Nutrients Trouble

[arranms96]

Hi all,

I've been struggling with Nutrients for a few weeks, to give you a background on my system first my tank is a Redsea Reefer 750, filtration equipment and stock is below.

​

Equipment - ​

• Redsea RSK 600 Skimmer
• TMC Reef-Connect 10000 (Running at 60%)
• Redsea Reefmat 1200 using 20cm a day average, peaks at 40-60cm on a maintenance day.
• Media reactor running GFO for Phosphate control, this is a recent addition.
• Gyre 350's running on random at 10-60%

Stock List - ​

• 1 x Medium/Large Vampire Tang.
• 1 x Medium Emperor Angel
• 1 x Small Powder Blue Tang
• 6 x Large Blue Chromis
• 3 x Medium Anthias
• 1 x 6 Line Wrasse
• 1 x Blue Springer Damsel
• 2 x Clown Fish (Large Female and tiny male)
• 2 x Strawberry Conch
• Roughly 15 Nassarius Snails, 10 Trochus, 30 Bumble Bee Snails, 5 Very Large Common Hermit Crabs.

I feed 4 cubes of frozen Mysis a day + 2 sheets of Nori.

My current Nutrient levels are 0.15 Phosphate (dropping) and 0 Nitrate (Tested with Hanna Checkers), I am using Rowaphos at the moment to bring down the phosphate and have pause my water changes to try and increase the Nitrate, I normal do around 10% every two weeks. However my Nitrate has been 0 for over a month now no matter how much I feed.

I have a small Cyano outbreak starting and I'd like to get ahead of it, I'm brushing off my rocks daily at the moment to keep it under control.

Should I start dosing Nitrate or increase my bioload (reluctant to do this as everyone in the tank is very happy) or something else entirely?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I'm a bit stuck

 

[X-37B]

In the past I have had to dose nitrate. I still have to dose 3ml a day of po4 to keep it from bottoming out in my 80+30g system.
2 choices. Feed more or dose nitrate.
At your stage I would dose nitrate instead of more food.
I like my nitrate to be <5 and it runs 1-2 on all of my systems.
I keep po4 at <.1.

 

[exnisstech]

You could probably dose nitrates or increase feeding tho the later doesn't really work well for me an I'll occasionally dose sodium nitrate.
Personally I would not use gfo to reduce phosphates at 0.15 I would bring nitrates up and watch phosphates. 0.15 is not too high, at least in my tanks. My corals, lps especially do not like when phosphates are below much 0.1

 

[To(meany)Tang]

For that stocking list I would be feeding alot more than 4 cubes a day. Frozen food has alot of water and can contribute more to phosphates. Pellets are more nutrients dense and add more nitrates. Id swap between frozen and pellet. Continue dosing and see if that helps

 

[kevgib67]

I would like to add that you might also take your skimmer offline for a while.

 

[jda]

If your tank has a mature sand bed or effective live rock, they could completing the nitrogen cycle and converting no3 into N gas. This is no issue. You still have nitrogen in the tank, especially with the amount of fish that you have.

Forget about the test kit. Do your corals look good? Nitrate is fools gold - nitrogen is the prize, but you cannot really test for it. If the corals look good, then just stop.

There was a long thread on here about nitrogen/nitrate. It is a good read if you can find it, but in the end there are 2 things to know 1). nothing in your tank NEEDS nitrate and 2). having a trace of nitrate likley only means that you have other forms of nitrogen.

Please do not take your skimmer offline. It is too important for gas exchange and also to remove harsh metals bound to organics. Your po4 will also rise more if you do. Folks who want their backed no3 and po4 to rise should at least keep their skimmers online and just set them to not collect much. pH will usually suffer too much if you do not run them.

If you have to dose something, ammonia is likely better to get nitrogen into the tank.

 

[Dan_P]

There was a long thread on here about nitrogen/nitrate. It is a good read if you can find it, but in the end there are 2 things to know 1). nothing in your tank NEEDS nitrate and 2). having a trace of nitrate likley only means that you have other forms of nitrogen.

Do you know of anyone trending the amount of protein import and the nitrate level? I don’t expect to see a correlation but wondered how the trends looked.

 

[runetspike]

Привет, ребята.
У меня проблема, банке 1 год 2 месяца, у меня нитраты больше 50.
Население рыб составляет 10 хирургов.
Заложила 50 литров сипоракса 2 месяца назад, сколько ждать пока начнет действовать?

 

[jda]

Do you know of anyone trending the amount of protein import and the nitrate level? I don’t expect to see a correlation but wondered how the trends looked.

With the unknown amount of anaerobic bacteria from tank to tank, I have no idea how that would work. In my tanks, I can feed as much and I want and no3 stays .1, or so. Watched a friends dog and she spilled 1-2 gallons of flake food into the tank and the no3 went up to .3 for a day, then back down - the po4 did rise.

 

[EricR]

Feeding more is a fine idea but that never worked for me,,, your mileage may vary.

Personally, I'd dose up nitrate and just monitor phosphate (like suggested in post #s 2-3).

I had opposite problem (undetectable PO4 but OK-to-highish NO3):
When I dosed up phosphate, my nitrates fell naturally.
*assumption is that lack of phos was limiting some biological process that then took over and reduced nitrates

...but I'm not as experienced as many on here so just a thought

 

[Miami Reef]

With the unknown amount of anaerobic bacteria from tank to tank, I have no idea how that would work. In my tanks, I can feed as much and I want and no3 stays .1, or so. Watched a friends dog and she spilled 1-2 gallons of flake food into the tank and the no3 went up to .3 for a day, then back down - the po4 did rise.

