Does high nitrate cause browning of SPS?

[DracoKat]

Why do you have nitrates? Most tanks with some sand and a good portion of real live rock have no problems keeping nitrate at zero, but it can take up to a year if you left everything alone for nature to do it's thing.

Are you bare bottom? Keep minimalistic rock scape? Is your rock man made or previous dry/dead? Have you impeded he last part of the N cycle (nitrate to N gas) with organic carbon, GFO, euro dosing regime or anything? Is your tank still pretty new?

Figuring out why you have nitrates could change your approach.

I have 2-3" of sand and a bunch of real pacific live rock. No matter how much I feed, the anoxic bacteria will keep the N about .1 or lower and there is nearly nothing that I can do to raise it including adding KNO3.

In my first post, I believe my nitrates are up from overfeeding. I put in an auto feeder and it went up after that at some point. I turned it off and will use it when I am away. I never had an issue with Nitrates before, it was an ULNS.

 

[jda]

Even with overfeeding, your tank should adjust with the new fuel and be able to handle them (for the most part) if you have sufficient places for the anoxic bacteria to live. The N might elevate for a while, but the tank catches up quickly. Short of causing a huge ammonia spike, I could not add enough food to get my N over .1 or .2 - the bacteria will multiply to handle the load. P will raise, though.

The overfeeding is the trigger, not the issue or root cause. If you used organic carbon to stay ULNS, then you likely starved the anoix bacteria and your tank is behind and they need time to develop since they never did. However, if you don't have sand and used dry rock or man-made rock, then there might not be enough places for them to live. It might be smart to address some of this, if indeed any of this applies.

 

[DracoKat]

Even with overfeeding, your tank should adjust with the new fuel and be able to handle them (for the most part) if you have sufficient places for the anoxic bacteria to live. The N might elevate for a while, but the tank catches up quickly. Short of causing a huge ammonia spike, I could not add enough food to get my N over .1 or .2 - the bacteria will multiply to handle the load. P will raise, though.

The overfeeding is the trigger, not the issue or root cause. If you used organic carbon to stay ULNS, then you likely starved the anoix bacteria and your tank is behind and they need time to develop since they never did. However, if you don't have sand and used dry rock or man-made rock, then there might not be enough places for them to live. It might be smart to address some of this, if indeed any of this applies.

Hmm.. I did install a carbon reactor a few weeks ago. think that may be the cause too? Starving the tank? I installed it because my water was cloudy and I wanted to clean it up. Should I stop it and run it a few times a month?

 

[jda]

Are you talking about activated carbon? That really does not anoxic starve bacteria. Vokda/vinegar/GFO does. So does ethanol and some of the 'black box' products.

Would you care to comment on your sand, rock and past husbandry? This is more likely the root issue. If you just used the rock in your build thread, the purple has no chance at denitrifying anything. The other might, but it depends on how long it was dead and how long it has been in the tank now. 1" of sand is not effective at denitrifying anything either. If you ended up with a DSB in your sump, that can do some good if it is good enough and and has had a year, or more, to grow unimpeded. If all of this is still right, then there are natural ways to address if you are wanting some ideas... perm solution, but they will take a while.

 

[DracoKat]

Are you talking about activated carbon? That really does not starve bacteria. Vokda/vinegar/GFO does. So does ethanol and some of the 'black box' products.

Would you care to comment on your sand, rock and past husbandry? This is more likely the root issue. If you just used the rock in your build thread, the purple has no chance at denitrifying anything. The other might, but it depends on how long it was dead and how long it has been in the tank now. 1" of sand is not effective at denitrifying anything either. If you ended up with a DSB in your sump, that can do some good if it is good enough and and has had a year, or more, to grow unimpeded. If all of this is still right, then there are natural ways to address if you are wanting some ideas... perm solution, but they will take a while.

Sure, I'll try to be detailed. Thanks!

The tank is 75g with 30g sump- running for just over a year now.
Sand is about 1-1.5" deep. Sump has 2.5-3" Deep sand. Chaetos don't seem to survive long with me.. it was doing great for a while, then in the past month dwindled to nothing. I leave the sump sand alone with tons of bristle and pods. DT sand I blow off with turkey baster here and there.

I have about 50-lbs of LR (may be more, I didn't weigh it). I am not exactly sure what rock they are, but there's pics in my build thread when it was dry. Some were purple rocks. Rubble and few small rocks in sump (took some rock out of sump recently due to aiptasia).

I do about 10-15% water changes about 2x a month (considering it WAS ULNS, I didn't want to do too much WC). Now I am doing it weekly- 10-15%.

