Help Me Start Managing Nitrate and Phosphate

[Travis Wagner]

Hello! I’m looking for guidance as I start trying to actively manage my phosphate and nitrate levels. I’ve had my take running for about three years now and have been maintaining steady parameters with a refugium, skimmer with CO2 scrubber, carbon, and calcium reactor as follows-

Alk: 8 to 8.5
Ca: 400-450
Mg: 1350-1320

Temp: 77-78
pH: 8.0-8.2
Salinity: 1.026

I’d like to start managing nitrate and phosphate levels in the range of 10-15 and .08 to 0.16, respectively (just based on reading around the forum). I’ve got Hanna Phosphate and Nitrate checkers. Can someone walk me through what to do once I get my initial readings? Do I need to dose something to adjust? How do I actually control the levels and keep them consistent?

 

[SPR1968]

To control and maintain the levels it’s just a matter of having systems in place, wether mechanical or biological, to manage the levels, in particular export methods (assuming your not trying to increase them) for each

For nitrate, you can use products such as Seachem Matrix, marine pure etc to increase the bacteria levels for denitrification within the system, theres also carbon dosing for example Red Sea Nopox.

I use a lot of Seachem Matrix and have found it very effective

For phosphate I prefer to use rowaphos (GFO) to keep phosphate locked down below around 0.03 which is a good target to keep unwanted problems at bay. Carbon dosing may bring it down a little, but personally I’ve not found it effective

You can also do water changes to keep levels down which is the simple way depending on the size of the actual tank. The general guide is 10% so then you hopefully won’t affect the water parameters to much

 

[Reef.]

All depends what your levels are, you may need to do very little or a lot, I would post your figures then go from there as there are many ways to do it, no point going through all of them if half are not suitable.

 

[blitzkragz]

My phosphate went to 0 a few weeks ago because of my overgrown refugium and I had a massive and destructive dino outbreak.

Since then I have been dosing nitrate and phosphate using loudwolf sodium nitrate and trisodium phosphate to increase no3 and po4 to about the same range you mentioned above. The dinos are gone and the tank is recovering nicely. My levels have stabilized and now I only test every few days vs every day when hand dosing to gradually get the levels back up.

If you search around there should be some threads on how many grams to use to increase levels a certain amount for a certain gallonage.

Also I would recommend the Nyos nitrate test vs the Hanna if you are going to often be checking for levels > 5ppm.

 

[Travis Wagner]

Update for my first test results:

phosphate 0.12
nitrate 0.03

Now what do I do? I have access to gfo, neonitro, and neophos.

 

[Reef.]

Update for my first test results:

phosphate 0.12
nitrate 0.03

Now what do I do? I have access to gfo, neonitro, and neophos.

nitrate getting quite low I would watch that.

po4 is not too bad, if no algae then no rush to lower it fast, I use Rowa in a media bag, just check on one of the calculators how much to use, test every day whilst it’s in there so it doesn’t go to zero.

you are in a good place I would say, just need to get the PO4 down a little, a lot of people aim for .03-.1 so you are nearly there.

 

[William Morris]

To control and maintain the levels it’s just a matter of having systems in place, wether mechanical or biological, to manage the levels, in particular export methods (assuming your not trying to increase them) for each

For nitrate, you can use products such as Seachem Matrix, marine pure etc to increase the bacteria levels for denitrification within the system, theres also carbon dosing for example Red Sea Nopox.

I use a lot of Seachem Matrix and have found it very effective

For phosphate I prefer to use rowaphos (GFO) to keep phosphate locked down below around 0.03 which is a good target to keep unwanted problems at bay. Carbon dosing may bring it down a little, but personally I’ve not found it effective

You can also do water changes to keep levels down which is the simple way depending on the size of the actual tank. The general guide is 10% so then you hopefully won’t affect the water parameters to much

Do you rinse the Matrix once in a while?
Or do you change it out when it's dirty?

 

[Reef.]

Do you rinse the Matrix once in a while?
Or do you change it out when it's dirty?

Rinse, normally at water change is a good time.
If you wanted too as it seems rinsing isn’t doing it, when just change a few pieces each time you rinse, pick out the worse ones. But rinsing should be enough.

 

[SPR1968]

Do you rinse the Matrix once in a while?
Or do you change it out when it's dirty?

You can do, I don’t, well rarely, and you should never need to change it out it’s basically stone, provided you can keep it reasonably clean.

 

[William Morris]

Short video on Seachem Matrix

 

[Travis Wagner]

Status update! I started having a slow growth of hair algae. Phosphate was 0.6 with a Hanna checker and has since dropped to 0.14 using RowaPhos in a reactor. I believe the change in phosphate has also caused a return in Dinos which are adhering to the glass. Initial test with nitrate was 0.09 using a Hanna checker and confirmed to be near 0 with an API kit. I added enough NeoPhos to get the level to 5ppm and will recheck tomorrow.