Nitrates arent bad

Andyk28

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Wanted to see if other people know that nitrates dont infact hurt your water quality, i have had reefs and fish only with high and low nitrates and i have never had any fish or corals die off infact ever tank thrived and corals grew as normal. The only perimeters i believe need to be monitored in a reef is temp, nitrite, calcium, alkalinity, ph, ammonia and for fish only, copper (if being used) ph, ammonia, and nitrite
 

MONTANTK

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Nitrates and Phosphates are vitally important to the success of a reef tank. Without them you are almost certain to struggle with long term success of corals
 

brandon429

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Paul runs 160 ppm at times, ergo nitrate are not bad agreed. Zeovit systems run ~1, so quite a range is acceptable.
 

Wyvern

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My tank is new, my corals are new and I am new.

My Phos. is .07 to .1 and my Nitrates are 10-20PPM depending on the day of the week, I do 10% water changes weekly.

I don't really want to maintain some low number of .03 phos and 5PPM or less of Nitrate, doing so would require reactors and such this early on, and because I've seen horror stories of systems becoming TOO clean, I don't want to add them, So we will see where it goes.
 

attiland

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I run around 25 ppm nitrates in my sps dominant tank. Once i start getting above 35 i see a decline in growth and more cyanobacteria so ideally i shoot for 10-25 in all my tanks
Good info thank you. I never really get higher nitrates than 5ppm since the algae reactor I run.
 

rlman41299

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yes it is important. I am now a firm believer on nitrates. My tank crashed and wiped out my sps tank because of a bad nitrate checker. Little that I know my nitrates already tanked out and the damage was done before I figured it out. Now I have to start all over again with a help from fellow reefers here who gave me good deals on sps frags.
 

nereefpat

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Wanted to see if other people know that nitrates dont infact hurt your water quality, i have had reefs and fish only with high and low nitrates and i have never had any fish or corals die off infact ever tank thrived and corals grew as normal.
You've never had any fish or corals die?
 

Kershaw

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Wanted to see if other people know that nitrates dont infact hurt your water quality, i have had reefs and fish only with high and low nitrates and i have never had any fish or corals die off infact ever tank thrived and corals grew as normal. The only perimeters i believe need to be monitored in a reef is temp, nitrite, calcium, alkalinity, ph, ammonia and for fish only, copper (if being used) ph, ammonia, and nitrite
Can we see what your tank looks like?
 

X-37B

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I run <5 no3 and <.1 po4.Works well for my sps system.
20210927_142744.jpg
20210927_142736.jpg
 

ZoWhat

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Any no3 above 20ppm for any length of time makes my high end zoanthids start to shrink.

Not an immediate melt, but their disc heads start to shrink.

If I don't take action, within 4 weeks it will shrink and then melt away until I get no3 back to 5ppm. After 4 weeks a lot times it's too late

Palys are not effected as sensitively than zoas... and the more colors, the more sensitive the zoas are
 

mdb_talon

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This is like saying iron supplements arent bad for the human body. Of course we all need some iron(in diet or through supplements). That does not however mean that it cant be detrimental at some level.

Nitrates are similar in a reef tank. We can argue all day what is the ideal level, but it is a futile argument anyway as it depends on many other factors.

I would point out that you mention nitrite as being important, but really that is the one you could say is irrelevant in a reef tank. In itself reasonable levels are not harmful at all and because it reasonably quickly is turned into nitrate it not really worth monitoring
 

ReefChasers

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I say natural sea water levels is a good guideline... We try to keep it around 0.03 phos 5ppm nitrate so we got a little wiggle room at the farm.

We don't like to run it much higher then that, though, nuisance algae starts to show up.
 

czoolander

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I believe from what I understand and read is that nitrates are toxic to marine life at high levels so yes they can be an issue causing death in fish and corals if they get too high . Also they will promote nuisance algae growth at certain levels too which I am just finished dealing with myself.

Had a GHA outbreak when I was measuring nitrates over 20. The number was probably higher as some of it was tied up in the GHA itself .

I am now aiming to try to keep my nitrates between 5 -15 range
 
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