Hello,
This has been discussed before but I just wanted to know a bit more of the chemistry behind it and get some advice. My tank is about ~4 Months old and the phosphates are consistently at 0.00 on the hannah checker and nitrates at 2.5 on the salifert. Now from what I've read, my understanding is that phosphates and nitrates should be a bit higher considering the tank is new and I run a cannister filter which is apparently not great at removing those compounds. I have a 55 gallon tank, I do 10g water changes weekly and clean my cannister filter religiously every two weeks. I have 1 xenia, 1 gsp, 1 trachyphyllia, 1 colony of zoas and 1 green tip torch. I also have two clowns, a cleaner shrimp and a turbo snail. I have very little algae growth on my rock or sand which must be a result of the non-existent phosphate. I've also been dosing half the recommended dose of MB7 for the past 2 months and run my t5s for ~6hrs/day . I spot feed my clowns and shrimp with a pipette (enough for them to eat in 2 minutes) and recently started spot feeding the corals as well once a week. I've read low levels like this is going to be a problem for my corals, I've been thinking of adding a flame hawk fish to increase my bio load, but afraid that the tank is still too new. What's the best way to fix these parameters without dosing any chemicals?
This has been discussed before but I just wanted to know a bit more of the chemistry behind it and get some advice. My tank is about ~4 Months old and the phosphates are consistently at 0.00 on the hannah checker and nitrates at 2.5 on the salifert. Now from what I've read, my understanding is that phosphates and nitrates should be a bit higher considering the tank is new and I run a cannister filter which is apparently not great at removing those compounds. I have a 55 gallon tank, I do 10g water changes weekly and clean my cannister filter religiously every two weeks. I have 1 xenia, 1 gsp, 1 trachyphyllia, 1 colony of zoas and 1 green tip torch. I also have two clowns, a cleaner shrimp and a turbo snail. I have very little algae growth on my rock or sand which must be a result of the non-existent phosphate. I've also been dosing half the recommended dose of MB7 for the past 2 months and run my t5s for ~6hrs/day . I spot feed my clowns and shrimp with a pipette (enough for them to eat in 2 minutes) and recently started spot feeding the corals as well once a week. I've read low levels like this is going to be a problem for my corals, I've been thinking of adding a flame hawk fish to increase my bio load, but afraid that the tank is still too new. What's the best way to fix these parameters without dosing any chemicals?