If it ain't broke? Elevated Nitrate and Phosphate but no algae

Calm Blue Ocean

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Just did my weekly water tests and I continue to be disappointed by my numbers.

Nitrates (Red Sea) probably pushing 30 (guess the color) and Phosphates (Hanna ULR Phosphorus) hit 200 which is the max - 0.613ppm. Both have been climbing since bottoming out last September (fought dinos in December).

It feels like now we're starting to snowball which is beginning to make me panic except...the tank doesn't look bad. Algae isn't out of control, I even find myself supplementing my urchin. But I'm sure there is a breaking point here.

Weekly water changes aren't cutting it. I tried GFO and again saw little change if any. I'm considering NO3:pO4-X or Phosphāt-E but I'm worried about upsetting a system that still shows hints of dinos.

Tank is 11 months old, started with dry rock.
 

KrisReef

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Interesting. How many fish, how much are you feeding them?
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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Interesting. How many fish, how much are you feeding them?

I have 6 fish in a 50 gallon tank - YWG, 2xOcellaris clownfish, Pink Streaked Wrasse, Red-Lined Wrasse, Midas Blenny. Plenty of scavengers to cleanup leftovers - Red Legged Hermits, 2 peppermint shrimps, about a dozen nassarius snails
They get a pinch of ReefNutrition pellets in the morning and about a quarter to a third of a cube of frozen mysis at night.
 

KrisReef

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I have 6 fish in a 50 gallon tank - YWG, 2xOcellaris clownfish, Pink Streaked Wrasse, Red-Lined Wrasse, Midas Blenny. Plenty of scavengers to cleanup leftovers - Red Legged Hermits, 2 peppermint shrimps, about a dozen nassarius snails
They get a pinch of ReefNutrition pellets in the morning and about a quarter to a third of a cube of frozen mysis at night.
A pinch of food does not sound like you are over feeding to drive up the phosphate levels to what you are seeing. I feed more fish a lot more food everyday. I control phosphate with GFO in an external filter. I use a lot of GFO!

My nitrates seem to stay very low (10ppm or less) by the live rock filter. The lack of nitrates is why I feed so heavy. My system took a few years to get to where it ate the nitrates. I only do water changes to help keep minor elements in the tank. I have a calcium reactor that adds alk & Ca.
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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A pinch of food does not sound like you are over feeding to drive up the phosphate levels to what you are seeing. I feed more fish a lot more food everyday. I control phosphate with GFO in an external filter. I use a lot of GFO!

My nitrates seem to stay very low (10ppm or less) by the live rock filter. The lack of nitrates is why I feed so heavy. My system took a few years to get to where it ate the nitrates. I only do water changes to help keep minor elements in the tank. I have a calcium reactor that adds alk & Ca.

Food sometimes vanishes so fast I worry I didn't feed enough. Filter floss gets changed out every two or three days. 10% water change weekly. Perhaps I was being too conservative with the GFO. I was running it passively using the GFO from the Innovative Marine PurityPack.

I did recently get a biome test from AquaBiomics that indicated that I had an unusually low level of diversity in my tank so it's possible my water quality issues are due to a problem at the biological level. I've added some live rock rubble and recently added about a dozen coral frags to increase the diversity but I imagine correcting something like that will take time. I'm just hoping my tank doesn't implode before that happens.
 

attiland

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A pinch of food does not sound like you are over feeding to drive up the phosphate levels to what you are seeing. I feed more fish a lot more food everyday. I control phosphate with GFO in an external filter. I use a lot of GFO!

My nitrates seem to stay very low (10ppm or less) by the live rock filter. The lack of nitrates is why I feed so heavy. My system took a few years to get to where it ate the nitrates. I only do water changes to help keep minor elements in the tank. I have a calcium reactor that adds alk & Ca.
I am no expert but some say raising nitratee help reduce phosphates.

on the other hand why don’t you try a algae reactor is scraper?

that works for a lot of people. I am waiting for mine too for similar reasons
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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I am no expert but some say raising nitratee help reduce phosphates.

on the other hand why don’t you try a algae reactor is scraper?

that works for a lot of people. I am waiting for mine too for similar reasons

I'm a bit reluctant to go with anything that involves pumping water out of the tank since it's an AIO (these are the days I wish I'd gone with a sump). But it's not a solution I'm ruling out. My old tank had a truly massive Xenia colony that I credit with keeping parameters in check. Definitely worth doing more research on algae reactors and the like.
 

