IS GFO and no nitrate the culprit to undesirable colored corals?

[Dilan Patel]

After reading Russ265's post on nutrients It got me thinking. Is GFO really hurting more than helping? From what I understand corals need food and that comes in a couple of ways. Light,fish poop,coral food(coral frenzy),and nitrate and phosphate. So if you run a ULNS it will deprive corals of the basic essentials for color and growth. Thus why the idea of ideal parameters have changed over the years to become around 2-4ppm of nitrate and around .02ppm of phosphate is what I have gathered from numerous posts.

So my question is, is GFO only good for taking down the phosphates if they rise too high. But if you take them down too quickly couldn't that be detrimental to the equilibrium of the tank. I am just trying to decide if I should take my GFO offline and only use it when I need it instead of running it 24/7.

 

[Brew12]

After reading Russ265's post on nutrients It got me thinking. Is GFO really hurting more than helping? From what I understand corals need food and that comes in a couple of ways. Light,fish poop,coral food(coral frenzy),and nitrate and phosphate. So if you run a ULNS it will deprive corals of the basic essentials for color and growth. Thus why the idea of ideal parameters have changed over the years to become around 2-4ppm of nitrate and around .02ppm of phosphate is what I have gathered from numerous posts.

So my question is, is GFO only good for taking down the phosphates if they rise too high. But if you take them down too quickly couldn't that be detrimental to the equilibrium of the tank. I am just trying to decide if I should take my GFO offline and only use it when I need it instead of running it 24/7.

I'm not a coral expert but I can speak from experience when I say that adding too much GFO too quickly will kill coral. They don't like the rapid drop in phosphates.

GFO is a tool that only hurts or helps based on how it is used. If you want to run a true ULNS then you are basically pulling all the nutrients out of the water as quickly as possible which does deprive the coral. To make up for this you need to feed the coral to make up for the nutrient poor water.
GFO can also be used in non ULNS. If you heavily feed or have rocks that leach phosphates you can use just enough GFO to pull some, but not all, of the phosphates out of the water. If you run too much GFO and don't make up for the lack of nutrients in the water in other ways you will have problems. Some bacteria's thrive when NO3 and PO4 are out of balance.

Not sure if that helps.

 

[hart24601]

In my tank I show below, what I found to work best for colors was detectable nitrate (just a little bit, under 5pmm and ideally under 1ppm - more isn't better - just need some) and 0 phosphate on hanna ultra low. I could actually tell when to change my GFO because I could see acros start to brown when levels rose just a little beyond detectable. I think people lump phosphate and nitrate together when making changes to a tank, but for my, in this system, it was only nitrate. That will vary between setups, but for me GFO was key.

I did feel the tank and the coral a lot. IMO there was plenty of phosphate in the system, but it was used fast enough that my ultra low would test 0 and anything that wasn't used quickly was bound by the gfo.

No photoshop, just white balance on the camera:

 

[Dilan Patel]

How do yall detect nitrates below 5ppm I am using red sea's test kit.

 

[40B Knasty]

After reading Russ265's post on nutrients It got me thinking. Is GFO really hurting more than helping? From what I understand corals need food and that comes in a couple of ways. Light,fish poop,coral food(coral frenzy),and nitrate and phosphate. So if you run a ULNS it will deprive corals of the basic essentials for color and growth. Thus why the idea of ideal parameters have changed over the years to become around 2-4ppm of nitrate and around .02ppm of phosphate is what I have gathered from numerous posts.

So my question is, is GFO only good for taking down the phosphates if they rise too high. But if you take them down too quickly couldn't that be detrimental to the equilibrium of the tank. I am just trying to decide if I should take my GFO offline and only use it when I need it instead of running it 24/7.

GFO gets a big thumbs down from me. Melted a yellow hammer and gold torch. In 3hrs Dang you Petco and your advice! Try the Chemi Pure Elite.. Yeah great idea ;Shifty

 

[40B Knasty]

How do yall detect nitrates below 5ppm I am using red sea's test kit.

ELOS Nitrate test kit. 0, 1, 2.5, 5, 10, & 20ppm on the color coated chart. NIST certified reagents. Can't go wrong. Did a video on YouTube for the kit check it out. 40B Knasty ELOS Nitrate Test Kit.

 

[hart24601]

Salifert. I look for just a hint of color.