How much Nitrate in an LPS and Softie dominant tank is considered too high? Mine are between 20 - 50 ppm and after spending months with Nitrate at 0, I am not sure if I want to lower it.
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I had similar experience with my 29 gallon tank, I let things slide, all my LPS and zoas gone, but discoma mushrooms, nepthia, colt, brown palys unaffected by 30ppm nitrates and phosphates at 1ppm and GHA growing everywhere. When I started to get my tank back together I had a frammer frag in those high conditions and grew very well.My nitrates and phosphates recently got out of control (lazy reefer syndrome) with nitrates maxing out at 55pm and phosphates around 0.3ppm. Pretty much all of my softies were fine including zoas, mushrooms, xenia, toadstool leather, etc. However, most of LPS did not like it at all save for a small hammer frag and my blastos. I lost a duncan, frogspawn, plate coral, bubble coral, and a platygyra/brain coral. I also experience an explosion of bubble algae. I can't for sure it was the high nitrates or high phosphates that did the most damage, but I know the LPS were not happy with the nutrients that high. I've since gotten them back down to under 10ppm nitrates and under 0.10ppm phosphates and everything is much happier. I would say an ideal target for softies LPS would be 10-20ppm nitrates and 0.03-0.15ppm phosphates.