High Nitrate and Phosphate

hsosa

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you can reduce your overall light schedule from 12- 9hrs if u don't have any corals. better skimmer . I would also double check your water test . ICP test to verify. u want to have all ur parameters constant . especially salinity . calcium is too hight u will kill coral at that high of calcium
 

EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal

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Hey guys, new to the forum, and for the sake of simplicity id consider myself a novice in the hobby as well, despite having had a tank prior to this one. My current 60 gal tank is just a few months under a year old. I haven't been in a huge rush to stock the tank so I currently have 2 clowns and a hippo tang, and no coral. Was just about to start getting my stocking underway but my nitrates and phosphates are pretty high. Nitrates were in the 50ppm range and phosphates in the 0.4 range when i started testing a month or 3 ago. At the recommendation of an LFS I started dosing ESV B-Ionic transition elements plus as per the directions on the bottle. I used it for a little over a month without any change in my parameters so I have since stopped (unsure if the right thing to do).

What I find bizarre is that my tank (to me) looks and seems pretty healthy. The tank is spotless aside from the sand browning a bit between water changes, all my cleanup crew guys SEEM great, my fish seem active and healthy. I do a 10% water change each week fairly consistently though I have missed a week a few times. I change my filter sock every 3 days, my skimmer seems to be producing well. I have since started to feed every other day to see if that helped, which i don't like the idea as i feel like im starving the fish (maybe not).

i test with Hannah products, and to illustrate my current timeline, on Nov 13th my nitrates tested at 54.3 and phosphate at 0.26. I missed last weeks water change. After doing the water change this past Sunday my reading as of today are 57.4 nitrate and 0.48 phosphate. The only thing i did different was i disturbed the sand bed quite a bit with this weeks water change so maybe i released some stuff, but im not sure that would explain the consistently high numbers.

After reading through similar issues I've seen lots of people saying to shoot for equilibrium and not chase numbers which makes sense. Am i in that equilibrium since everything seems healthy? Or should i continue attempting to reduce these numbers before stocking more fish and coral? Any advice would be greatly appreciated as its stressing me out lol. Thanks in advance.

Todays Readings:

Temp: 78.7
PH: 7.89
Alk: 6.73
CA: 640
MG: 1185
Nitrate: 57.4
Phos: 0.48
salinity: 1.024
I personally see no problem with your N/P. Unless you're planning on having ULNS coral, these numbers are fine, and once you do add coral you'll likely see a decrease since they use the nutrients as food.

Edit: your Alk is pretty low - I'd worry more about that than the other levels.
 

EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal

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Would it be as simple as just tossing some chaeto in or would I have to prepare a proper fuge? I have a apex system, my alk was way higher initially, so I just stopped dosing for a few weeks, ill def make adjustments for those. My PH fluctuates, rarely peaking at 8.0. Im planning on running the air intake to outside my house in an attempt to raise that. Thanks for the suggestions!
If you have no coral, why would you need to dose??
What salt do you use? You haven't mentioned having anything in your tank that would be depleting your Alk/Mg
 
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Dan_of_Earth

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If you have no coral, why would you need to dose??
What salt do you use? You haven't mentioned having anything in your tank that would be depleting your Alk/Mg
at the advice of an LFS I was dosing to get the alk,calc, and mag to a baseline level in preparation for adding coral. So currently I don't have any. I was planning to start adding but was worried about the N/P. I had considered that, to start adding and as i do the N/P would drop, but i was hesitant, as i didn't wanna put frags in just to kill them. I don't plan on getting any ulns corals, at least for the time being. Just planning on doing some LPS and softies.

As for salt, I use Trop Marin pro reef.
 
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so to update you, tested my nitrates again today and they have risen to 60.7 lol. Just a steady rise. I truly don't understand. I have read that a tank will generally see the effects of something like 2 weeks after the fact. Not sure how accurate that is, but last Sunday during my water change I stirred up the sand bed pretty dramatically. So maybe that. Idk I'm stumped. Worst hobbyist ever :crying-face:
 

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so to update you, tested my nitrates again today and they have risen to 60.7 lol. Just a steady rise. I truly don't understand. I have read that a tank will generally see the effects of something like 2 weeks after the fact. Not sure how accurate that is, but last Sunday during my water change I stirred up the sand bed pretty dramatically. So maybe that. Idk I'm stumped. Worst hobbyist ever :crying-face:
Are you using RODI or tap water?

I'd do a 30-50% water change (salt mixed with RODI) to reduce nitrates and bring your other parameters down/up to more appropriate levels. Test the parameters of your tank and the fresh saltwater prior to the water change ... I still don't see how your Alk and Mg are so low with no corals...
 
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Dan_of_Earth

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Are you using RODI or tap water?

