Can corals become too acclimated to very little nutrients?

Kaiser · Jun 5, 2021

I've always kept my tank running triton method because school/work and having little to no water changes saves me a bunch of time. My tank has always ran practically unreadable levels of nutrients but I suspect my sps colors have always suffered due to it and I'm sure I've lost incoming corals as well. I've tried here and there to bring up my nutrients and it's always seemed to have caused me to lose sps. I recently found more time on my hands like most of us living during covid so I decided to give it another shot and bring it up. I went from running my fuge about an hour per day (I think all my GSP sucks up my nitrates and phosphates cause I used to run it for like 5 hours) to 2 hours every other day. I've increased my amino acid dosage and feed the corals about once a night. My po4 bumped up but my nitrates have stayed put so I started dosing nitrates to see if that would help. It didn't. Some of my sps look stressed/are dying, but my nitrates are only 4 and my po4 is 0.03. All of my other corals are fine but I can't seem to figure this out. Have my sps just become too adjusted to ULNS parameters?

Nano sapiens · Jun 5, 2021

Whenever something changes or goes a bit awry in my system it's nearly always the Montipora and Seriatopora that are first to show the effects.

Coral in general do become adapted to particular conditions. Every time we make changes to the system (nutrients, lighting, flow, WHY), the coral holobiont has to readjust and adapt to the new conditions. And SPS tend to be even more sensitive to changes that deviate from a long established norm.

I treat nutrients as I do any other parameter in my system. And for any parameter I change, I make the change very slowly.

blasterman · Jun 6, 2021

Basically the OP has a ULN system and brought up nutrients too fast.

This will cause havoc in SPS, especially acropora. Phosphate especially needs to be brought up gradually.

This is why many of us like nitrate level of 5-10 and phosphate around .03. It gives you the best growth and widest wiggle room for nutrient drift. ULN is like walking on a fence with two hungry alligators on either side.

Ditto on montipora. I can look at mine and determine my tank params.