Poll: Is there a relationship between Alk and nutrients?

[Mike810]

As the title states, should one with low nutrients also have low alk or vice versa? I'm kind of at a loss right now with my tank. Tank was setup in July 2017, my system has been running stable parameter wise except for nutrients. Below are my parameters:

alk: 7.5
ca: 420
mg: 1350
no3: 25
po4: .16
ATI Hybrid 8x54w +LEDS (400-500 par on the corals, 300 on the sand bed)

I see the majority of my sps frags are either brown or pale. Some of them have decent color but some of them also have tips burning. I was always under the assumption that tips burning meant alk was too high. My parameters have been very stable for several months and the acros in the tank now have been in there for a couple months. CA/ALK are supplemented by a dastaco carx. Nutrients are controlled via arid reactor and zeovit reactor. I am only running the basic zeovit products to try and reduce nutrients. So far, these two reactors have only been able to bring down the nutrients to their current values.

I have a high fish bioload, 40-50 fish in a 360 gallon tank. 9 of them being tangs med-large and the rest are wrasse, angels and misc fish. I feed frozens once a day and pellets on auto feeder. Nori every other day and this is me reducing feedings to lower nutrients. At their highest, it was no3 100 and po4 .31.

What would cause the tips of some acros to burn but not others? Why are some acros colorful while the majority are not? At first I thought maybe too much light because my frag rack gets about 300 par and the acros on there looks to be doing well. However, a lot of people tell me they're running close to 500+ par and their acros grow and color great. Someone else brought up alk to my attention being too low compared to my nutrients. I'm wondering if I should raise my alk up to 8, 8.5 or even 9 since my tank is no where low in nutrients.

Any help would be greatly appreciated it. In the last couple months I've lost several high end torches, frog spawns and an elegance coral which I attributed to the high nutrients. Even now with the lowered nutrients, I am still seeing polyp bailout on one of my frog spawns. All the other lps I lost also exhibited polyp bail out. Needless to say, my wife was really sad..

 

[Hentz]

IME yes.

I’ve ran ULNS with my Alk at 7.0 flat. If it went down to 6.5 or even 7.5-8.0 I’d see some very unhappy Corals. It was kind of weird.

Now that I’m running a higher nutrient tank and my Corals can actually eat now, 8-8.2 seems to be my sweet spot. Anything lower or higher my Acropora become unhappy.

Lighting is also included. From my personal experiences, my SPS in multiple tanks with low nutrients and dKH Alk, they did best at lower lighting from 200-250PAR. Complete opposite for my SPS in a tank with nutrients and running the Alk at 8dKH where I can run them at a higher PAR as they seemed to prefer it.

Your Alkalinity may be too low for your tank along with too high of PAR. I’d say try boosting your Alk to 8-8.5 while leaving your nutrients where they are, and see how that works out.

 

[drawman]

IME yes.

I’ve ran ULNS with my Alk at 7.0 flat. If it went down to 6.5 or even 7.5-8.0 I’d see some very unhappy Corals. It was kind of weird.

Now that I’m running a higher nutrient tank and my Corals can actually eat now, 8-8.2 seems to be my sweet spot. Anything lower or higher my Acropora become unhappy.

Lighting is also included. From my personal experiences, my SPS in multiple tanks with low nutrients and dKH Alk, they did best at lower lighting from 200-250PAR. Complete opposite for my SPS in a tank with nutrients and running the Alk at 8dKH where I can run them at a higher PAR as they seemed to prefer it.

Your Alkalinity may be too low for your tank along with too high of PAR. I’d say try boosting your Alk to 8-8.5 while leaving your nutrients where they are, and see how that works out.

+1. I think there is much more room for error on the higher side of the nutrient spectrum also. Your acros will settle in and once things start to change they will become unhappy.

 

[jda]

Yes, there needs to be in some situations, but in others, it does not matter. There is a lot of nuance here that matters and a lot of people overlook.

If you are going to have low nutrients, then you must keep alk low or else the coral will calcify faster than the tissue can grow to cover the skeleton - this is commonly called burnt-tips. This is around NSW-type water parameters. In this range, you can have some swing, but you better be under 8.0. I run this range, but with Halides with massive amounts of light. Low nutrient is a fine place to be... this is not the same as Ultra Low.

