HELP! MY SPS ARE PALING AND I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO

[Russ265]

What do you recommend for nitrate dosing?

like twilliard stated. seachem flourish nitrogen (if you read the article) has potassium nitrate. stump remover from lowes also has it. salt peter.

you can also use sodium nitrate or calcium nitrate

 

[twilliard]

i just have a melanurus wrasse

Right on Russ! But the people I help are plagued by these things and I have the ultimate cure!!
Thanks Russ for your postings !

 

[Arnie]

Try seachem flourish nitrogen .... Thanks Russ!

Thanks...

How about those socks in the sump that people say are "nitrate factories" if you dont change them... naturally... should i wait for a month before replacing the 2 socks? And produce nitrate that way? Just a thought..

 

[Russ265]

Thanks...

How about those socks in the sump that people say are "nitrate factories" if you dont change them... naturally... should i wait for a month before replacing the 2 socks? And produce nitrate that way? Just a thought..

if you want to wait. maybe. i cant tell you how fast itll break down.

i CAN tell you. sps decline quickly and recover slowly from bleaching/paling

 

[ReefMadScientist]

perhaps the introduction of po4 is greater than the system can handle, hence po4 remains in the column even with gfo on.

it leads me to believe if gfo was off for a day, that po4 would rise substantially and the gfo bandaid would be needed to retain your healthy state. (as many other reefers need to do).

do you know how much it will rise with gfo off for 24 hours? or a week?

this would also coincide with alk below 7 rtning. systems generally run higher alk to get away with higher nutrient loads.

this is all speculation on my part of course.

Hey speculation is what leads to questions then answers

I am not sure what will happen if I turned my GFO off...but I am not going to try it lol. As like anything in this hobby, slowness is key and I am sure I could shut my GFO off eventually with intervals of on/off. But I am happy to not deal with all the bad bacteria and nasty sand I used to have.

I used to believe zero PO4 was a bad thing but now I believe the opposite. Of course you need some nutrients in the system and there is such thing as having "too-clean" of a tank which is why I feed my corals daily to help with the untraceable PO4 and 3ppm Nitrates.

 

[twilliard]

Well let's think a second why people say this
Is there truly anything that is a nitrate factory besides a DSB or bio balls or detritus in the bottom of the sump?
I have all of this and will never see an increase of no3. Well I don't have the bio balls or DSB
If your no3 is 0 right now the best thing in my opinion is to dose it.
Do your corals a favor and give them the blocks of life

 

[ReefMadScientist]

Well let's think a second why people say this
Is there truly anything that is a nitrate factory besides a DSB or bio balls or detritus in the bottom of the sump?
I have all of this and will never see an increase of no3. Well I don't have the bio balls or DSB
If your no3 is 0 right now the best thing in my opinion is to dose it.
Do your corals a favor and give them the blocks of life

Hey and I have a DSB Well I think 4-5 inches is justified as a DSB.

 

[twilliard]

Hey and I have a DSB Well I think 4-5 inches is justified as a DSB.

Well don't stir it! Lol

 

[ReefMadScientist]

Well don't stir it! Lol

Definitely won't. I know stirring can cause you to kill some organisms and release nasty gas into the tank. I do gravel vac every other month.

 

[twilliard]

Definitely won't. I know stirring can cause you to kill some organisms and release nasty gas into the tank. I do gravel vac every other month.

Just messing around I knew you wouldn't!
Lol

 

[Arnie]

Well let's think a second why people say this
Is there truly anything that is a nitrate factory besides a DSB or bio balls or detritus in the bottom of the sump?
I have all of this and will never see an increase of no3. Well I don't have the bio balls or DSB
If your no3 is 0 right now the best thing in my opinion is to dose it.
Do your corals a favor and give them the blocks of life

Grabbing a bottle of flourish nitrogen tomorrow... i will just start off on a 250ml or 500ml bottle... would do adjustments slowly....using seachems dosing formula (.05 X tank gallons X desired nitrate level = ml amount to dose) luckily my bubble coral and mushroom are still alive...

