Benefits of Higher Nitrates and Phosphates for softies?

[LRT]

In particular Mushrooms?
I continue to see people stating they are running higher nutrients for softies.
Can someone please break it down to me why?
Is it because softies use different nutrients because of soft tissue like hard skeleton corals use calcium etc?
Try to wrap my head around it all.
How does it work?
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

 

[Spare time]

I think that this is a common misconception of what "dirty" water means. From my understanding, corals like lps (the article I read specifically referred to lps) and softies get this rep because they live in places with lots of particulate matter, which is food that they can catch similar to what reef roids and other products try to replicate. This does not mean that you have high amounts of nitrate and phosphate flooding the water. That scenario would be disasterous. However, we are not replicating nature in our tanks. I also think they get the reputation from that they (sofites) can tolerate dirty water better than other corals. I can't imagine any organism likes to be floodd with oxidants. While they can tolerate it, it likely would slow down their growth as they begin to host too much zooxanthellae (at least I know this happens to stony corals. I am not sure if corals can purge excess zooxanthellae in scenarios like this as I do not know a scenario in the wild where they would have selective pressure to have dump zooxanthellae other than bleaching.

I would just have some detectable nitrate as these corals can grow fast, and need a present nitrogen source.


Again, anyone can feel free to correct me or debate me on this as have only read limited scholarly journals on the matter.

 

[Angelwolf21203]

I don't know the answer to your question, but coincidentally, my tank is mostly softies including several mushrooms, and they are thriving. My PO4 has been running about .25 and my nitrates are usually around 80ppm.

 

[Katrina71]

I can only tell you from my own experience, but mine are happiest with nitrates at 10.

 

[LRT]

@Spare time Crazy thing happened recently when I overdosed Nitrates beyond undetectable levels.
Some of my mushrooms became super vibrant and perked up and never looked better.
However some of them I probably toasted and will lose.
At the same time raising my Nitrates to undetectable levels completely depleted my phosphates.
Not sure how all that coincides together I wish someone would write a Nutrients for dummies book that breaks it down to a 3rd grader!
All experiences and comments welcome please.

 

[LRT]

I don't know the answer to your question, but coincidentally, my tank is mostly softies including several mushrooms, and they are thriving. My PO4 has been running about .25 and my nitrates are usually around 80ppm.

.025 or .25..
I was running .025 phosphates with 0 nitrates before the recent nitrate overdose.
Got my nitrates around 15 ppm. About to dose potassium phosphates to bring it back up slowly.

On edit: Your response is greatly appreciated. Can I see some pix of your shrooms?
I am 99% mushroom dominant in my system and this is particularly what I'm after!

 

[blasterman]

I've had zoa and paly garden tanks so dense you cant see rock and grew them so fast I threw cuttings away that most reefers would kill for. All by driving up nitrate to double digits and keeping phosphate elevated. Also iodine. I recently sold a rock full of utter chaos palys the size of quarters because I pumped them up with nutrients like steroids. They dont grow near as large or as fast in my low nutrient tank.

Go snorkeling along the coast and you will see the increased bioload along coastal run offs and sewers. This is not a myth. Shrooms love nitrate.

The problem is high nutrient levels can will create a time bomb and cause nuisance algae outbreaks that can out compete softies via biological warfare and shut them down.

Another issue is it's easier to increase nutrients with softies than decrease. A sudden drop in nutrients with softies can cause melting and tissue loss, and reefers who try to correct nuisance algae issues with water changes exacerbate the problem.

So, run high nutrient at your own risk.

 

[NS Mike D]

Softies can do well in a wide range of parameters. I think a lot of the misconception comes from being stressed in ULN (ultra low nutrients) we see for many SPS tanks. I have had softies grow rapidly in 1ppm NO3 and 0.08 PO4. Not high nutrients at all, but not ULN either.

Higher nutrients means faster growth and since softies can tolerate higher NO3 and PO4 than say SPS, we can be less diligent with nutrient export/uptake. Also, filtration has gotten so good we can easily bottom out NO3 and PO4 which stresses corals.

Light is another factor. Lights have gotten to the point we can overload corals (even. kill them) with too much light so light should be also be in balance with nutrients.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Many soft corals also do not as readily feed on plankton as many hard corals (at least from my observations of them), so soft corals may naturally get more of their N and P from nitrate and phosphate.

 

[LRT]

Hi @Randy Holmes-Farley. Thank you for your response sir.
As far as mushroom corals and any other softy I have in my system.
I can say beyond a doubt that they do and will eat reef roids readily. Apparently it's made up of plankton and zooplankton according to ingredients.
I have mine on a regular diet of reef roids and mysis shrimp currently and most eat daily honestly.
Just got done feeding reef roids. Many different species here.

Do you know if there is any literature anywhere explaining anything on how or whether or not soft corals uptake and use Nitrates and Phosphates?
Aside from my feeding of reef roids and mysis shrimp I did just recently experience and clear and noticable explosion of growth on some. Probably because they where running at 0 nitrates for awhile idk?
As well as different fluorescent coloring coming through in the last week that was not present until I raised my nitrates in this one in particular-

Some pictures of them feasting on reef roids-

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'm not sure what you are asking exactly. There are lots of papers that show the uptake of ammonia, nitrate, and phosphate in hard and soft corals, including discussion of what sorts of uptake transporters are involved.

Here's one for a hard coral:

Control of phosphate uptake by zooxanthellae and host cells in the scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata

Error - Cookies Turned Off

aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

"Transporters in the animal and the algae presented different affinities for phosphate, with higher half‐saturation constants for the animal compartment than for the isolated zooxanthellae "


and a soft coral:

Inorganic nutrient availability affects organic matter fluxes and metabolic activity in the soft coral genus Xenia

Inorganic nutrient availability affects organic matter fluxes and metabolic activity in the soft coral genus Xenia | Journal of Experimental Biology | The Company of Biologists

jeb.biologists.org

"Our data strongly indicate that the corals during experimentation were more limited by the availability of inorganic phosphate than by ammonium. Previously, it has been demonstrated that elevated ambient ammonium as well as phosphate concentrations may trigger a significant increase in photosynthesis, chl a tissue content and zooxanthellae abundance in several scleractinian species "