Raising Nitrates and Phosphates

[Sean Duggan]

Hey everyone, I have a fairly new red sea reefer 300 XL, that's about 80 gallons, that's been running since November. I do have a reef mat hooked up to it and a protein skimmer running. I have experience with reef tanks had a successful 200 gallon for years. Recently some of my zoas have been closing up and I think its from low nutrients. My parameters are the following, all tested with hanna checkers
ALK 10.0
Calcium 490
Nitrate 0.0
Phosphate 0.015
I have a little bit of turf algae in the tank that is slowly dying off and I am still dealing with some other new tank uglys. The past couple days I've tried dosing Brightwells Neonitro and my nitrates haven't moved from 0.0. Is there any other additives I should look into to dose? Or any suggestions in general on how to "dirty" my tank a little bit is much apprenticed. Thank you!

 

[Reefering1]

I would remove/bypass the reef mat until you feel like you need to lower nutrients, if at all

 

[Sean Duggan]

Okay I bypassed the reefmat for now. Do you think I should continue to dose nitrate?

 

[Reefering1]

Okay I bypassed the reefmat for now. Do you think I should continue to dose nitrate?

If you're still testing 0 and have verified/ are confident in results, then yes keep dosing(maybe increase dose). Are you dosing po4?

 

[Sean Duggan]

I am not dosing PO4 yet. Was going to go to my LFS tomorrow and pick some up

 

[crabgrass]

Other simple things to do are feed a bit more (if you have fish that will use it), or dial the skimmer back.

I have sat on 0 Nitrate before, and dosing the recommended level of NeoNitrate didn't do anything. If it is truely 0.0, there are a lot of in the tank trying to soak it up, and its getting absorbed right away.

I had to does probably 4-5x the recommended dose a couple times a day to sustain. This isn't a recommendation, just my own observation. I basically went in with a couple of heavy doses over the course of 2-3 days and then maintenance doses for a week until it leveled out. You may not need to do the same thing with P, as its detectable at the moment - however that could change once N is present.

I am assuming your not doing anything funny like carbon dosing or GFO. If so, I would stop that right now.

 

[Sean Duggan]

Nope not doing any carbon dosing or GFO. I will take your advice and heavy dose for a day to see if I can get any detectable nitrate in the system. And will get a bottle of PO4 to have just incase that bottoms out.

It’s funny my past tank I had trouble keeping my nitrates and phos low and I read that the reef mat was a great way to help do that. That’s why I got it. Never imagined it would be doing too good of a job and I would have too “clean” of a tank. I will also start feeding my fish 2x a day. See if the extra nutrients from the food will give them a little bump.

Would running my skimmer without the collection cup be worth a shot?

 

[lbacha]

Get some potassium nitrate powder and mix up your own solution to dose. You can get it from stores that sell nutrients for planted aquariums. It works great for increasing nitrates in your tank if you need to.

 

[crabgrass]

Nope not doing any carbon dosing or GFO. I will take your advice and heavy dose for a day to see if I can get any detectable nitrate in the system. And will get a bottle of PO4 to have just incase that bottoms out.

It’s funny my past tank I had trouble keeping my nitrates and phos low and I read that the reef mat was a great way to help do that. That’s why I got it. Never imagined it would be doing too good of a job and I would have too “clean” of a tank. I will also start feeding my fish 2x a day. See if the extra nutrients from the food will give them a little bump.

Would running my skimmer without the collection cup be worth a shot?

New tanks are funny. You (and me too, same boat) will have probably have a post in a month or two about high N and P

Anyway, yes - I did that with my skimmer. I wanted the aeration/ph boost still and just took the collection cap off when nutriets got low. That is a good option in the short term

 

[Sean Duggan]

Get some potassium nitrate powder and mix up your own solution to dose. You can get it from stores that sell nutrients for planted aquariums. It works great for increasing nitrates in your tank if you need to.

Is there a formula I can use somewhere to calculate how to mix it and how much to dose?

 

[lbacha]

Is there a formula I can use somewhere to calculate how to mix it and how much to dose?

I usually just mix a few tablespoons into a liter of water I then add a small amount as needed. I have smaller tanks without a lot of fish so keeping nitrates up is hard without dosing. There are calculators online for exact amounts to dose

 

[thedon986]

I would just buy NeoPhos and NeoNitro and keep it simple. There’s a lot of things that are great to DIY for reefing but phosphate particularly can send a tank south fast if you screw it up.

 

[Sean Duggan]

I would just buy NeoPhos and NeoNitro and keep it simple. There’s a lot of things that are great to DIY for reefing but phosphate particularly can send a tank south fast if you screw it up.

Okay I was thinking that as well. I did heavy dose the neonitro and did read 3.7 ppm this morning. I may hook the reefmat back up in a week or so if I can balance out tyhe nitrate and Phos with the Neophos and NEonitro

 

[crabgrass]

Okay I was thinking that as well. I did heavy dose the neonitro and did read 3.7 ppm this morning. I may hook the reefmat back up in a week or so if I can balance out tyhe nitrate and Phos with the Neophos and NEonitro

This will probably be annoying, but I would check N every 12-24 hours and see how it’s balancing out.

If it’s 0 in 12, I doubled the dose I used before
If it’s 0 in 24 hours (but readable after 12), I kept dosing the same amount until it leveled out as a readable number.
Once you can keep it to 4-10 in a 24 hour period I would stop

If you can get it to 5-10 and steady for a couple of days, let the system run without changes. Then maybe turn the reefmat online, or skimmer cap back on etc. One at a time so you can get a better idea of what is dropping the nutrients