Equipment my sump:
Skimmer was previously run at night to try to bring up some nutrients. its back on 24/7 as of few days ago.
I use filter floss, no socks. Change weekly.
Added Carbon reactor about a month ago, using BRS's ROX Carbon media. cleaned weekly.

Dosing with Calcium and Alk (BRS 2 Part). Nothing else dosed in at least a month.

 

[DracoKat]

the attached pic you can see the ratio of purple vs non-purple rock. I guess it's about 50/50

 

[jda]

The purple rock has no ability to control nitrates. The epoxy that they color it with seals the inside from being able to let water into it.

1" of sand will not do much for denitrification. 2-3 can get the job done pretty well, as long as it is not 2" everywhere.

If your chaeto was dying when you were not changing water, then this is common. The chaeto uses up all of the iron and the only way to get it back is in water changes. Most people don't know to dose iron when they do chaeto or to step up their water changes. Too high of N can kill macro too.

If you into this for the long term, I would add more sand and sell the purple rock and replace it with real pacific live rock. Boat rock is about $2 a pound, is phosphate free and very porous and is a great addition to your tank - it does need cured. I would also consider more rock unless you really love the scape.

 

[Scorpius]

^ Most of us have nitrates. Yippy you don't. lol

 

[a6walter1]

Nitrates are most certainly not the issue... Your issue is PO4. The reason I know is that I am having the same issue right now. Over the past 2 years I have experimented with ULNS, high nutrients and anywhere in between. I have found that Nitrate has little to no negative effects on coral until it gets higher than 50ppm and even at that point it is hit or miss whether it causes issues. Phosphate is the big culprit. I recently tested my PO4 because my corals started browning out and had terrible polyp extension and it was up to 0.25. The sweet spot i have found for PO4 is 0.05-0.1, that way the corals have enough phosphate to feed themselves, but its not enough to cause issues with growth or coloration.

 

[jda]

I do agree that PO4 is a big issue at .25. However, I am kinda sick of hearing that elevated NO3 is not an issue. Certainly, it does not have to be very low or near zero, but if you look at the best of the best tanks, it is nearly always under 5. I am not talking about the article about "old timer parameters" or whatever it is... those are just crazy where yes, Dr. Joshi get good color out of some stags and the corals THAT DID NOT DIE when he switched from his MH to Radions (he lost all of his Milles, deepwaters and many others that would not color up over 20 nitrate even if they lived). Read the threads of Ed, Copps, Joe and take a look at their tanks. Also, check out some of the tanks from Europe with awesome color. You might see some outliers, but the vast majority of tanks that keep the hardest acropora will N all under 10 and most under 5. You can do Ok with some corals with nitrates over 20... but if you get them under 5, you can do well with anything.

 

[a6walter1]

I can agree with that as well, I'm not saying high nitrates are good, i think the sweet spot is 5-15ppm.

I also want to point out that the bacteria you were talking about living in the rock does not get rid of nitrate, on the contrary, it produces nitrates. It takes the waste (ammonia) (toxic) and converts it to nitrite (toxic) then to nitrate (not toxic), the nitrate is then consumed by tank inhabitants.

 

[jda]

That is not true. While you are right, there is another step that you are missing. When you get deep enough and the oxygen is all gone, the bacteria in there will convert NO3 to N gas. These are called Anoxic or Anaerobic bacteria. This is just a little way past the bacteria that you reference that turn NO2=>NO3 where the oxygen is. The proximity of these two has tremendous synergy since healthy rock can do both almost at once since they are right next to each other. These anoxic bacteria that are SO important that are in the deeper parts of the sand and in the rocks in the deeper parts. The vast majority of nitrate that is take care of in the reef aquarium is by the anoxic bacteria.

Without much sand or rock that is not effective (man-made, dry/dead, non-porous), there is no place for the anoxic bacteria to grow... but the people who sell you this stuff oft forget to mention this. I better stop... I can go on for days about selling some of this rock for profit and actually hurting most (not all, for sure) who buy it.

 

[a6walter1]

I know what you mean about charging a premium for "crappy" rock. Its funny because the "better" rock is typically lighter, since it is much more porous that the heavy rock. This is one thing i didnt know when i first got into the hobby, and actually used texas holey rock in my reef :O

 

[2Wheelsonly]

I do agree that PO4 is a big issue at .25. However, I am kinda sick of hearing that elevated NO3 is not an issue. Certainly, it does not have to be very low or near zero, but if you look at the best of the best tanks, it is nearly always under 5. I am not talking about the article about "old timer parameters" or whatever it is... those are just crazy where yes, Dr. Joshi get good color out of some stags and the corals THAT DID NOT DIE when he switched from his MH to Radions (he lost all of his Milles, deepwaters and many others that would not color up over 20 nitrate even if they lived). Read the threads of Ed, Copps, Joe and take a look at their tanks. Also, check out some of the tanks from Europe with awesome color. You might see some outliers, but the vast majority of tanks that keep the hardest acropora will N all under 10 and most under 5. You can do Ok with some corals with nitrates over 20... but if you get them under 5, you can do well with anything.

