Nano Tank Struggles

[Charlie’s Frags]

yeah, I have been slowly trying to increase nutrients but I’m honestly more scared of that then lowering alk. I’m going to try both in concert I just feel like I’m feeding the tank a **** ton of food and nothing happens. I add around 1/4 of a cube of frozen mysis, ~2 ml of phyto daily and a small amount of reef roids and some other powdered food I can’t remember 3 times a week. I was dosing amino acids too but I forgot to keep up with that.

All I do is feed my 15 fish frozen mysis.

The only thing that makes me nervous in this hobby is having nutrients as low as yours. Your tank is too clean for long term coral health.

 

[Gk5321]

All I do is feed my 15 fish frozen mysis.

The only thing that makes me nervous in this hobby is having nutrients as low as yours. Your tank is too clean for long term coral health.

I’ll try it out starting today.

 

[xCry0x]

It's a funny thing in the hobby, I'm mentally shifting myself to needing more nutrients.

I've had algae issues for years and always operated with the mindset that if I have algae problems then I have nutrient issues.

A month ago I did a flucanazol treatment to knock out GHA in my tank (5 year old tank) that was starting to get bad.

With the GHA gone my nutrients were still stripped.

0.0 nitrate and near undetectable phosphate (19 ppb).

Oh, and after the flucanazol treatment I ended up growing dinos.

So now I'm working on getting nutrients back up and firmly switched my beliefs from algae = dirty nutrient rich water.

 

[Hooz]

Raise your nutrients by doubling (halving?) your WC schedule and doing everything else the same as you are now. If you change water weekly, do it every 2 weeks. Every 2 weeks? Switch to monthly.

I had to do that in my nano anemone tank because I couldn't keep detectable nutrients at all. I was stuck on the weekly water change thing, but found that by doing them less frequently, my tank actually did better. I'm in the process of setting up a 10g SPS only tank, and I'll do the same with it.

 

[xCry0x]

Raise your nutrients by doubling (halving?) your WC schedule and doing everything else the same as you are now. If you change water weekly, do it every 2 weeks. Every 2 weeks? Switch to monthly.

I had to do that in my nano anemone tank because I couldn't keep detectable nutrients at all. I was stuck on the weekly water change thing, but found that by doing them less frequently, my tank actually did better. I'm in the process of setting up a 10g SPS only tank, and I'll do the same with it.

Too funny.

My first nano tank 10 years ago was almost completely neglected and was completely fine.

I didn't test anything. I did water changes when I remembered.

I had like 5 fish in a 20g AIO cube.

Coral grew fine. Only issue I had was when I removed my 6 line wrasse and then all the nasty critters went nuts without the wrasse police keeping them in check. ( Zoa eating nudies and monti eating flatworms both materialized shortly after wrasse was removed)

 

[Gk5321]

So do you guys think I should be testing alk, and nutrients daily while doing these changes? From what I’ve read before (obviously it can be different) ideal for sps is something like 3-5 ppm NO3 and 0.03 (or 0.3 I can’t remember) ppm phosphate.

I’ve thought about dosing nitrate and phosphate too becuase apparently that’s a thing now. It just seems like it wouldn’t be a good solution for my tank becuase of how small a dose it needs unless I start diluting things, which sounds more involved than I want to get into.

 

[Hooz]

Too funny.

My first nano tank 10 years ago was almost completely neglected and was completely fine.

I didn't test anything. I did water changes when I remembered.

I had like 5 fish in a 20g AIO cube.

Coral grew fine. Only issue I had was when I removed my 6 line wrasse and then all the nasty critters went nuts without the wrasse police keeping them in check. ( Zoa eating nudies and monti eating flatworms both materialized shortly after wrasse was removed)

Yeah. I started reef keeping in the mid 90's when everyone thought you had to have no nutrients. Took a break in the mid 2000's for about a decade, then got back in and people are running with actual nitrates and phosphates?!

When I started a 10g anemone tank, I thought I'd need to be religious on my water changes. I changed 2g of water every week, like clockwork. Everything did for crap in the tank, even though the water was pristine. Turns out it was too pristine.

Now I test weekly and change the water only when it actually needs it. Things are going much better for me.

 

[Hooz]

So do you guys think I should be testing alk, and nutrients daily while doing these changes? From what I’ve read before (obviously it can be different) ideal for sps is something like 3-5 ppm NO3 and 0.03 (or 0.3 I can’t remember) ppm phosphate.

I’ve thought about dosing nitrate and phosphate too becuase apparently that’s a thing now. It just seems like it wouldn’t be a good solution for my tank becuase of how small a dose it needs unless I start diluting things, which sounds more involved than I want to get into.

How often do you test now? Currently, in all my tanks, I run nitrate around 10 and phosphate anywhere under .1 with .05 being a nice target. I test alk, nitrate and phosphate weekly and calcium and magnesium every few weeks unless something seems off or I am adjusting dosing or something..

 

[Gk5321]

How often do you test now? Currently, in all my tanks, I run nitrate around 10 and phosphate anywhere under .1 with .05 being a nice target. I test alk, nitrate and phosphate weekly and calcium and magnesium every few weeks unless something seems off or I am adjusting dosing or something..

