I feel like reef sales people want us to starve our corals with these kinda statements
- Thread starter FugeTown
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Yes, starve them so they die off, and you have to buy more. lol
danreefman
Valuable Member
All it says is keep nitrates and phosphate low. If you keep reading it says they benefit from food.
The trick is finding a happy place where corals get food without all the nitrate and phosphate. Refugiums, skimmers (some of us like oversized), carbon, water changes, ect. All help.
The trick is finding a happy place where corals get food without all the nitrate and phosphate. Refugiums, skimmers (some of us like oversized), carbon, water changes, ect. All help.
Or they just haven't updated their overview in years. If you are relatively new to the hobby you may not be aware 0/0 phosphate / nitrate was considered ideal for quite some time. The thing was most people were not able to achieve this so trying for 0 just meant you were keeping things low but not too low. Old phosphate kits before photometers became popular were also very inaccurate.
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Agreed. I'd guess they just haven't updated their info recently. I will add that coral should be fed sparingly. They get most of what they need from photosynthesis.
melanotaenia
Well-Known Member
In NSW the concentrations of P04 and N03 tend to be very low, but not zero; this is precisely what they are saying in the description. Not sure how they are being misleading or suggesting we starve our corals.
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FugeTown
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Yea but natural sea water has a lot of plankton for them to feed on and idk about yours but mine doesn’t and I don’t plan on colonizing them in my tank. My tank isn’t even close to a NSW scenario so I have to continue making sure my nitrates are at least 5 because my corals seem to be much happier with the nutrients . Phosphate on the other hand I can see keeping close to zero in a reef tank because when they get too high it’s algae city. I can just see this misleading a lot of people saying close to zero as possible and for example I contacted customer service because I was having an issue with a new birdsnest frag and they said I need to drop my Nitrates because 2.5 was a little high but the problem only turned out to be placement in the tank which I figured out by moving it till it was happy. If I would of dropped my Nitrates below 2.5 corals would of started to starve. They need to eat too.
BeejReef
2500 Club Member
That's a great point. All of a sudden, with the popularity and advances in fuge lighting, "as close to 0 as possible" took on a whole new meaning.
motortrendz
2500 Club Member
That's just crazy saying nitrates of 2.5 are too high. Between 5-10 and po4 between .04-.08 has been my sweet spot and what I've always recommended for years now. ULNS like zeovit systems, the corals are always on the verge of failure bc they're so thin... but that system works bc you are adding the exact elements and amount of nutrients you need and not a drop more.
I think that statement they have is accurate, I might change the verbiage a bit to say something like close to, but not 0.
Many times with information we see pendulum swings. Something isn’t good, or something is good so the advice tends to swing to the extremes before settling in the middle.
Many times with information we see pendulum swings. Something isn’t good, or something is good so the advice tends to swing to the extremes before settling in the middle.
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