as a sign of improvement. I've also been feeding once a day.

 

I also meant filter floss, not a filter pad. Would you still recommend going without this? I feel like even if I had the skimmer running it would be good to have some kind of mechanical filtration going on? Also, probably going to put the skimmer back online this week.

 

In terms of the crapton of fish, I know everyone has a different view on it. Fish all seem happy and no one fights, so no physical signs of stress among the fish. I know this might not necessarily be the right view, but I think if fish don't seem apparently stressed and I can maintain water quality on a much more minimal water change schedule, I'm doing okay. If I cannot maintain water quality or fish seem stressed, I think at that point I would need to consider parting ways with a fish or two and make adjustments as needed.

 

Is there any other water quality parameter that having this many fish might impact? Outside phosphate, nitrate, and ammonia? Dissolved o2 I would also imagine.

[Clown79]

Filter floss is fine. All it does is collect particles. It won't hinder anything.

 

It should be changed duribg waterchanges and 1 other time a week.

 

You wanna stay away from media that reduces nutrients like gfo, phosguard, purigen.

 

What is your salinity at?

[Chris O]

Using an instant ocean hydrometer, its at 35ppt right now. Just recalibrated my refractometer to cross check and getting 37ppt. Thinking maybe the old hydrometer (+10 years old) might need to go. 

Edited March 30, 2021 by Chris O

[mcarroll]

On 3/20/2021 at 3:22 PM, Chris O said:

I run an eShopps nano protein skimmer, do 30ish percent water changes weekly, change the filter pads twice a week, and only feed my fish every other day.

I think the protein skimmer is the only thing that doesn't need changing here.  It's removing hardly anything from the tank and is providing aeration.

 

But...

 

Eliminate the filter pads.

 

Stop doing water changes for now.

 

Feed your fish at least once a day – more is better.  Feed more, but don't over-feed. (Which means letting food go to waste.)

 

See how it goes for a week or two...or a month.

 

If you get the results you want, resume water changes as needed – otherwise, you should have a new normal.  Keep doing it like this.

[Chris O]

So since I started the original post I've only done two water changes; once every two weeks. The first change was one gallon the second was two gallons. Last week my nitrates were still reading less than 1 ppm, so I dosed twice last week to raise them a little over 1ppm. I got a little worried because I actually recently lost my angelfish (yesterday) and I'm worried something bigger is going on here. My water conditions haven't changed all that much:

 

API tests

Ammonia: 0

Nitrates: 0

Nitrites: 0

pH: 8.4

Salifert tests

Calcium: 400

Alkalinity: 9.2

 

NYOS test

Nitrates: between 1-2ppm

Other

Salinity: 35ppt

Temp: 78 f

 

Is there something else significant that I'm missing/not testing for? I can't figure out the problem since these water parameters look in check. I blew off the rocks/GSP and tried to stirrup the sand during the last wc to see if that helps, but so far my GSP has only done worse and is getting a lot smaller. In fact, a small portion of the purple mat has even taken on a green color. It also might be worth noting that my other corals are doing okayish, but not thriving. My zoas grow in numbers but are slowly shrinking in size, birdsnest opens but not always all the way/all the time, same with my frammer corals. 

 

I'm also not sure if this is worth noting, but about once a week for the past few months I've taken a long strip of filter fabric and skimmed the surface. There is some kind of film that covers the surface I have to clear off. It looks white when looking at it in the water, but once its skimmed off it looks brown against the white filter fabric.

 

Any further guidance is greatly appreciated.

 

 

[Thrassian Atoll]

My nitrates are 20 and my phosphate is .1.  Since I’ve upped it to these numbers from 5 nitrate and .05 phosphate, my corals are growing a lot faster.  Zero algae issues.  Your still on the super low end of nutrients.

 

  Did you buy the low range phosphate checker?

 

If it were me, I would shoot for 10 nitrate and .05 phosphate and just see how the tank does.   

[DevilDuck]

It was a fight for a while to get nitrates and phosphates to some predictable level. I believe it's part of the tank maturing. 

During the first 4 months with the tank I struggled to get nitrates and phosphates to some testable level. I would need to test both nearly every day and dose, now I can get away with testing once or twice a week.

 

For nitrates, I tested with API test kit since it is cheap and easy. I just make sure it's a shade of orange, so nitrates are in between 5-20ppm. I get food grade sodium nitrate from Amazon if I need to dose additional nitrates. I think BRS has a video which showed that none of the off the shelf nitrate tests are highly accurate, no need to stress the numbers here.

 

For phosphates, I think the Hanna Ultra low range checker is a must. I try to keep it around .05 ppm (no need to panic if it's a few points higher) as others have suggested. I dose Brightwell NeoPhos when it occasionally drops, which is very rare now.

 

 

 

 

[Murphs_Reef]

To get my N and P detectable I now feed 3 times a day. A mix of coral phyton, frozen mysis shrimp, rotifers and TMC copipod complete. Only after that I see 5ppm nitrate and 0.01 phosphate.. 

Kill the floss, skim light and things start to balance.. as the nutrients start to climb, add floss back in, reduce feeding slightly.. 👍🏼 

 

P.s. I tend to do what @mcarroll tells me to do and I'm good 🤣🤣... He reads alot and I listen loads 😂

 

[Chris O]

Low range phosphate checker is on the way, went with DevilDuck's suggestion of the Hanna Checker. Mcarrolls advice does seem to be paying off too. While the GSP has yet to rebound, it looks like my birsdnest is getting more color back in it after about a week of having detectable nitrates. GSP opened for longer today too so that's another good sign. Will keep you all posted. Feeding small amounts of reef roids now too in hopes to feed the coral while raising nitrates at the same time.