Nutrients and Feeding

[H-TownMike]

I am not "new" but i think I am still new been in the hobby about a year at this point. I am constantly fighting low nitrates and phosphates even to the point I've had my first Dino outbreak, this has been solved and i am really trying to prevent another. I am currently feeding dry flake food twice a day for 45 seconds with my reef octo auto feeder which seems like a lot but no food or very little food goes uneaten. I feed Benereef once a week. About twice a week I feed 1 cube PE Mysis frozen shrimp. At this point if I don't Dose nitrates and Phos I will bottom out my nutrients as it is even dosing I find it hard to keep my levels at where they are now which is about 5 N2 and .03 Po4 I can go up on dosing yes that will work however i would like to try and maintain stable nutrients without having to dose. As far as filtration I am running my skimmer about 4 days a week a filter roller (clariSea 5000) and I have some carbon that I keep in a reactor running constantly for water clarity. I am hoping that I can get some help from the group here.
My livestock is as follows:
2 Cardinal fish
2 Clowns
1 Scopas Tang
1 Blue tang
2 Firefish
1 Fire Flamehawk
1 Coral Beauty
1 Royal Gramma
1 med Starfish
1 Cleaner Shrimp
1 Fire Shrimp
CUC
several Conchs
6 or 7 Hermits
3 Emerald Crabs
Coral
6 smaller Hammers
1 Med Cany cane colony
1 med GSP Colony
3 small Duncans

 

[bubbgee]

Feed high phosphate food like Reef Roids. Believe it or not, Benereef LOWERS phosphates and nitrates because it has probiotics. Fish flakes also raise phosphates higher.

Another is to just turn on the skimmers and GFO reactors for part of the day instead of 4 days in a week. The same goes with refugium light if any.

 

[TankYouVeryMuch]

It seems to me you’re exporting too many nutrients. The filter roller is removing things before it can break down, and then whatever starts to break down is pulled out by the skimmer. Things which still get through and trapped by carbon. Triple whammy.

Dosing helps but is a bandaid, not a solution.

The goal with filtration shouldn’t be to remove everything from the tank, it’s to get it to levels which are healthiest for the inhabitants. The obvious answer is to use less filtration. It might take some experimenting to find what works, since there are a lot of moving parts and changes won’t show up immediately. Keep a good log.

 

[H-TownMike]

It seems to me you’re exporting too many nutrients. The filter roller is removing things before it can break down, and then whatever starts to break down is pulled out by the skimmer. Things which still get through and trapped by carbon. Triple whammy.

Dosing helps but is a bandaid, not a solution.

The goal with filtration shouldn’t be to remove everything from the tank, it’s to get it to levels which are healthiest for the inhabitants. The obvious answer is to use less filtration. It might take some experimenting to find what works, since there are a lot of moving parts and changes won’t show up immediately. Keep a good log.

I log all results from testing once a week to keep track of what's going. I have found it helps me. I will try to turn off the carbon and bypass the filter roller to some extent and see what that does. Thanks for your input

 

[exnisstech]

No skimmer and I shut my roller off at night a few times a week and let it overflow. Corals respond well. This is in my SPS tank that ran at or near zero N and P since start up. A few months ago I started dosing ammonium bicarb and had great results. I was actually able to stop dosing and am still seeing good levels of N and P after 2 years of them being chronically low.

DIY Ammonia dosing for low nitrate systems

Some reef aquaria have chronic low nitrogen availability. One indicator is very low nitrate. Nitrate dosing is a fine remedy, but it is possible that ammonia dosing may be more beneficial for some organisms since ammonia can be energetically easier to assimilate than is nitrate. For this...

www.reef2reef.com