Exporting NO3

[loftreef]

I am having issues reducing Nitrates. The tank is a little over a month old, 13.5 evo.

Lighting: AI Prime 16HD
Filtration: bio media, chamber 2 basket with chemipure elite, floss and more media. I ran the Fluval PS2 skimmer for about a month but tuning it got ridiculous and I figure I can achieve the same thing by keeping up with water changes on this small of a tank.
Livestock: 2 baby clowns, 1 duncan, 1 frogspawn, 6 head zoa, 1 head blasto, xenias, 1 LTA 6-8" in diameter (i know)
Temp always remains between 77.5 and 78.5 depending on my AC's cycle.
I have embedded my parameter history, all measurements taken with Salifert tests. WCs are typically around 30%. Also included a FTS with dirty glass.

The tank was set up with Carribsea "Liferock" and CarribSea "live sand". All livestock is flourishing, corals are extended to the max during the day. LTA has found a spot and is colorful, expanded, and exhibits a vicious feeding response. I do still have diatoms, which I presume is due to the high no3/po4 and silicates from the sand. They seem to be on their way out though. I do not have any algae besides that.

I feed the clowns a little pinch of flakes twice a day (its all they will eat). I target feed the corals and nem with brine/mysis every few days, lets say 1.5 times a week. I remove the nem poop when I see it.

Am I overfeeding the corals/nem? Will this level of NO3 affect my livestock's quality of life? Am I missing some place that no3 is being generated?
Should I even be worried about this?

Edit: water is RODI generated with RO Buddie from municipal tap water. Always tests 0 TDS but I have never tested fresh RODI for nitrates, I figured that it included in TDS. Salt is fluval sea salt. Those frag plugs at the front of the tank were left there because I figure at this time the tank demands biodiversity.

 

[homer1475]

At 17.5 I wouldn't be worried about it one bit.

Probably over feeding a bit, but I take the approach of feeding the tank, and not the fish or corals directly. I just heavily feed the entire tank.

Up your WC schedule(I would probably do 5gallons a week), and change that filter floss every other day will help.

 

[Dennis Cartier]

I agree. If your tank was hanging out at 40 or 50 nitrates on a sustained basis, then I would be concerned. Especially for the Nem, but at 17.5, not an issue.

You may want to try adding some easy SPS, like Monti's, to help use up the left over nitrate. Cyphastrea will also flourish with slightly dirty water. As you don't need to directly feed Monti's or Cyphastrea, they will be a net consumer and help to balance your nutrients.

Dennis

 

[Bayareareefer18]

I have a 45G AIO. I run the brightwell xport biocubes. Can't say for certain they are the true cause but my nitrate stays stable around 5. I have seen it go up a bit but it dropped back down so has to be something xporting

 

[Uncle99]

17.5 N at just over a month, that’s pretty good!
I would do nothing different and just let that age.

 

[loftreef]

Thanks for all the replies!

 

[MabuyaQ]

The thing I would be 'worried' about is the low PO4 as this seems to now be close to zero, but first start testing this as often as NO3 and the others so you get a clear picture on what the value and stability is.

General rule I stick to, and has proven to keep nutrient imbalance based pest (dino's, cyano and algae) away and coral colors vibrant, is for every ppm of NO3 have (almost) 0.01 ppm PO4 , never let PO4 get below 0.03/0.02 ppm or over 0.1 ppm. So with 17ppm NO3 it would be better to have PO4 at or near 0.10 ppm (this would help bring NO3 down as well).

New rock and sand can both be a source of PO4 or bind PO4, I think yours are currently binding PO4 causing this inbalance, so actually dosing a small amount may be helpfull to keep it stable and at a slightly higher level untill your sand and rock have 'absorbed' enough to keep it stable without dosing.

To be certain though you need to monitor PO4 more frequently.

 

[loftreef]

Thanks @MabuyaQ , some research after you mentioned maintaining a ratio led me to the Redfield ratio which seems similar. Although, with my level of NO3 I would end up with 1.7ppm of PO4 if I were to chase that ~10:1 ratio
I will see about slowly raising my PO4 and see if I get some favorable changes. I had been wondering about the lack of algae in my tank...

I have also removed the Chemipure Elite w/ GFO, I grabbed it without much research in an attempt to remove nutrients but certainly isnt helping with the phosphate/nitrate balance

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

IMO, it is a meaningless exercise to target nutrient ratios of any sort.

It makes far more sense to target both nitrate and phosphate to desirable levels, rather than force a ratio that might have both too high or too low, but still a "great" ratio. So what purpose is a ratio at all if you reject them based on the absolute values and not the ratio?

 

[MabuyaQ]

Thanks @MabuyaQ , some research after you mentioned maintaining a ratio led me to the Redfield ratio which seems similar. Although, with my level of NO3 I would end up with 1.7ppm of PO4 if I were to chase that ~10:1 ratio
I will see about slowly raising my PO4 and see if I get some favorable changes. I had been wondering about the lack of algae in my tank...

I have also removed the Chemipure Elite w/ GFO, I grabbed it without much research in an attempt to remove nutrients but certainly isnt helping with the phosphate/nitrate balance

The ratio is 100:1 so you are looking for 0.17 ppm PO4, but I consider this to high as it goes beyond the 0.10 threshold. So that 0.10 ppm max PO4 is the target you aim for, which may already help bring NO3 down (and if it doesn't bring NO3 down, you have created the possibility to use a carbon source to bring down NO3 without lowering PO4 to zero).

 

[loftreef]

Small update: Brought PO4 up to 0.05ppm from 0 (hanna ULR). Never seen my frogspawn and duncan open this much they seem to be loving it.
I will continue to target non-zero values within ranges and ignore any ratios, thanks all
(cloudiness is from me messing around in the sand earlier)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks for the update!