Cant keep nitrates. Sps not super happy

[brahm]

hmm, do you feel your non-sps corals are looking off as well? I see you have mostly softies/lps etc. SPS are typically more tolerant of a cleaner system than a lot of the other corals you have in that tank. Your system is pretty mature, and for the amount of fish you have does sound light you aren't feeding as heavy as you could get away with. If all your other corals are fine and it's only your SPS (Acros or ??) I'd be looking at what other things might be fluctuating that might impact your more sensitive corals. I'd also be auditing my equipment if you haven't recently who knows what might be awry after 10 years. Your tank doesn't have that sterile starved look to it at all. Are you running carbon? Do you see things "perk up" when you water change? At 10 years old what have you done so far to combat OTS. Could it be time for some new bac, replace a little rock, etc?

 

[brahm]

also noticed you said you have a fuge, could also half your algea / cut the time back.

 

[VanDalsenReef]

Lower fuge lighting / dose ab+ daily wil get them up. Or go crazy with feeding / dosing neo nitro

I used ab+ sladly nothing, great idea though

 

[VanDalsenReef]

hmm, do you feel your non-sps corals are looking off as well? I see you have mostly softies/lps etc. SPS are typically more tolerant of a cleaner system than a lot of the other corals you have in that tank. Your system is pretty mature, and for the amount of fish you have does sound light you aren't feeding as heavy as you could get away with. If all your other corals are fine and it's only your SPS (Acros or ??) I'd be looking at what other things might be fluctuating that might impact your more sensitive corals. I'd also be auditing my equipment if you haven't recently who knows what might be awry after 10 years. Your tank doesn't have that sterile starved look to it at all. Are you running carbon? Do you see things "perk up" when you water change? At 10 years old what have you done so far to combat OTS. Could it be time for some new bac, replace a little rock, etc?

all my equipment is cleaned and up to date with replacemnt parts and such, Lps are eh, pale as well. nothing happens after a water change ( I really just do them cause im bored). I don't believe in OTS, I think that's just LAR. I run carbon to keep the water clear. If I feed more pellets most fall into rocks and no reason to waste food. The picture doesn't do much justice. It doesn't look that nice in person. I actually have more sps believe or not (count wise). I think I techinically have more zoas kinds.

 

[VanDalsenReef]

also noticed you said you have a fuge, could also half your algea / cut the time back.

I did try that a while ago and got no affect but could try again and see

 

[brahm]

Tried amino acids? What’s in the array of coral foods. Heh letting over feeds rot away is one way to raise nutrients (not that I’d recommend it) .

I don’t really see pale colours in your photo but I don’t know how they looked before. When I compare to say a zeo tank or something like this (not saying it’s a bad thing) but def on the lighter nutrient side of thing. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/my-new-sps-tank.674002/

Are they more greyd / washed out?

or bleached

curious if you have a good clean up close photo of a coral that Can convey the issue you have

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I run gfo for phosphates but kinda getting bored with it as it doesn't seem to drop them under 0,04

I never run gfo (never will) and only run carbon if I need to remove something from the water. Never more than a couple days.

 

[polyppal]

start dosing daily ab+ or reefroids... will take care of your low nitrate problem

Do you have some source of major nitrification, like lots of bio-media/bio-pellets/? If there is a ton of it, that might be consuming the nutrients. Your tank looks great otherwise though, any particular reason your worried about the levels?

 

[C. Eymann]

Synthesis by aquavitro is a great product for raising nitrates and not affecting phos phosphate.
It's a blend of urea and free nitrogen made for planted tanks, it's what we use at TSA.

You could also just (carefully) dose ammonia

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Synthesis by aquavitro is a great product for raising nitrates and not affecting phos phosphate.
It's a blend of urea and free nitrogen made for planted tanks, it's what we use at TSA.

You could also just (carefully) dose ammonia

What dosage of the synthesis do you use?

 

[Pntbll687]

Synthesis by aquavitro is a great product for raising nitrates and not affecting phos phosphate.
It's a blend of urea and free nitrogen made for planted tanks, it's what we use at TSA.

You could also just (carefully) dose ammonia

You can also use Seachem Flourish Nitrogen to raise nitrates

 

[t5Nitro]

My tank shows no nitrates because of algae consuming it. I think input and output is more important than a steady state of 15ppm nitrate. Just dose a few ppm daily or every other day and feed a lot. The corals will respond.

 

[Pntbll687]

Here's the flourish nitrogen page, there's a calculator if you scroll down under the "directions" section

Seachem - Flourish Nitrogen

seachem.com

Here's the page on synthesis. No calculator, but it looks to be 2x stronger than flourish nitrogen

aquavitro - synthesis

 

[ReefGeezer]

What kind of lighting? Could bulbs/diodes be getting old?

You probably have about as many fish as the system should support, particularly as the larger species grow. BUT... you may not have enough fish to provide ammonia for all the corals to use. More feeding may not increase available ammonia because of that. It may raise phosphates though. You might consider dosing ammonia rather than increasing feeding.

 

[VanDalsenReef]

What kind of lighting? Could bulbs/diodes be getting old?

You probably have about as many fish as the system should support, particularly as the larger species grow. BUT... you may not have enough fish to provide ammonia for all the corals to use. More feeding may not increase available ammonia because of that. It may raise phosphates though. You might consider dosing ammonia rather than increasing feeding.

2 orphek compacts, 4orphek or120 blue and 2 kessil 360

 

[Pntbll687]

What kind of lighting? Could bulbs/diodes be getting old?

You probably have about as many fish as the system should support, particularly as the larger species grow. BUT... you may not have enough fish to provide ammonia for all the corals to use. More feeding may not increase available ammonia because of that. It may raise phosphates though. You might consider dosing ammonia rather than increasing feeding.

Agreed

This is why I dose Flourish Nitrogen from Seachem. Provides both nitrate and ammonium.

One thing that I wrestle with is... Could we get the same results as feeding more by simply dropping a whole shrimp into the sump, and let it decompose?

 

[ReefGeezer]

Agreed

This is why I dose Flourish Nitrogen from Seachem. Provides both nitrate and ammonium.

One thing that I wrestle with is... Could we get the same results as feeding more by simply dropping a whole shrimp into the sump, and let it decompose?

If you are dosing enough of the Flourish, nitrogen probably isn't the problem. It looks like the corals that use dissolved//particulate organic compounds are doing well , so amino acids probably won't help. Phosphate seems ok. In the picture, the water looks a little cloudy... could PAR be low due to the cloudiness?

 

[ReefGeezer]

Agreed

This is why I dose Flourish Nitrogen from Seachem. Provides both nitrate and ammonium.

One thing that I wrestle with is... Could we get the same results as feeding more by simply dropping a whole shrimp into the sump, and let it decompose?

IMO, a simple ammonium chloride solution is a more direct and controllable option.

 

[J1a]

I just dose ammonium chloride to supply nitrogen element to my corals

 

[FreshCoastReef]

I'm curious how this situation shook out for you @VanDalsenReef?