If you are going to run Ultra-Low, then you better be at 6.8 to 7.0 all the time with no flux. I consider ultra low the people who drive N and P lower than NSW with chemicals or media. These people are few and far between. The typical example of this is the Zeo crowd in Europe that use 10-12 bulb T5s and also have a lot of light. I do not recommend Ultra Low unless you REALLY know what you are doing.

Another really positive side effect of lower alk with lower nutrients is that it keeps coralline down. It really gets to be a pain and I hate scraping it off of the glass all of the time. I know that many people think that grow is better in their tanks with higher nutrients, but they likely never experienced nutrient levels low enough to outgrow tissue and to have coralline cover everything ever few weeks.

If your nutrients are over .03 P and 1 N, or so, then this does not matter nearly as much and you can be in a wide range as long as they are stable.

As for your tank, the tip burn could be from an alk swing, up-too-high LEDs (just take them off if you have 8x T5s... the quality is not as good and some coral have to fight off bad waves... I think that you will see some improvement). 25N and .03P is is that range where some acros will have deeper, richer color, but others will struggle. I would see if you can get the NO3 down, but naturally like with a fuge or water changes. I do not think that raising alk will hurt if you want to try it... I would not go over 9 but I have no real reason why I think this. Personally, my N is at .1 and my P is at .01... the tank does this naturally with a fuge, skimmer and water changes... along with massive amount of light, I love the color and the coral grows really fast and the coralline is TOO FAST.

Some people do not like the look of some acros under lower nutrient. The colors are brighter with more contrast, but some are not as rich. To each their own, but either look good IMO. I would shoot for low but barely detectable N and P, keep the alk and calcium near NSW and replenish your trace elements with some periodic water changes and you should be golden for nearly all acros except for the one stubborn one that everybody has.

 

[Bpb]

I’ve had tip burn with moderate nutrients and lower alkalinity with no swings. Traditionally low nutes and high alk will do it, but some trace imbalances or metal contamination will cause it as well. I’d pick up several sheets of polyfilter and load up on salt and do several larger water changes along with the polyfilter. Just reset your minor element profile and get rid of any possible contaminants. Check all your magnets and pumps for possible sources of contamination. I dealt with the same thing for about 2 years and it drove me to almost quit. On a whim I picked up a bunch of polyfilter and did roughly 150% water change over a couple weeks time and it completely turned the tank around and now my acros grow amazing.

 

[ycnibrc]

Hey mike do u run zeolite if you do reduce the rock to half dosage. Zeolite is very potent it will strip all trace elements and thats why successful zeovit tank dose everything from a to z. If you dont dose everything they ask then your tank wont do well. Also your tank is only 9 months old and you start it with dry rock so it will take longer to mature and stabilize. What kind of salt do you use? Have u send your water in for icp test? Do u have a frag tank that separated from your main tank that you can test

 

[Mike810]

My triton test came back today and everything came back pretty good. Only heavy metal that was slightly elevated was tin.
Sn 2.369 µg/l 0,1 µg/l 2.27
low on manganese, iron and iodine. I dose the paxbellum iron/maganese additive every night per the arid instructions for the chaeto.

The interesting part was that po4 values from triton test put my tank at .08, hanna ulr put po4 at .18. Tested at the time I took samples for triton. Should I go with the triton values and just assume my hanna ulr is off by .10 points anytime I test? I do run zeolites to try to reduce nutrients alongside the arid reactor. I run 3 liters with 300 gph, zeovit recommends 3.5 liters with 350 gph but I wanted to run a little less than recommend. I took pics of the corals last night and I gotta say, some of them look pretty good from the top down. However some of them don't look too hot. I'll try to post them up later, I'm really bad at post processing the images. Maybe it's because I don't really know what I'm doing..... My parameters are very stable so I don't think alk swings are my problem. I am thinking my nutrients might be the problem with the low alk. I'm going to continue to try and get my nutrients down even lower especially nitrates. I'll try increasing the time the arid lights are on for. Right now they run for only 12 hours opposite of the DT.

