Could this be why some corals are looking bad.

[CorbetJackson50]

Corals have taken a dive over the last few days/weeks so I started testing water.
Parameters as follows:
SG 1.025
Temp 77
Calcium 450
Alkalinity 7.7 dkh
Ph 8.1
Phosphate 0.09
Mag ? (Never tested in 20 years)

I’ve never really bottomed out on nitrates before honestly most of my life I the hobby I’m trying to bring them down. The corals most affected are sps have bleached out. Also noticed my kryptonite candy cane is deflated and unhappy most zoas and lps seem fine. If you guys think the nitrates are the culprit here what’s the best course to raise them without raising phosphates that are on the high side?

 

[jackson6745]

Too many variables to say, but likely no. You should start with and ICP test. They’re great for pointing out things that you would never find. Then look into lighting, flow, and biome related issues.

You can bump up with esv nitrate or search ammonium bicarbonate dosing on r2r.

 

[CorbetJackson50]

Too many variables to say, but likely no. You should start with and ICP test. They’re great for pointing out things that you would never find. Then look into lighting, flow, and biome related issues.

You can bump up with esv nitrate or search ammonium bicarbonate dosing on r2r.

Lighting and flow haven’t changed. Tank is well established and corals have been growing great for years. I do have some icp tests but would like to try and get a handle on it pretty quickly.

 

[jackson6745]

Lighting and flow haven’t changed. Tank is well established and corals have been growing great for years. I do have some icp tests but would like to try and get a handle on it pretty quickly.

What was nitrate last time that you tested?

Unless you run an extreme amount of par with very little feeding, you shouldn’t be bleaching sps with .05 po4 and detectable no3. Worst case maybe some lightening of colors but shouldn’t be bleaching. By all means bump your your nitrates and feed a bit more. There’s no risk by bringing nutrients up. Perhaps you’ll see a positive response.

 

[Pod_01]

Just for reference:

Corals at the time:

I tend to tun PO4 around 0.1 and try to keep it there.
NO3 I don’t get too excited, sometimes I add ammonia if corals lighten up.

Good luck,

 

[CorbetJackson50]

Just for reference:

Corals at the time:

I tend to tun PO4 around 0.1 and try to keep it there.
NO3 I don’t get too excited, sometimes I add ammonia if corals lighten up.

Good luck,

Well there goes that idea.

 

[stE26wy14]

yes, you need to aim for a 10-20 nitrate, and raise alk above 8 :D

 

[braaap]

yes, you need to aim for a 10-20 nitrate, and raise alk above 8 :D

Why? Natural Sea water is 7 alk. I run mine at 7.5-8 and have been seeing excellent growth and color. Wasn’t seeing much in the 8.5-9 range.

Personally I would say yes it is nitrate related. There is a reason most SPS keepers recommend around the 10-20 range. .9 could be error and you could be near or at zero.

 

[Nate Chalk]

How long were they suppressed.

Mine did the same thing acros peeled on bottoming out.

Just got back to .6P and 30N

 

[Nate Chalk]

My acro resume

Here's the peeler on zero

 

[Pod_01]

Well there goes that idea.

You may be N limited, for corals ammonia dosing works better compared to NO3 dosing.

Also if you have sufficient fish / snail population you may not be N limited.

 

[stE26wy14]

Why? Natural Sea water is 7 alk. I run mine at 7.5-8 and have been seeing excellent growth and color. Wasn’t seeing much in the 8.5-9 range.

Personally I would say yes it is nitrate related. There is a reason most SPS keepers recommend around the 10-20 range. .9 could be error and you could be near or at zero.

ok, never knew that always heard best was 8-12, sorry :D

 

[ReefChasers]

Why? Natural Sea water is 7 alk. I run mine at 7.5-8 and have been seeing excellent growth and color. Wasn’t seeing much in the 8.5-9 range.

It is best to think about the Nutrients the Lighting and the Alkalinity as a sort of "Three Body Problem". I think this is why people have successful tanks over a wide range of conditions but also where the complexity can come in. There are other energy factors like Flow and Temperature as well.

You can run higher alk, but usually need to accompany that with both higher nutrients and higher lighting and having a "higher energy" reef overall. Or you can run less alk, but that should also be accompanied with less nutrients and less lighting and that might be a lower energy reef overall but both can be successful. If you start to get those things inverted bad things can start to happen. For example one tank might be running High Alk and High Light for a while with High Nutrients but then one day comes along due to the success of the corals and the tank and the nutrients start to bottom out and whoops there goes the neighborhood (if you don't catch it early, anyways).

That's just how I've learned to approach it and has led to success for us here. At the same time, those issues get worse at the extreme ends so the more you can ride the middle of things the more forgiving it will be, again, this is in our experience. If you want to push Alk up to 12 I think you can get away with that under a certain set of conditions or if you want to run as low as 7 you can get away with that too under a different set of conditions.

For us, riding the middle, we tend to keep the nutrients elevated (10 nitrate, 0.1-0.2 phos -- elevated but not through the roof) the alkalinity slightly elevated 8-8.5 range (again this is elevated but not through the roof) and the lighting (a loaded topic) pushed as far as we can get away with under those conditions. We use our eyes to judge that, starting low and moving up until we feel we've hit the mark.

Hope this information help, if the nutrients are super low I'd start there for sure.

 

[Reefer Matt]

One way to find out, raise the nitrate to for a few months and see. Whatever the cause of the bleaching is, it likely won’t be a quick fix, but I think this is a good place to start. I personally have 25-40 nitrate in my lps and softy tanks.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

One thing that greatly complicates deciding whether any specific nitrate level is too low or not is that in any given tank, one cannot know how much (if any) of the coral needs are being satisfied by nitrate, as opposed to other sources such as ammonia and organics.

I recommend that folks think of nitrate as insurance that there is enough N, rather than assuming corals are actually using it.

When nitrate is on the low side, I recommend feeding more (if phosphate is also low) or dosing ammonium bicarbonate (if phosphate is at or above your target level).