Reef Tank Nutrients and Test Struggles

[jross827]

Hi,
I’ve been using R2R as a resource from the beginning but this is my first post.

Some background:
This is my first reef tank. It’s a 110gal with a 40breeder sump. I built the aquascape with Marco dry rock with a huge focus up front of trying to eliminate as many pests as possible (I know this is a polarizing topic but it is what it is). I set up the system last fall and added my first pair of clowns around thanksgiving.. I’ve since added a tailspot blenny, a dwarf hawkfish, and a yellow eye kole tang. I’ve also got a smallish CUC of 5 hermits, a strawberry conch, a rose urchin, and 3 trochus snails.. I used to have a few more snails but they didn’t make it thru a battle with SCA dinos in the spring..

That brings us to the start of the topic… I was having great luck controlling nutrients and managing parameters considering it was a fairly new tank trying to get a good diversity of bacteria established with dosing a few different brands of bottled bacteria.. out of the blue, my nitrates and phosphates started to tank and over the course of a few weeks my nutrients went from too high and trying to bring them down, to almost undetectable and dinos showed up..

After battling dinos for about a month, I was able to overcome by dosing phosphates and sodium silicate..

Ever since that, my nutrients have always been on the low side and I continued dosing phosphates and feeding more to make sure they remained at detectable levels…

Well, a few more months pass and my weekly testing shows similar parameters (under 5ppm nitrates and between 0.02 to undetectable phosphates even though I’m still dosing phosphates) however now I have cyano show up.. everything I’ve read says cyano shows up in a high nutrient environment and the reason my testing shows low numbers is because the cyano is sucking up all the nutrients and giving me false low readings..
so then I stop dosing and start skimming a little wetter and increase my water change volume..

After a few more weeks I was successful in getting rid of the cyano.

Now, the point of this whole, long writeup..
How the heck am I supposed to monitor my nutrient levels moving forward? I’ve invested in Hanna testers for nitrate, phosphate, alkalinity, and copper.. I love the level of accuracy they give a guy trying to recreate the ocean in his living room, but I now question the point of even testing for nutrient levels, if low might actually mean high and I’m fueling a cyano outbreak, or it might mean I’m on the verge of dinos..

Has anyone else dealt with this, and what was your solution to this dilemma?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Unlike many pests we have, cyano is a bacteria and thrives on organics as food. While a lot of cyano will drive down inorganic nutrients, I’m not sure it is fair to say that higher inorganic nutrients drive cyano.

That said, are you sure the problem is cyano and not dinos?

 

[jross827]

That said, are you sure the problem is cyano and not dinos?

Unfortunately I didn’t think to put them under my scope but I’m fairly convinced that it was cyano as the process of increased water changes, cutting back on feeding, and increased skimming got rid of it.. that process completely goes against the process of getting rid of dinos..

The annoying part was, my coral were colored up and growing the absolute best I’d even seen right when the cyano started… so it seems like the nutrients in my tank had been too low previously.

 

[allof fish]

Unfortunately I didn’t think to put them under my scope but I’m fairly convinced that it was cyano as the process of increased water changes, cutting back on feeding, and increased skimming got rid of it.. that process completely goes against the process of getting rid of dinos..

The annoying part was, my coral were colored up and growing the absolute best I’d even seen right when the cyano started… so it seems like the nutrients in my tank had been too low previously.

Cyano just comes with a maturing tank. Most times tanks tends to settle in a certain spot for nutrients. Using dry rock can make nutrients very inconsistent for awhile but at also a year I don’t think that’s the case. Do you have any algae issues? I would add a larger cuc as it’s pretty small for that size tank. Also what water do you use? Rodi? If so maybe need to change your filters as those can let tds thru and cause issues like this

 

[jross827]

Cyano just comes with a maturing tank. Most times tanks tends to settle in a certain spot for nutrients. Using dry rock can make nutrients very inconsistent for awhile but at also a year I don’t think that’s the case. Do you have any algae issues? I would add a larger cuc as it’s pretty small for that size tank. Also what water do you use? Rodi? If so maybe need to change your filters as those can let tds thru and cause issues like this

No algae issues, really ever.. Kinda surprised me, diatoms and algae were the two things I never really had.. Just went smooth sailing until dinos then cyano..