Does anyone have any experience with seachems matrix or denitrate media? They claim if you run flow rates lower than 50gph that the media will be able to process nitrates. I don't have a frag tank yet since well, I only have frags in the DT lol. I use redsea blue bucket and this batch, the alk test at 7.8ish, other parameters are inline with stated values.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Its totally related but its more so a combination of Alk, Nutrients, and PAR/Photoperiod. If these 3 are stable and the corals given enough time to acclimate to them then the range can be pretty large. However, if nutrients are low the corals zooenthelle won't have enough food to support the light intensity. Same thing happens when ALK if too high.

I've come to the conclusion that its good to keep nutrients and ALK in a safe range since things do change and it gives me enough time to catch things. I do my best to keep my Alk at 8.5, NO 5-10PPM, Phosphates 0.02-0.05ppm. Most of the issues I see in the hobby is over lighting and over doing the nutrient export thing; both are more deadly to SPS then doing the opposite. Overtime you'll get good at knowing if your giving your coral too much or too less lighting.

Based on your posting I feel your corals are receiving too much light and your nutrients are too high compared your ALK. You may be better reducing the photoperiod and over 1-2 weeks bring your ALK up to 8.3dkh. If the coral continues to look pale move it to very dark area and if its browning move it to a higher par area.

 

[Hans-Werner]

I think bleaching and burned tips may be caused by nitrate. But I thought these effects only occur when at the same time phosphate is low. Some corals are much more tolerant to nitrate than others.

And yes, there is a relationship between nutrients, alkalinity and adverse effects to corals. When alkalinity is high and phosphate is low or sinking corals loose tissue from the base, especially Acropora.

 

[Mike810]

Started dosing nopox a couple days ago to help lower nutrients. No3 testing slightly lower than 25ppm, po4 at .08, tested with salifert and hanna ulr.

 

[Skibum]

Started dosing nopox a couple days ago to help lower nutrients. No3 testing slightly lower than 25ppm, po4 at .08, tested with salifert and hanna ulr.

What kind of wrasse is that yellow headed/blue bodied in the pic?

Thanks!

 

[IslandLifeReef]

Be careful with the NOPOX. Test nitrates daily, and when they go below 10ppm, I would cut your dose in half. Keep testing, and if the go below 5ppm, I would cut it in half again. Your nitrates can zero out easily if you don't adjust your NOPOX dosing.

 

[HairyGary]

What kind of wrasse is that yellow headed/blue bodied in the pic?

Thanks!

A. Feminius Tamarin

 

[Skibum]

A. Feminius Tamarin

lol I had to ask. I just saw the price on those and it's a BIT above my fish budget lol.

 

[GoVols]

If you run high alk and or carbon dose at high alk, you need to keep nutrients up, within the water column, or you will fry your sps

 

[Mike810]

Be careful with the NOPOX. Test nitrates daily, and when they go below 10ppm, I would cut your dose in half. Keep testing, and if the go below 5ppm, I would cut it in half again. Your nitrates can zero out easily if you don't adjust your NOPOX dosing.

Weird thing is nitrates haven’t budged but po4 dropped to .08. I’m testing po4, no3 and alk daily.

 

[jeffrey holloway]

I tried the low alk, low nutrient with the zeovit system. Didn't work out for me, lost a lot of coarls. Went back to overfeeding and alk level of 9.0, my tank in about 3 months started to come back. Nutrients are still pretty low on the test kits, but all the corals are growing and have great color again. I also dose trace elements and use ECO System Miracle Mud in my fuge. I don't have any issues with algae so I don't fuss with a lot of nutrient testing anymore. I have 150g mixed system that's close to 3 years running. I agree low nutrients for algae control, but it didn't make my acros happy.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Newer system with dry rock seem to work best with low nutrients and low lighting. Higher nutrients in established tank works well.. What I am doing now that my tank is established would have wiped out my tank earlier on, alot of the issues come from the organism in the tank are competing for every inch so once established the pecking order is set. When my system was new and i tried to push some nutrient all it did was cause cyano and dinos to come out and dominate... When I ran it too clean nothing would grow on the rock even after 6 months I had bright white rock.