Nitrates reading 0.0 - this CANNOT be true - What should do next?!?

[Sniklefritz]

Have a 1 year old 12 gallon nano AIO. Stock list: 3 torches 2-3 heads each, some zoas, a small goni (size of a baseball cut in half when fully extended), and a small acan bout 6 heads. 1 clown, 1 pygmy wasp fish, 1 dart fish, and a mandarin goby.

I'll admit, I've definitely been lazy about maintenance on it for the past few months and it and as a result it has developed some patches of GHA (not a full blown outbreak by any means) and corals aren't looking their greatest. So last night I did a ~50% water change and removed a good amount of the hair algae roughly 80% of it. Some small bits of it left, mostly in the hard to get to areas.

Tonight I decided to dust off the No3 HR and Po4 Hana test kits and came to find out that my No3 is at 0.0 and Po4 is at .08.... Tested No3 with a Salifert kit and its reading 0 as well. I'm SURE the left hover GHA is contributing to this, and I know its not truly 0, I'm just very surprised that after nearly 24 hours after removing the majority of the GHA and doing a feeding today that its showing 0...I really thought my results were going to be atrociously high based off my recent neglect.

What should I do to make this right?!? In a perfect world id like to get my corals looking healthier without making the left over GHA go crazy! I'm not sure how to accomplish that, so hoping someone has gone through something similar and can help guide me on how they handled it.

Should I.....
Shut off the skimmer?
Feed more?
Add something like Red Sea AB+?

I'm not in a panic, just hoping for a bit of guidance for this conundrum. Hopefully from some of you who have gone through this before.

 

[mcarroll]

Have a 1 year old 12 gallon nano AIO. Stock list: 3 torches 2-3 heads each, some zoas, a small goni (size of a baseball cut in half when fully extended), and a small acan bout 6 heads. 1 clown, 1 pygmy wasp fish, 1 dart fish, and a mandarin goby.

I'll admit, I've definitely been lazy about maintenance on it for the past few months and it and as a result it has developed some patches of GHA (not a full blown outbreak by any means) and corals aren't looking their greatest. So last night I did a ~50% water change and removed a good amount of the hair algae roughly 80% of it. Some small bits of it left, mostly in the hard to get to areas.

Tonight I decided to dust off the No3 HR and Po4 Hana test kits and came to find out that my No3 is at 0.0 and Po4 is at .08.... Tested No3 with a Salifert kit and its reading 0 as well. I'm SURE the left hover GHA is contributing to this, and I know its not truly 0, I'm just very surprised that after nearly 24 hours after removing the majority of the GHA and doing a feeding today that its showing 0...I really thought my results were going to be atrociously high based off my recent neglect.

What should I do to make this right?!? In a perfect world id like to get my corals looking healthier without making the left over GHA go crazy! I'm not sure how to accomplish that, so hoping someone has gone through something similar and can help guide me on how they handled it.

Should I.....
Shut off the skimmer?
Feed more?
Add something like Red Sea AB+?

I'm not in a panic, just hoping for a bit of guidance for this conundrum. Hopefully from some of you who have gone through this before.

Test results being wrong because the tests show zero because algae is in the tank is a crazy (il)logic chain the hobby has cooked up.

Unless you're testing incorrectly ot eh kit is broken or expired, the results are correct.

Usually lack of NO3 isn't that big a deal to corals, but if it's indicating more than just NO3 being unavailable, then corals might still have issues. It might be preventing uptake of PO4 if it's really bad....that might account for your "elevated" PO4 level.

Focus in on eliminating the rest of the algae. It will help if you work in small patched so you can be sure it's TOTALLY clean before you move to the next area. Pulling hunks from all over the tank invariably leaves lots of little patches everywhere. Not great to remove at that stage.

Can you detail what's in your CUC? Don't list scavengers like hermits and shrimp. They should be keeping the areas you clean form regrowing algae again....unless they are MIA or too few in numbers. Seems likely you CUC needs an upgrade.

If you're just running a protein skimmer and nothing else for filtration, then just keep doing what you're doing.

Feeding more is good, but do not waste food in the tank....(continue to) only feed what your fish will consume in a minute or so. Then feed more.