Wwc runs 10-15 no3, not many people do corals better than them, I also believe battlecorals keeps higher.

I worked hard to run ULNS for years and it did nothing but cause issues for me. Was very hard to keep corals alive while keeping solid and stable params. I took the advice of some guys at WWC and let my nitrates rise and am sitting at 20. I have zero traces of nuisance algae and my rocks are spotless and my corals looks amazing. So much vivid bright colors, growth and pe. I'm growing corals I never could keep alive before. I keep my po4 around 0.02-04.

I am 100% convinced his problem is not no3 but rather p04. I think keeping nitrates close to 0 is a silly thing to do. Wish I knew that years ago, is such bad and tired advice that people need close to 0 to grow sps.

 

[jda]

Who said to take N to zero? I don't think that anybody did, but perhaps I missed something. There is a big difference between 2-5 and zero. I think that most specifically stated not to do that. While the acropora in the ocean THRIVE at near-zero N and P, I think that a hobbyist needs a really good reason to do this, but it can have amazing results if done correctly.

BTW - everybody that I mentioned does corals better than WWC. This is not really a fair comparison... they have closed environments and shops have a lot changing all the time. Shops also have to sell things that they would do differently if they did not. They have a really nice shop the three times that I have been in there, but it is no comparison to a high-end hobby tank.

 

[happyhourhero]

I think the best course of action was covered pretty well early on in the thread. I agree you should slowly bring the p04 down and get the nitrates down to less than 10. You could throw a marinepure block in your sump to make up for the live rock in the DT. Could look into carbon dosing if your skimmer is up to the task.

Adding more flow never hurts too.

 

[Brew12]

Not to sidetrack this discussion too much, but there is more to nutrients and NO3 than just what you measure in the water. If you feed heavily and have a lot of algae in your tank you can get a test showing 0ppm NO3 and still have a high nutrient system. The coral just needs a chance to absorb the nutrients before the algae consumes all of it. If you don't have much algae or other nutrient export capability and feed very lightly and have 0ppm then you could have a problem with low nutrients.
The important thing is to know your system. Water testing is just one piece of information that you can use and provides a snapshot of that specific moment in time.

 

[DracoKat]

I actually had to go back to the beginning of this thread and re-read all. Who knew it'd be a popular topic?

Thank you again to everyone who has voiced their input!

My nitrate went down a little. its around 30 now. Need to drop it a bit more. Doing it slow as I can and wll worry about phosphate after that's down

 

[Dom]

I am trying to figure out how to get my SPS to color up in my 75g tank. They are all rather dull brown and green. I'd like some help to figure it out. Other than the blah colors, they're all growing and polyps are extended beautifully. My Softies and LPS is doing amazing, bright and growing.

The only thing that I see is "wrong" with my tank in my testing is my Nitrate is high at 40ppm. it wasn't always this high, it went up when I added my auto feeder. I cut this back thinking that's the culprit as nothing else has been added to the tank. Additionally I am upping the water change to bring it down more. (I believe the autofeeder is the cause)

Nitrite-0
Nitrate- 40
Phosphate- .25
Calcium-470 (dosing)
Alk- 7.8 (dosing)
Mag- 1600 this spiked recently)
Ammonia is 0
Salinity .025
PH- 8.0

Lighting is 4-ATI Bulb (2 blue+, Coral+ Purple +) and SBar Actinic.

30 gal sump, running skimmer at night and recently installed Carbon reactor (about a month ago). Macro (including chaetos) always grow, then die on me (you'd think with nitrates, they'd do well).

I was supplementing with this https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/coral-system-500-ml-package-korallen-zucht.html
But after over 3 months of not seeing any changes, I stopped it.

Can someone help me with coloring my SPS? Do I need better lights, if so, which ones?

The only way that I could see high nitrates causing a browning of your coral is that high nitrates cause algae growth. Perhaps the browning you're seeing is just brown algae growing as a result of the high nitrate and not causing the actual pigmentation of the coral to change.

 

[DracoKat]

The only way that I could see high nitrates causing a browning of your coral is that high nitrates cause algae growth. Perhaps the browning you're seeing is just brown algae growing as a result of the high nitrate and not causing the actual pigmentation of the coral to change.

good thought, but I don't think so. I don't see any algae in the tank, at least none that's worrysome.