Need Advise For Nitrate Phosphate Balance

[LordGman76]

.6 or so on Phosphate. Try to get to around 8-10 on Nitrates. Just clean sand and do a 50 percent water change. Then wait about a week and do a 25 percent. should be in decent shape after that. In my opinion.

 

[Jipolley]

Hoping to get Randy’s expertise here as I feeling like I’m going in circles. I have a 210 a 120 a 300 gallon sump and a 60 gallon frag tank all on the same system. Total water volume estimated at 575-600 gallons. Tanks are 18 months old. Parameters are very stable at 8.5alk, 1400 mag, 450 cal all tested daily on trident. Full of probably 400lbs live rock, SPS, LPS, and softies which all are doing well and growing. My struggle is nitrate and phosphate balance. Since im dosing I don’t do water changes. My nitrates sit between 30-35 typically and phosphate has become an issue with bottoming out regularly …both tested with Hannah testers. My goal was to get nitrates in the 10-15 range and phos .1 and under. I’ve been carbon dosing at 100ML per day DIY NoPox 500ml vinegar/400ml vodka/100ml ro water as stock solution for the last 6 months. I tried going up and down with the dose and nitrates didn’t really move. Went as high as 175ml daily and started getting white film so I dialed back to the 100ml dose. I recently added a fuge in a 5 gallon bucket full of Cheato and sea lettuce and an ATS200 algae scrubber. I’ve been running the scrubber and fuge opposite of the tank lights. That’s been going for about 2 months and still no reduction in nitrates. However major effect on phos which I expected. I’m now dosing Neophos at 30ml a day to try and keep the phos from bottoming out but since the scrubber is established and fuge is growing wildly all phos is being immediately consumed while nitrate is remaining the same. I feel like I’m at the point of overkill but dont know what to change or omit to get the.numbers where they should be. What’s the right combination ?I also run a Reef Octo SR6000 skimmer and 2 large filter socks which recently seem to overflow within 24hrs at most. Thanks in advance for any advice that can help me get these two parameters dialed in

I can only imagine its from leaching rock

 

[mike.metzger6]

.6 or so on Phosphate. Try to get to around 8-10 on Nitrates. Just clean sand and do a 50 percent water change. Then wait about a week and do a 25 percent. should be in decent shape after that. In my opinion.

I have so many nutrient export systems in place to stay away from doing water changes. For me a 50% water change and I’m looking at 300 gallons of fresh salt water which as you know isn’t an easy task by any means. I do agree that phos is my problem and I’ve actually made some progress. See most recent post.

 

[mike.metzger6]

UPDATE. so I have made some progress. I messed with the carbon dose a little more and to no avail. It doesn’t lower nitrates for me and the higher the dose I went with the worse my anenomies looked and the white haze on my glass was literally every 12 hrs. I’d have to clean the glass constantly or the tank looked cloudy because of the haze on the glass. I decided to eliminate the carbon dosing for now to lessen the amount of variables I was dealing with. Since …no white haze on the glass and anemones are rebounding. I also went from using neophos to a stronger dose of DIY phos consisting of potassium phosphate at 1Tbsp into 1000ML RO water and dosing at 10ML. I’ve been dosing that for the last 3 days. Day one no detachable phos reading. Yesterday…phos .17 and nitrates came down from 33 to 27.5. Today tested at .44 phos and 20.5 nitrate. I’ve left fuge light and algae scrubber scheduled the way they were. Just need to test once a day for awhile still and see what a happy medium is for phos and nitrate. Ideally I wanna see 10 nitrate and .05-.1 phos. Stay tuned.

 

[danlechem]

Seems like a rather steep po4 increase over 3 days. Have you noticed any adverse affects?

 

[mike.metzger6]

Seems like a rather steep po4 increase over 3 days. Have you noticed any adverse affects?

Thus far zero adverse effects. Every time I do with the Neophos., even if I kept increasing the dose, I kept coming back with a zero reading. I know the phosphate was in the system. It was just being depleted too quickly by the fuge, algae scrubber, and nopox. I was almost on the bottle, so that’s why I chose to make my own phosphate additive at a stronger dose. I knew it would take a decent amount to actually get a detectable reading. I don’t plan on going any higher with it and if it does, I’ll lower the dose. as long as I see the nitrates decreasing I’m gonna stay there until the nitrates are where I want it and then cut the dose in half and see what happens

 

[rishma]

Thus far zero adverse effects. Every time I do with the Neophos., even if I kept increasing the dose, I kept coming back with a zero reading. I know the phosphate was in the system. It was just being depleted too quickly by the fuge, algae scrubber, and nopox. I was almost on the bottle, so that’s why I chose to make my own phosphate additive at a stronger dose. I knew it would take a decent amount to actually get a detectable reading. I don’t plan on going any higher with it and if it does, I’ll lower the dose. as long as I see the nitrates decreasing I’m gonna stay there until the nitrates are where I want it and then cut the dose in half and see what happens

I find that dosing either an N source or P source, depending on which is limited, tends to pull down the other one when I am carbon dosing. I assume that will happen to some extend now that you are not carbon dosing.

When boosting phosphate I find the tank actually looks great when I overshoot my target, my corals seem to love it higher after it’s been too low; however, I get hair algae when I let phosphate linger at the higher levels. Getting the hair algae to go away in my tank takes much longer than it does to appear, so I don’t let my phosphate stay at higher levels. I usually try to bring back down to target within a week.

Once I get phosphate up, bringing it back down and easier and more predictable. I can get it to decline and monitor the trend as apposed to be stuck at zero when trying to raise it.

 

[mike.metzger6]

I find that dosing either an N source or P source, depending on which is limited, tends to pull down the other one when I am carbon dosing. I assume that will happen to some extend now that you are not carbon dosing.

When boosting phosphate I find the tank actually looks great when I overshoot my target, my corals seem to love it higher after it’s been too low; however, I get hair algae when I let phosphate linger at the higher levels. Getting the hair algae to go away in my tank takes much longer than it does to appear, so I don’t let my phosphate stay at higher levels. I usually try to bring back down to target within a week.

Once I get phosphate up, bringing it back down and easier and more predictable. I can get it to decline and monitor the trend as apposed to be stuck at zero when trying to raise it.

I agree. Corals seem very happy at the phos level currently but I don’t want to stay there with fear of an algae outbreak as you stated. I would hope it would occur in the scrubber but know wherever there’s light there’s a possibility of growing it. Monitoring day to day to see what happens. Hopefully nitrate continues to slowly drop then I can reduce the phosphate level by backing off the dose and if the stars align lol be left with a 10 +/- nitrate level and a .1ish phosphate level.

 

[rishma]

I agree. Corals seem very happy at the phos level currently but I don’t want to stay there with fear of an algae outbreak as you stated. I would hope it would occur in the scrubber but know wherever there’s light there’s a possibility of growing it. Monitoring day to day to see what happens. Hopefully nitrate continues to slowly drop then I can reduce the phosphate level by backing off the dose and if the stars align lol be left with a 10 +/- nitrate level and a .1ish phosphate level.

I don’t run a scrubber but it will be interesting to see how it responds. Surely it will grow more algae. Now that you are not so limited in phosphate, I hope to see your nitrate be more responsive.

If you don’t get the response you want, restarting with a low carbon dose might help pull down nitrates as it does for most people. But no rush. I think your strategy of fewer variables is good one for now.