I do use RODI, but I'm usually pretty on top of it.. I pretty much only consume cation resin, and I have a anion, cation, and mixed bed setup... I never let it fully consume the cation resin before changing it, and even if a little gets through, the mixed bed should catch it.. I've always had 0 TDS coming out.

As far as the CUC, I agree, it seemed small to me, but since I've never really had algae issues, I was always afraid to buy too much stuff and starve them to death...I do currently have 3 nassarius snails, 4 ceriths, and 2 hermits that are done with a 76 day QT and ready to go in, so my CUC size will be upped shortly..

@Randy Holmes-Farley Can you clarify what you mean by organic and inorganic nutrients and how that affects the tank? What is the Hanna tester measuring for?
Sorry if this is a super basic question, but I've never seen this referenced before.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Inorganic nutrients include ammonia, nitrate, and phosphate.

Organics include billions of different compounds, such as sugar, ethanol, DNA, lipids, proteins, amino acids, urea, fats, phospholipids, etc. anything containing carbon and hydrogen with just a couple of exceptions.

 

[jross827]

So what do you think is consuming all of my inorganic nutrients? I've had my protein skimmer off now for about a week, so my only filtration at the moment is mechanical using filter socks... I'm only doing about 2%/week water changes right now to lower my nutrient export.. And for some reason I'm still regularely testing undetectable phosphates and steadily dropping nitrates (less than 3 currently).

Like I said, I'm currently dosing phosphates from time to time to make sure theres something in there to avoid dinos again, but last time I went down this road, I ended up with cyano lol..

But maybe now I understand why based on your first comment... If I'm cutting back filtration and water changes, I might be getting a buildup of organic nutrients which is fueling the cyano... So I guess now I'm wondering how do I balance my organic and inorganic nutrients?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

So what do you think is consuming all of my inorganic nutrients? I've had my protein skimmer off now for about a week, so my only filtration at the moment is mechanical using filter socks... I'm only doing about 2%/week water changes right now to lower my nutrient export.. And for some reason I'm still regularely testing undetectable phosphates and steadily dropping nitrates (less than 3 currently).

Like I said, I'm currently dosing phosphates from time to time to make sure theres something in there to avoid dinos again, but last time I went down this road, I ended up with cyano lol..

But maybe now I understand why based on your first comment... If I'm cutting back filtration and water changes, I might be getting a buildup of organic nutrients which is fueling the cyano... So I guess now I'm wondering how do I balance my organic and inorganic nutrients?

My point was that lots of any pest, including cyano, can reduce inorganic nutrients, but that higher levels do not necessarily make it grow faster.

For cyano in particular, higher flow and reducing organics (skimming, GAC, water changes, etc.) can help deter it, but folks sometimes resort to more drastic means, including antibiotics (e.g., chemiclean) or dosing abcteria to compete with it for spaces on surfaces.

 

[JonasRoman]

You describe a normal scenario when you nutrients go up and down between extreme values together with cyano/dino outbreak because those organisms consume a lot of nutrients very fast.
Its not always the low or high nutrients that are the primary problem but cyano or Dino is, and those due to fast growing reflects what happens with your nutrients.
If Dino appear of some reason the N and P is consumed very fast and you will measure almost zero values. Dino finaly dies (by different methods or by itself) and N and P goes up. I have showed and quantified that Dino binds a lot of po4 and do it fast.
In my situations when I had Dino it was never preceded by zero nutrients but zero nutrients was a consequence of the outbreak.
So, , the roller cast behaviour of your nutrients are connected to clinical fluctuations in dino/cyano outbreaks as those organism are a h7ge reservoir for N and P.

Hanna is good enough for both nitrate and po4 measurements according to my opinion.

Remember that icp can't measure po4. It calculate from p and in a situ8with high organic load that icp po4 value is often quite much false high. Better trust the Hanna.

Jonas