I'd do a 30-50% water change (salt mixed with RODI) to reduce nitrates and bring your other parameters down/up to more appropriate levels. Test the parameters of your tank and the fresh saltwater prior to the water change ... I still don't see how your Alk and Mg are so low with no coral
 
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ill do a big water change this weekend. I have an RODI system that I've changed the filters on fairly recently. My talk was WAYYY higher, and I turned the dosing off for a while which brought it to the level its at. What ALK level would you recommend? I think 8.6 was what the LFS suggested. So ill reprogram my apex to get it to dose shooting for a higher level.
 

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Don’t even worry about it! I can’t get mine down and I am dosing mb7, vodka and running chateo with an oversized skimmer and rawaphos… current test show nitrates around 90 “sailfert” and po4 at .54 lol… per Hannah meter.. my Sps are getting super colorful and my lps are loving it! I bought my tank used as fowlr and it’s spotless like yours but crazy numbers when testing
 
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Don’t even worry about it! I can’t get mine down and I am dosing mb7, vodka and running chateo with an oversized skimmer and rawaphos… current test show nitrates around 90 “sailfert” and po4 at .54 lol… per Hannah meter.. my Sps are getting super colorful and my lps are loving it! I bought my tank used as fowlr and it’s spotless like yours but crazy numbers when testing
yea..thats what i keep hearing, "if it ain't broke don't fix it". But I am worried I'll start adding frags just to have them die. Hard to tell without any coral currently in there.
 

Troylee

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yea..thats what i keep hearing, "if it ain't broke don't fix it". But I am worried I'll start adding frags just to have them die. Hard to tell without any coral currently in there.
Grab a couple easy and cheap tester pieces.. give them a couple weeks and everything checks out go full bore! That’s what I did haha…. I didn’t even have a test kit till like a week ago! I let the corals do the talking..
 

HankstankXXL750

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Don’t even worry about it! I can’t get mine down and I am dosing mb7, vodka and running chateo with an oversized skimmer and rawaphos… current test show nitrates around 90 “sailfert” and po4 at .54 lol… per Hannah meter.. my Sps are getting super colorful and my lps are loving it! I bought my tank used as fowlr and it’s spotless like yours but crazy numbers when testing
I would be really concerned at 90 nitrates. Possible that your corals have adjusted. I have a FOWLR tank that I have GSP in and it does amazing at the higher nutrients, but added some athelia and Cespitularia and they actually melted under the high nitrates. I considered them bullet proof and pulled a couple of rocks out of my reef as they were growing so strong.

If adding corals to a high nutrient system I would say they would need a really thorough acclimation.
 

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I would be really concerned at 90 nitrates. Possible that your corals have adjusted. I have a FOWLR tank that I have GSP in and it does amazing at the higher nutrients, but added some athelia and Cespitularia and they actually melted under the high nitrates. I considered them bullet proof and pulled a couple of rocks out of my reef as they were growing so strong.

If adding corals to a high nutrient system I would say they would need a really thorough acclimation.
I have over 30 Sps and a bunch of lps and I’ve lost one single frag of a wild acro my buddy gave me.. everything is doing amazing! Colors are crazy and stuff growing and encrusting without any issues.. just an example of one of my corals. This isn’t my first rodeo but def my first rodeo not chasing numbers lol.. my last 500 gallon Sps system was a ulns system and tons of work before I took a long break..
2DD19682-CB0A-4EC6-97D6-FABB55FCF421.jpeg
869F0004-3A77-4FD2-80CD-C0EC3666977A.jpeg
 

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Hey guys, new to the forum, and for the sake of simplicity id consider myself a novice in the hobby as well, despite having had a tank prior to this one. My current 60 gal tank is just a few months under a year old. I haven't been in a huge rush to stock the tank so I currently have 2 clowns and a hippo tang, and no coral. Was just about to start getting my stocking underway but my nitrates and phosphates are pretty high. Nitrates were in the 50ppm range and phosphates in the 0.4 range when i started testing a month or 3 ago. At the recommendation of an LFS I started dosing ESV B-Ionic transition elements plus as per the directions on the bottle. I used it for a little over a month without any change in my parameters so I have since stopped (unsure if the right thing to do).

What I find bizarre is that my tank (to me) looks and seems pretty healthy. The tank is spotless aside from the sand browning a bit between water changes, all my cleanup crew guys SEEM great, my fish seem active and healthy. I do a 10% water change each week fairly consistently though I have missed a week a few times. I change my filter sock every 3 days, my skimmer seems to be producing well. I have since started to feed every other day to see if that helped, which i don't like the idea as i feel like im starving the fish (maybe not).

i test with Hannah products, and to illustrate my current timeline, on Nov 13th my nitrates tested at 54.3 and phosphate at 0.26. I missed last weeks water change. After doing the water change this past Sunday my reading as of today are 57.4 nitrate and 0.48 phosphate. The only thing i did different was i disturbed the sand bed quite a bit with this weeks water change so maybe i released some stuff, but im not sure that would explain the consistently high numbers.

