Sps high nutrients myth?

iiluisii

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0 nitrates and .01 phosphates and I'm gettting the best colors i ever had. Also the video is a bit hard to believe in a few things for example the part that he said he started with all frags which is not the case according to another article about his tank. Which you can see the picture below. The picture I added is supposed to be when he introduce the acros back to his tank.

Those guys are legends in the reef community but sometimes we tend to exaggerate a little which go back to don't believe everything that is publish and if your tank is running great the way it is then don't go changing hunga around because others are having great results.

An sps tank can be successful on a high nutrient system or ULNS but many things have to me in consideration i.e. alkalinity and the way you introduce and export the nutrients.

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Thales

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Thanks!
I loved the talk in San Diego last year too! You guys should take that show on the road.

Ps That was a really cool thing you did for my friend Tapio.

Thanks! That was really fun. The year before we did 'confessions of coral killers' which was fun too. We have co talked 3 or 4 times and I really like it - it feels different from other stuff which has to be a good thing.

My pleasure showing Tapio around. Let me know when you are in the neighborhood!
 
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dave57

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I always believe in each tank being its own little ecosystem and what works in one may not work in others.

For my own ecosystem, I employ heavy feeding and large fish populations to give my corals ample nutrients and food and counter it with aggressive nutrient removal to get rid of the wastes. In those respects, I aim to mimic the ocean as best as possible. Heavy import of food without the residual nutrient issues that come with it.

I feed 6x/day between a combo of pellets, nori, and frozen. And when I feed frozen (which is 2x/day), its a virtual snowstorm in there.

My nutrients are kept at 5-8 ppm nitrates and 0.03 ppm of phosphates. I've been able to run less phosphate removal media over the years as my coral mass has increased, helping become a nutrient sponge of its own.

Here's the latest tank video on my system.



Growth shots for fun. This is over a 4 month time span.

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For my system, phosphates over 0.18 ppm brown my acros and some start to STN. Anything over 15 ppm of nitrates and my acros tend to look a little more brown but still healthy.

Do you happen to run high par levels? Led?
 

DukeOfSavoy

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There's a saying that holds truth here, "there's more than one way to skin a cat". In my +10yrs in the hobby I've learned that just cause one person, in one place, has had success doesn't not mean it's a rule.

For Low nutrients being best for SPS to be a myth then the opposite or another set of parameters would have to be true. If ULNS was less than ideal you would never see any of the beautiful tanks on DTOTQ or tank of the month. If you cruise the forums your are much more likely to find beautiful SPS in systems that controll NO3 and PO4 to very low levels. That being said I think the reason that you find variability in how certain tanks with zero NO3 look amazing, and others with 30ppm, has to with many factors(many of which aren't fully understanded). Using natural means of controlling nutrients seem to yield better reasults. The ocean has been sustaining reefs at >1ppm NO3 for a little while, so it must be doing something correctly. If you were to go to the Great Barrier Reef and dump a bunch of NO3 and PO4 until they reach the levels in previous posts, I would bet my house that things wouldn't be doing very well.
Ask 100 reefers a question and you'll likely get 1k answers. There simply is no recipe for the "perfect" Reef tank, cause it doesn't exist.
 

gregkn73

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That's why I went SPS dominant actually. I got tired of pleasing one group and ticking off another group.

I thought that was difficult to please all groups of corals in a mixed reef, when people try to achieve 0 nutrients ... at your tank nutrients level, with so much food get in, why do you thing LPs and aofties wouldn't be happy , if you didn't have your beautiful angels?
 

Magem

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I keep acroporas, zoas, euphhylias, cinarina, goniopora,...with less than 0,2 nitrates and 0,02 phosphates...and everything doing well!
Nitrates were measured with 2 diferent tests of salifert and Sunday were at 0.
This is my post and this same Sunday I took some pictures...


https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php?threads/92-gal--Sps-tank.263219/

Every reef is a different world...
 

FarmerTy

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I thought that was difficult to please all groups of corals in a mixed reef, when people try to achieve 0 nutrients ... at your tank nutrients level, with so much food get in, why do you thing LPs and aofties wouldn't be happy , if you didn't have your beautiful angels?
Now I think my softies would actually do fine with the nitrates at 5ppm. Before I was keeping the tank at 0.25 ppm and they were struggling a bit.

But you are absolutely correct, though the current nutrient level is nite conducive to a mixed reef tank, the angel would dictate an all SPS tank anyways.
 

FarmerTy

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I keep acroporas, zoas, euphhylias, cinarina, goniopora,...with less than 0,2 nitrates and 0,02 phosphates...and everything doing well!
Nitrates were measured with 2 diferent tests of salifert and Sunday were at 0.
This is my post and this same Sunday I took some pictures...


https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php?threads/92-gal--Sps-tank.263219/

Every reef is a different world...
Magem, I hope you don't take this the wrong way but your colors on the acros would be more deep and bold if you had 5 ppm nitrates. Your acros looked like mine at 0.25 ppm nitrates. They looked good and had decent color until I put my fish back in the tank and the nitrates rose to 5 ppm, then it was like night and day difference with the colors. I would have never realized the colors could be better until my nitrates went up to 5 ppm and I saw it myself.
 

