Dosing phosphates and nitrates or overfeed?

[tbrown]

I'm running super low nutrients and am just curious what everyone's opinion is.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Dosing gives better control and is likely cheaper.

 

[Uncle99]

Dosing for me, easy to control and test.
Increased feeding works but takes time and harder to scale.

 

[taricha]

dosing. Overfeeding adds a lot of organics and can bring with it more problems than controlled additions of PO4 and NO3.

 

[blasterman]

If you have soft corals like zoas feeding more, especially meaty foods pushes growth much more than nutrient dosing. LPS prefer this as well. Ask any acan if he wants some brine shrimp for dinner or boring sodium nitrate.

For SPS I would rather under feed a bit and dose a bit to keep numbers where I want. Its a lot easier to dose nutrients than remove them.

The problem with feeding to keep nutrients up is its almost impossible to keep both phosphate and nitrate where you want. I have to dose ridiculous amounts of phosphate in my SPS tank or I bottom out within days. My nitrate though is spot on at 10. Feeding more to elevate phosphate will push my nitrate up too high. So I feed to keep nitrate where I want and dose phosphate.

 

[arking_mark]

I'm in the heavy feeding / heavy exports camp.

I'm always happy feeding the fish...heavy exports take care of the extra.

I will admit that this is more of an imprecise art. When I was away for two weeks, and someone else was feeding, my PO4 bottomed out and I came back to Cyano.

My fix was more sand sifters, some eco-balance bacteria, and controlled feedings.

In two weeks since I'm back, Cyano is gone.

 

[BiggestE222]

dosing. Overfeeding adds a lot of organics and can bring with it more problems than controlled additions of PO4 and NO3.

I would just add coral foods.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

I would just add coral foods.

One issue I run into is spirorbid worms which are ugly, especially if they get massive in numbers. I notice these guys pop there heads up when I start feeding reef roids too often :/