After reading through similar issues I've seen lots of people saying to shoot for equilibrium and not chase numbers which makes sense. Am i in that equilibrium since everything seems healthy? Or should i continue attempting to reduce these numbers before stocking more fish and coral? Any advice would be greatly appreciated as its stressing me out lol. Thanks in advance.

Todays Readings:

Temp: 78.7
PH: 7.89
Alk: 6.73
CA: 640
MG: 1185
Nitrate: 57.4
Phos: 0.48
salinity: 1.024
With numbers such as what’s posted I would assume testing error .
how did you get cal 640 are you dosing any calcium products ?
I would get a second opinion for all
Tests

I keep my parameters at
Alk :7.5dkh
Cal :425 ppm
Mag : 1350-1450 ( I rarely ever test )
Ph : ( never test )
Nitrates acceptable range for nsw alk 5-10ppm But mine is <5ppm
Phosphates 0.03-0.1 ppm mine is always closer to 0.1
 

Sisterlimonpot

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Can we all take a step back here? I read the first post and skimmed through a lot of the rest.

Unless I missed something, you're N and P seem to be fine. Your current fish and invert stock is keeping the main display free of algae. And despite popular belief your N and P are prime for corals. They actually want nutrients. Artificially lowering them to achieve some arbitrary number is asinine, following that advice will lead you down a rabbit hole of problems.

My advice is to dip your toe and add a coral, see how it does, after few weeks then you can start to develop a game plan.
 

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Can we all take a step back here? I read the first post and skimmed through a lot of the rest.

Unless I missed something, you're N and P seem to be fine. Your current fish and invert stock is keeping the main display free of algae. And despite popular belief your N and P are prime for corals. They actually want nutrients. Artificially lowering them to achieve some arbitrary number is asinine, following that advice will lead you down a rabbit hole of problems.

My advice is to dip your toe and add a coral, see how it does, after few weeks then you can start to develop a game plan.
Exactly what I told him! This game has changed since my long break but mine are crazy high both no3 and po4 I tried and tried to bring them down and they didn’t wanna budge… I added a few corals and they took off so I stocked the tank head to toe haha! People are dosing so much crazy stuff now a days and bottoming out which was hard to do 10 years ago.. I guess it’s everyone starting a sterile tank instead of real live rock and bio diversity.
 

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I'm 15 yrs in the hobby and have learned not to chase ideal laboratory numbers.

I look at my corals every day and if I notice a particular week they look great, I test my po4 no3 numbers and then know that's the numbers they like.

Not some number that everyone says it should be


.
 

HankstankXXL750

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I have over 30 Sps and a bunch of lps and I’ve lost one single frag of a wild acro my buddy gave me.. everything is doing amazing! Colors are crazy and stuff growing and encrusting without any issues.. just an example of one of my corals. This isn’t my first rodeo but def my first rodeo not chasing numbers lol.. my last 500 gallon Sps system was a ulns system and tons of work before I took a long break..
2DD19682-CB0A-4EC6-97D6-FABB55FCF421.jpeg
869F0004-3A77-4FD2-80CD-C0EC3666977A.jpeg
Didn’t say that it can’t work, but I would fear putting a coral used to 10-20 nitrate to 90+ nitrate without some acclimation.
Nothing against your tank and results, but some reading this may be in their first rodeo, and might not have the skills or experience to make it work. Like many of God’s creations, corals can adapt to many different conditions.

I got some new acros as I wanted to give them a try. First attempt at some like what you are showing. Think I got lighting to high in QT and killed them off. Maybe I would have had better success if I had changed the light more slowly.
 

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Didn’t say that it can’t work, but I would fear putting a coral used to 10-20 nitrate to 90+ nitrate without some acclimation.
Nothing against your tank and results, but some reading this may be in their first rodeo, and might not have the skills or experience to make it work. Like many of God’s creations, corals can adapt to many different conditions.

I got some new acros as I wanted to give them a try. First attempt at some like what you are showing. Think I got lighting to high in QT and killed them off. Maybe I would have had better success if I had changed the light more slowly.
You’d think anyways.. I’m dumbfounded myself this go around! I know the tanks I’m getting my corals from are pretty pristine and displays etc from trusted friends.. I have zero clue what their parameters are but the only thing I’ve noticed when adding corals is they don’t do much for a week or 2 then start coloring up like crazy and take off…. I’m not trying to spread false info but this really seems to work and think today people are way to obsessed with chasing numbers and do drastic things I stead of just letting the tank do it’s thing and the corals speak for them selves.. my tank was a fowlr I purchased used and is about 10 years old.. first corals we’re added a couple months back and I never looked back..
 
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