Magem

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Magem, I hope you don't take this the wrong way but your colors on the acros would be more deep and bold if you had 5 ppm nitrates. Your acros looked like mine at 0.25 ppm nitrates. They looked good and had decent color until I put my fish back in the tank and the nitrates rose to 5 ppm, then it was like A night and day difference with the colors. I would have never realized the colors could be better until my nitrates went up to 5 ppm and I saw it myself.

Nothing wrong! Thanks for the advertisement. ;) I have read about increasing NO3 and its impact in sps colors. In fact, I dose KNO3 everyday to keep 0,2 to make pOssible to
decrease PO4 and to fight against ciano. Maybe I will increase KNO3 dosis but on the other hand things are doing well and I don't want to assume the risk of breaking the balance I have achieved...you Know..
 

edosan

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Nice thread

Like some one says nothing new tho. Guys at wwc are saying this for years.

High nuts, better growth
Low nuts, better colour

Playing in ULNS can be very dangerous, in the limit of a potential catastrofe (cero all)
Playing on the other side (very high nuts) also can be dangerous
(I have try it all, I believe...)

Some coloration of corals (sps mainly) can only achieve by low nuts, but corals suport a wide range of nitrates and phosphates as long as the systems is STABLE. (any change make it slow)

Thanks for sharing experiences, very informative!

If you want more nitrates, add aminoacids. Things can do really bad adding Potassium Nitrate, Sodium Nitrate or Calcium Nitrate (by exprience)

I have seen and test LPS and Soft with over 150ppm on No3 with no problems at all.

Me?
No3: 20
Po4: 0.03

50E6F509-DCCD-4F24-8286-24FCA1751990.jpg
 
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Paul B

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If you want to study what nutrients can or can not do, jump in the sea. I took these a couple of years ago off an almost uninhabited Hawaiian Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Nothing but algae.



 

Centerline

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If you want to keep single color SPS and no crazy wild color morphs then you can high nitrate all day long. I have never seen a tank though with wild colored SPS running high nutrient.
WWC runs N03 pretty high to maintain the depth of color you see in their acros.
 

Thales

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If you want to study what nutrients can or can not do, jump in the sea. I took these a couple of years ago off an almost uninhabited Hawaiian Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Nothing but algae.




What were the nutrient levels?
 

Robthorn

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Paul B did you test the water in Hawaii when you were there?
I tested water at Electric beach on Oahu. That is when I realized our hobbyist kits are marginal at best.
No3 was undetectable via Red Sea and Salifert kits and phosphorous was undetectable on my Hanna ppb Ultra Low checker. Its the lowest one. I forget the model. Alk was way low on Salifert and Hanna ppm checker. Like 6.7 and 7.3. Alkalinity is supposed to be much higher since we are told we are testing total alkalinity. I don't know if the kits are just that far off or if they truly aren't testing all the elements of Total Alkalinity. I assume the later.
Calcium and magnesium were very close to text book numbers. So was potassium. Salinity was right around 1.026 if I remember correctly. 35ppt on my green Milwaukee.

I add 2ml of Reefgrow iron to my tank every week. Does Randy say the oxydator removes iron or changes it to a different form than that found in synthetic salt mixes? I don't recall reading this article/review yet.
 

FarmerTy

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Nothing wrong! Thanks for the advertisement. ;) I have read about increasing NO3 and its impact in sps colors. In fact, I dose KNO3 everyday to keep 0,2 to make pOssible to
decrease PO4 and to fight against ciano. Maybe I will increase KNO3 dosis but on the other hand things are doing well and I don't want to assume the risk of breaking the balance I have achieved...you Know..
Absolutely understand! I tried to tweak something in my tank a couple weeks ago and wish I would have just left it alone. When things are good, leaving it alone is sometimes just best.
 

Paul B

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Robthorn, I generally don't bring test kits diving with me. I don't even have any test kits, but sometimes I bring my very high tech swing arm hydrometer in the water with me and am happy to report the salinity in the South Pacific is fine so they won't have to tweek it. From the taste of the water I would say the nitrates are 00.3, the phosphates are about 0002 and the Vodka is about 8.72.
Oahu would not be the best place to test water as it is filled with tourists, run off, pina colada's, Coppertone and all the criminals they killed on Hawaii Five O.
I took those pictures off of Lanai or Molokai where there is hardly anyone.



I took this from a helicopter over one of the places I took those algae pictures. The original King Cong movie jungle scenes were filmed in that valley so there may be giant gorilla poop in the water causing that algae, but I really can't be sure.



I add 2ml of Reefgrow iron to my tank every week.

I dose one hammer for every 25 gallons of water twice a month which I test with a Black and Decker test kit.

 
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Magem

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I tested NO3 and PO4 in the Mediterranean Sea, 20 km far away from BARCELONA and both were undetectable
 

saltyfilmfolks

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Sorry for the crappy iPhone picture but here are a few quick pictures of my acros with 0 nitrates and 0.01 phosphates. I do run the full zeovit method.

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your lighting seems low ish 200 350 range? where does your alk sit?
 

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