 

[twilliard]

Grabbing a bottle of flourish nitrogen tomorrow... i will just start off on a 250ml or 500ml bottle... would do adjustments slowly....using seachems dosing formula (.05 X tank gallons X desired nitrate level = ml amount to dose) luckily my bubble coral and mushroom are still alive...

Yes do it slowly!
I am dosing 10Ml a day but I have many macros that suck it up (ya Russ still haven't trimmed them back)
I am switching to potassium nitrate soon because it makes financial sense
Watch you no3 close and you will be right on track.
My tank is .014 po4 and 2ppm no3

 

[Arnie]

Yes do it slowly!
I am dosing 10Ml a day but I have many macros that suck it up (ya Russ still haven't trimmed them back)
I am switching to potassium nitrate soon because it makes financial sense
Watch you no3 close and you will be right on track.
My tank is .014 po4 and 2ppm no3

Thanks.... switching from canister filter to sump filtering switched nitrate and phosphate levels around... factors if heaving a lot of macroalgae that gets rid of the nitrates and switching back to using RO water as the culprit of phosphate increase was from the tap water i was using for 6mths+

 

[twilliard]

Did you say tap water? Noo!!
Silica
Heavy metals
Chlorine!

 

[Arnie]

Did you say tap water? Noo!!
Silica
Heavy metals
Chlorine!

Yes it was my bad.. i was using RO water and stopped after having some foot problem so got lazy and used tap water instead....

 

[ReeferJohn408]

- My 10+ years experience truly justified as I read along this edifying provision.

Very well written Russ.

Thank you for your time.

 

[bneufelder]

Sounds like I need to limit the amount of cheato I have.

 

[Arnie]

Yes do it slowly!
I am dosing 10Ml a day but I have many macros that suck it up (ya Russ still haven't trimmed them back)
I am switching to potassium nitrate soon because it makes financial sense
Watch you no3 close and you will be right on track.
My tank is .014 po4 and 2ppm no3

Dosed 10ml of flourish nitrogen today... in my 80g system (65g dt + 15g sump).. hope my nitrates rises tomorrow... unless my caulerpa and chaeto takes it...lol

 

[ReeferJohn408]

When I started this hobby 10+ yrs ago I had an algae bloom on a year old sps dominated tank, didn't we all? Here comes the Rookie mistake...

IMMEDIATELY I made some ADJUSTMENTS, oh well a few there & here that I didn't know the real cause/solution because I was adjusting so many things all at once then Panicking and Paranoia sets in because the tank was loaded and could not afford of losing any of them or perhaps the thought of a Crashed Tank.

So I decided to take action, Stopped feeding my fish with mysis and switched down to flakes from 6x daily feeding down to 1x feeding only. Added an extra Filtration, LFS also mentioned to be careful with the GFO, I doubled the amount anyways. LEDs were not even available then so I was running 3x 400 watts Halides and instead of cutting down on the time exposure, I added an extra hour.

I thought I was doing the tank a favor of keeping it clean unknowingly that it was heading down south instead. So within that week alone, most of my SPS started bleaching from the base up even my fish started acting lethargic. The tank was cooking without the means of any nutrients intake to support them Photosynthesize.

- Algae disappeared and so 80% of my SPS. =)

LESSON LERNED EXPENSIVELY.

 

[ReeferJohn408]

Now, we have 2 SPS tanks in the house and everything is happy. Fish are feeding well ( No Food Wasted ), Corals get their goodies once a week as well. Filtration and proper maintenance are always up to date and the most important part is, WIFE BOSS IS HAPPY.

So happy that she wanted a 3rd tank and the bad part is she wants to buy all the fish ( ReefSafe ) and house them in one tiny tank ( 150G ) . Fish are friends, NOT SHOES. Of course I didn't tell her that. Tank is currently cycling and still talking her out of her obsession of housing them all in one confinement.

3rd tank cycling FOWLR