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Are you experiencing any problems with your tank? If not, I'd say just leave it be. I've been battling high nutrients for as long as I can remember. Tried everything, nothing seemed to do the trick and it's exhausting. I now run high nitrates (20 - 30+) and phosphates (>0.8) all the time and my tank is doing mighty fine. Only algae I ever get is a green film on the glass. Corals are growing and looking great.
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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Are you experiencing any problems with your tank? If not, I'd say just leave it be. I've been battling high nutrients for as long as I can remember. Tried everything, nothing seemed to do the trick and it's exhausting. I now run high nitrates (20 - 30+) and phosphates (>0.8) all the time and my tank is doing mighty fine. Only algae I ever get is a green film on the glass. Corals are growing and looking great.

From everything I read I should be having all sorts of problems. GHA should be taking over the world. But it's not. The tank looks pretty darn healthy (knock on wood). Corals are growing, next to no algae, even the glass stays clean, and I have a healthy 'pod population. Doesn't make sense but clearly not necessarily the end of the world.
 

Bars

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From everything I read I should be having all sorts of problems. GHA should be taking over the world. But it's not. The tank looks pretty darn healthy (knock on wood). Corals are growing, next to no algae, even the glass stays clean, and I have a healthy 'pod population. Doesn't make sense but clearly not necessarily the end of the world.
Yep, that's what I always thought as well. Appearantly that's not always the case. I don't care about my nutrients anymore, as in chasing numbers. I run a DIY ATS and that's keeping everything in check.

This was the tank in february (+ 2 weeks worth of film algae). A few weeks after the lighting upgrade. I've got new heads growing and splitting everywhere now.
20210217_112712.jpg
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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Yep, that's what I always thought as well. Appearantly that's not always the case. I don't care about my nutrients anymore, as in chasing numbers. I run a DIY ATS and that's keeping everything in check.

This was the tank in february (+ 2 weeks worth of film algae). A few weeks after the lighting upgrade. I've got new heads growing and splitting everywhere now.
20210217_112712.jpg

I just checked out your build thread. Beautiful tank, your corals definitely seem happy with your approach!
 

Uncle99

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Can you increase your surface area in terms of rock or marine pure. That, seeded 24 hours with bottle bacteria should move your nitrates ( and some phosphate) downwards.

If you can’t lower the input, increase the export beyond current level.
 

DrMMI

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After battling dinos last summer, I stopped doing water changes and was dosing nitrates. Due to blindly believing my reefbot results, I accidentally ended up with nitrates of over 100ppm. Phosphates were over 1ppm. In all honesty though, my tank never looked better. All my euphillya were filled out completely, my btas were all bubbled, and my sand was as white as white can be. But I was worried about my shrimp so I did 30% water changes everyday for a week until my nitrates got down to 10ppm. I seriously wish I hadn't. Dinos came right back and I haven't been able to fully eradicate them since.
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

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Can you increase your surface area in terms of rock or marine pure. That, seeded 24 hours with bottle bacteria should move your nitrates ( and some phosphate) downwards.

If you can’t lower the input, increase the export beyond current level.

I do have Marine Pure gems and live rock rubble in my filtration chamber. Definitely considering adding more.
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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After battling dinos last summer, I stopped doing water changes and was dosing nitrates. Due to blindly believing my reefbot results, I accidentally ended up with nitrates of over 100ppm. Phosphates were over 1ppm. In all honesty though, my tank never looked better. All my euphillya were filled out completely, my btas were all bubbled, and my sand was as white as white can be. But I was worried about my shrimp so I did 30% water changes everyday for a week until my nitrates got down to 10ppm. I seriously wish I hadn't. Dinos came right back and I haven't been able to fully eradicate them since.

Definitely an argument for if it ain't broke don't fix it! Particularly when dinos are involved.
 

Uncle99

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I do have Marine Pure gems and live rock rubble in my filtration chamber. Definitely considering adding more.
Those are great, you just can’t get that amount of surface area in anything else. You just need a higher population of the good guys, those who process those nitrates into nitrogen gas. That’s what goes on inside rock.

Super charge your filter anytime nitrate rises.

Phosphate just mop that up with GFO, but leave a trace.
 

KrisReef

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Pretty healthy discussion regarding how to stay calm when your numbers could trigger a panic reaction.
Last year I decided to try boosting the microbes in my system after reading similar threads including thoughts by AquaBiomics and some others. I ordered mud and pods from https://floridapets.com and “dumped” the mud into my sump/tank. I can’t say it helped, I didn’t get a microbe panel test before. I may get one soon just to see what the diversity looks like now?

I try to keep phosphate low, but detectable and I’m hoping eventually to have phosphate also more low/stable and self maintained if I can.
 

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