I have a 120g setup that is about 3 months old and I am getting concerned about my nitrate levels being so low. Pic from today below:
I'm not sure what all information to put in here to help. Happy to add info as necessary. Things have generally gone pretty smoothly and about as expected. This was setup with mostly dry rock and Frtiz bacteria, but I did add about 25lbs of mature wet rock from my LFS at startup.
I've had green hair algae bloom a couple of times as I was slowly bumping up the photoperiod and the CUC size at the same time. There are traces of GHA in the tank today, but I'm guessing I need to be growing a bit more for the herbivores, so I bumped up the photoperiod again slightly today.
By biggest concern is that my nitrates are very low. Today measured at 0.2ppm again (Hanna test kits for all my measurements)
Here are what Nitrate and Phosphate have looked like since I started the tank:
Over the last few weeks I have been increasing the feeding (as well as fish load) and slowly turning back the filtration. Still my nitrates are dropping or at best holding steady. I'm running a Reef Octo Regal 150int and it is setup to produce a very dry skimmate at the moment. I also have a roller mat that is built into the Trigger systems sump, and have been increasing the height of the water level sensors to increase the dwell time the waste has in the system before getting rolled out.
Do I need to dose some form of nitrate, or am I ok for the time being? I'm worried that dosing nitrates will launch me into instability, but I'd like to avoid whatever scenario will play out with no nitrate and high phosphate. With a test reading of 0.2, I may actually be at zero now when you consider the test accuracy.
I feed two frozen cubes a day with one usually being mysis, and the other either plankton or brine shrimp. I also try to keep nori in a feder all day for the Tang and Foxface.
Fish load:
2 - MaiTai Clowns about 2" long
1 - Tomini Tang <3"
1 - Foxface Rabbitfish <4"
1 - Green Spotted Puffer <2"
1 - Yellow Watchman Goby <2"
I'm not sure what all information to put in here to help. Happy to add info as necessary. Things have generally gone pretty smoothly and about as expected. This was setup with mostly dry rock and Frtiz bacteria, but I did add about 25lbs of mature wet rock from my LFS at startup.
I've had green hair algae bloom a couple of times as I was slowly bumping up the photoperiod and the CUC size at the same time. There are traces of GHA in the tank today, but I'm guessing I need to be growing a bit more for the herbivores, so I bumped up the photoperiod again slightly today.
By biggest concern is that my nitrates are very low. Today measured at 0.2ppm again (Hanna test kits for all my measurements)
Here are what Nitrate and Phosphate have looked like since I started the tank:
Over the last few weeks I have been increasing the feeding (as well as fish load) and slowly turning back the filtration. Still my nitrates are dropping or at best holding steady. I'm running a Reef Octo Regal 150int and it is setup to produce a very dry skimmate at the moment. I also have a roller mat that is built into the Trigger systems sump, and have been increasing the height of the water level sensors to increase the dwell time the waste has in the system before getting rolled out.
Do I need to dose some form of nitrate, or am I ok for the time being? I'm worried that dosing nitrates will launch me into instability, but I'd like to avoid whatever scenario will play out with no nitrate and high phosphate. With a test reading of 0.2, I may actually be at zero now when you consider the test accuracy.
I feed two frozen cubes a day with one usually being mysis, and the other either plankton or brine shrimp. I also try to keep nori in a feder all day for the Tang and Foxface.
Fish load:
2 - MaiTai Clowns about 2" long
1 - Tomini Tang <3"
1 - Foxface Rabbitfish <4"
1 - Green Spotted Puffer <2"
1 - Yellow Watchman Goby <2"
