Do I need care about bottoming out no3 and po4 if alk under 8 dkh

[JohnIsNewToReefKeeping]

do I need to care about my no3 and po4 bottoming out if I keep my alk under 8? and keep the coral no more than 300 par.
I have a large 35-gallon refugium with the Neptune light running for 8 hours. have like 13 fish and feed twice a day with pellets. I have acros and they are doing okay, they are growing. But will be dosing acropower to feed the acros. I do a 1-gallon automatic water change every day and the skimmer isn't running right now but will be getting that up to increase ph. Also will (not on for two months) put on a roller matt to take out organic matter.
Does anyone have success with this?
Dont want to chase numbers and start dosing no3 and po4 and having a more complex system.
Thoughts.

 

[bushdoc]

I do understand your "growing pains", I have similar situation. My Nitrates started bottoming down, initially from 6-4, but now at 0.6ppm, phosphate keeps around 0.05 ppm or so. No refugium, removed excess bioblocks. Could add more fish and I am planning to do it slowly. Few months ago started dosing Calcium Nitrate, got transient bacterial bloom, decreased dose and kept dosing for few more weeks. Skimmer running 16h/day, will consider returning skimmate to sump and running it only for aeration, pH control.Had some RTN/STN, which might or might not have been atributed to Nitrate dosing. Decided to stop dosing and I am watching my tank carefully. No Dinos so far, coral growing slowly. Just starting feeding coral with Reef-Roids, will see it nutrients go up.
Not entirely convinced about Nitrate and phosphate dosing in other form than as combined in food. It is very easy to over do it.
Keeping Alkalinity near 8.5. Stability and doing it slowly is my plan.

 

[JohnIsNewToReefKeeping]

Yeah, but my tests says 0 on everything so I turned off the refugium for a few days since my sps was bleaching out, but then bryopsis started to take over and my levels were still 0 so I turned the refugium on and started automatic water change of 1 gallon per day on my 200 total gallon system, which helped. Yet Im still at 0.

 

[JohnIsNewToReefKeeping]

Bump

 

[gbroadbridge]

do I need to care about my no3 and po4 bottoming out if I keep my alk under 8? and keep the coral no more than 300 par.
I have a large 35-gallon refugium with the Neptune light running for 8 hours. have like 13 fish and feed twice a day with pellets. I have acros and they are doing okay, they are growing. But will be dosing acropower to feed the acros. I do a 1-gallon automatic water change every day and the skimmer isn't running right now but will be getting that up to increase ph. Also will (not on for two months) put on a roller matt to take out organic matter.
Does anyone have success with this?
Dont want to chase numbers and start dosing no3 and po4 and having a more complex system.
Thoughts.

The problem is that if you starve organisms that require NO3/PO4 for their metabolism, you are leaving the door open for organisms that do not require those nutrients to outcompete and take over the tank.

An example could be dinoflagellates that can exist utilizing photosynthesis to survive.
Once those unwanted organisms get a foot in the door, they are difficult to eradicate.

 

[JohnIsNewToReefKeeping]

The problem is that if you starve organisms that require NO3/PO4 for their metabolism, you are leaving the door open for organisms that do not require those nutrients to outcompete and take over the tank.

An example could be dinoflagellates that can exist utilizing photosynthesis to survive.
Once those unwanted organisms get a foot in the door, they are difficult to eradicate.

Yeah I have Dino’s right now but it isn’t bad and I have a bit of cyano and somehow a bit of bryopsis, and my corals aren’t pale yet. But what happened when I turned off the refudgium light for a few days the bryopsis started taking a hold on the tank. So I think that means that there are a very sight no3 and po4 but aren’t detectable, I’m afraid if I let the nutrients rise then the other algae will take ahold of the system, and realistically I would think aslong as I’m dosing Acropower then the coral have a food sources on a daily basis. I don’t know I could be wrong but what would be the best way to increase nutrients? Dosing no3 and po4 or trying to guesstimate how much cheato to remove

 

[Reefahholic]

John,

Definitely get the nutrients up and you’ll find that your reef will do much better. You’ll probably need to dose, but definitely reduce the lighting on the fuge or scrubber down to like 4 hrs. Just enough to keep it alive, but you may need to get rid of it completely. Also, avoid water changes when you have low nutrients or Dino’s in the system. This will only make it worse. I’d would suggest to buy some Brightwell Neonitrate and NeoPhos and only raise NO3 by 1 ppm in 24 hrs and PO4 no more than .02 ppm in 24 hrs. If that is not enough you will need to put them on a dosing pump and spread out the dose. Best of luck!

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Yeah, you really should. Why wouldn’t it matter? Yes, acros aren’t as sensitive to really low nutrients if you keep alk closer to natural levels and run low light but won’t be to happy with bottomed out nutrients.
Disregarding that, the system as a whole won’t be to healthy if there are no nutrients and it leaves the door open for a select few organisms to really take over.

 

[homer1475]

You cannot starve out algae without starving your corals. Lowering nutrients to combat algae, only hurts your corals in the long term, and will do nothing to help rid the algae.

They both need the exact same things to survive. A healthy system always has some algae growing somewhere. The balancing act is to provide enough herbivores to keep the algae at bay, while still providing enough nutrients for corals to grow.