I test alk nearly everyday becuase I assumed that’s where my problem was becuase of burnt tips. Everything else maybe 2-3 times a week. I’ve known about the low nutrient issues I just didn’t know how to solve it without major changes. I’m going to try letting the tank get a bit dirtier now that everyone is saying the same thing.

speaking of which, I just tested nitrate with my Hannah checker and I’m now at 0.15 ppm from 0.06 ppm yesterday.

 

[Hooz]

I test alk nearly everyday becuase I assumed that’s where my problem was becuase of burnt tips. Everything else maybe 2-3 times a week. I’ve known about the low nutrient issues I just didn’t know how to solve it without major changes. I’m going to try letting the tank get a bit dirtier now that everyone is saying the same thing.

speaking of which, I just tested nitrate with my Hannah checker and I’m now at 0.15 ppm from 0.06 ppm yesterday.

I've found that the best, least shocking way to raise nutrients is to just keep doing what you're doing with regards to feeding and dosing and just slow down on the water changes. That way the nutrients come up gradually, and you get a feel for how long it takes for them to get "too high" based on everything you already do.

 

[xCry0x]

I've found that the best, least shocking way to raise nutrients is to just keep doing what you're doing with regards to feeding and dosing and just slow down on the water changes. That way the nutrients come up gradually, and you get a feel for how long it takes for them to get "too high" based on everything you already do.

Also been amazed at how quickly I can go from "I need to dose nutrients" to "I need to reduce nutrients" from simply adding another fish or two.

My personal nutrient deficit was largely due to losing livestock over time, not replacing anything, and not really thinking of the negative impact of having "less".

 

[Gk5321]

Also been amazed at how quickly I can go from "I need to dose nutrients" to "I need to reduce nutrients" from simply adding another fish or two.

My personal nutrient deficit was largely due to losing livestock over time, not replacing anything, and not really thinking of the negative impact of having "less".

I thought about adding another fish but the tank is just too tiny for what I have in there now. I had an appropriately small fish (tail spot blenny) but it didn’t do well with the high flow. The clown could care less.

 

[Rick5]

From what I’ve read before (obviously it can be different) ideal for sps is something like 3-5 ppm NO3 and 0.03 (or 0.3 I can’t remember) ppm phosphate.

If this is a dry rock setup, you likely cannot safely operate within that range unless your throughput is significant (but given your tank size, that probably isn’t the case).

I would change the filter floss less frequently.

 

[Gk5321]

If this is a dry rock setup, you likely cannot safely operate within that range unless your throughput is significant (but given your tank size, that probably isn’t the case).

I would change the filter floss less frequently.

It’s dry rock that I’ve seeded with various critters from IPSF and algae barn. I also dropped a tiny piece of rock from WWC they gave me when I stopped by their shop.

 

[Perry]

I’m not a believer in don’t “correct” too much too fast. Change it if it needs to be changed. Don’t worry about “alk swing”paranoia, especially if you’re lowering it.

Man Charlie, I thought my tank was packed, lol... Looking good

 

[Gk5321]

Just an update for anyone that wants it. I lowered my alk and have been feeding more. I took out any carbon and dropped my skimming time to around 10 hours at night. So far, my acros are dying pretty quickly and I still haven’t been able to raise nitrate or phosphate.
I think I may return to my old routine and values and then slowly start dosing nitrate and phosphate. I don’t know why I can’t get nutrients to increase, but I don’t want to continue this routine and have everything die.

 

[Rick5]

7 gallons is an extremely unforgiving amount of water volume. (Did I read that right?) I am not suggesting it cannot be done, but you have very little room for error. Having that said, if your tank is empty or nearly empty (in terms of coral) and it were me, I'd order some live rock, assuming you're really committed to making 7 gallons work. Either the Australian stuff that's been going around or the Florida stuff.

The smallest volume I can recall (personally) successfully keeping SPS in was about 20 gallons and while it was fun and looked neat, it was more work than when I had ~180 gallons or my current volume of about 39 gallons (Red Sea XL200).

 

[Gk5321]

7 gallons is an extremely unforgiving amount of water volume. (Did I read that right?) I am not suggesting it cannot be done, but you have very little room for error. Having that said, if your tank is empty or nearly empty (in terms of coral) and it were me, I'd order some live rock, assuming you're really committed to making 7 gallons work. Either the Australian stuff that's been going around or the Florida stuff.

The smallest volume I can recall (personally) successfully keeping SPS in was about 20 gallons and while it was fun and looked neat, it was more work than when I had ~180 gallons or my current volume of about 39 gallons (Red Sea XL200).

My tank is filled already with coral and live rock. The sps were growing well I was just a bit put off my color and recognized it had something to do with nutrients being low. I tried lowering alk and raising nutrients but it ended up killing some of my acros. I think the most controlled way for me to get parameters right is to dose. I may just dilute whatever nutrient solutions I get so the values in the tank don’t depends on a single ml of a chemical. But yeah it’s a tiny water volume (the tank is 9 gallons but I’ve worked it out to be 7 gallons of water from monitoring the supplement changes over time with what I dose). I like the challenge but I’m also in law school so it’s a bit hard to handle both.