@Randy Holmes-Farley

Can you explain how JDA’s tank is able to work like this? My nitrate oxidation/reduction doesn’t work unless I carbon dose, which is no problem. I really like carbon dosing.

I think it sounds really interesting how his tank crushes nitrates so quickly without adding easily metabolized carbon.

My tank is a little over a year old, and it was started with mostly dry with some KP rocks to seed it. My rock scape is pretty minimal. Jda has 3” of sand, while mine is barebottom.

 

[jda]

The deeper parts of the sand have anoxic bacteria that turn no3 into nitrogen gas. They establish to equilibrium with the available nitrate and always just a trace that hasn't made it there yet.

Dr. Ron has written about this a ton. You don't need the deep sand bed that he talks about and 2-3 inches of fine as long as you don't disturb it.

 

[apb03]

You could add some more fish, another tang and a foxface would create a ton of poo.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

The deeper parts of the sand have anoxic bacteria that turn no3 into nitrogen gas. They establish to equilibrium with the available nitrate and always just a trace that hasn't made it there yet.

Dr. Ron has written about this a ton. You don't need the deep sand bed that he talks about and 2-3 inches of fine as long as you don't disturb it.

You must be part of the old school way, back in my day we would build a plenum system to support a very deep sand bed that you dare not touch..

 

[jda]

I do not want to distract from the OP's question. I am not really all that old school - plenum is not necessary for me, nor a deep sand bed. I do like sand for the purpose of denitrification, but also to house microfauna that devour fish disease tomonts (over looked or unknown thing about sand), bind/buffer phosphate so that it never gets to zero, and also to have some of the fun critters and fish that like sand. I talk about this in my build thread, I think.

In any case, if you have real rock, or sand, it very much could have anoxic bacteria that converts no3 into N gas. This is a very natural way to finish the last step of the nitrogen cycle. Many of these tanks cannot keep much no3 around, even if they want to, but their stuff always is fine since nitrogen is nearly never limited unless they stop feeding.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

@Randy Holmes-Farley

Can you explain how JDA’s tank is able to work like this? My nitrate oxidation/reduction doesn’t work unless I carbon dose, which is no problem. I really like carbon dosing.

I think it sounds really interesting how his tank crushes nitrates so quickly without adding easily metabolized carbon.

My tank is a little over a year old, and it was started with mostly dry with some KP rocks to seed it. My rock scape is pretty minimal. Jda has 3” of sand, while mine is barebottom.

I think any comment on what is happening to nutrients in any given tank is largely speculation. Could be he has substantial denitrification potential that is not generally maxed out due to low nitrate. A burst of nitrate then causes a burst of denitrification.

It could also be more uptake by organisms, and since he keeps N and P low, a sudden burst from overfeeding may get taken up to satisify pent up demand for them.

 

[jda]

My tank has low no3 and po4. I doubt that it has low N and P with feeding kilos of mysis, frozen and buckets of pellet food. The tank decides where it settles at, not me. I just feed a ton, empty the skimmer cups and divide my chaeto in half. No chemicals, OC, etc. I do run some GAC if the waters starts to look yellow and it irritates me.

I got an old, used Hach total P test kit a while back and did a few tests. With po4 at 1-3 PPB, but total P was about 30x higher than this. I was going to test the other day for a different thread, but a few of the reagents were all crystallized.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hi all,

I've been struggling with Nutrients for a few weeks, to give you a background on my system first my tank is a Redsea Reefer 750, filtration equipment and stock is below.

​

Equipment - ​

• Redsea RSK 600 Skimmer
• TMC Reef-Connect 10000 (Running at 60%)
• Redsea Reefmat 1200 using 20cm a day average, peaks at 40-60cm on a maintenance day.
• Media reactor running GFO for Phosphate control, this is a recent addition.
• Gyre 350's running on random at 10-60%

Stock List - ​

• 1 x Medium/Large Vampire Tang.
• 1 x Medium Emperor Angel
• 1 x Small Powder Blue Tang
• 6 x Large Blue Chromis
• 3 x Medium Anthias
• 1 x 6 Line Wrasse
• 1 x Blue Springer Damsel
• 2 x Clown Fish (Large Female and tiny male)
• 2 x Strawberry Conch
• Roughly 15 Nassarius Snails, 10 Trochus, 30 Bumble Bee Snails, 5 Very Large Common Hermit Crabs.

I feed 4 cubes of frozen Mysis a day + 2 sheets of Nori.

My current Nutrient levels are 0.15 Phosphate (dropping) and 0 Nitrate (Tested with Hanna Checkers), I am using Rowaphos at the moment to bring down the phosphate and have pause my water changes to try and increase the Nitrate, I normal do around 10% every two weeks. However my Nitrate has been 0 for over a month now no matter how much I feed.

I have a small Cyano outbreak starting and I'd like to get ahead of it, I'm brushing off my rocks daily at the moment to keep it under control.

Should I start dosing Nitrate or increase my bioload (reluctant to do this as everyone in the tank is very happy) or something else entirely?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I'm a bit stuck

You may want to increase types of foods fed. Mysis and nori are inadequate for the type of fish you have.
Consider:
spirulina brine shrimp
LRS fish frenzy
Formula 1 frozen
TDO pellets
small Plankton
Hikari veggie diet

The two foods you feed are also not going to raise the level of nitrate much