The worst paradigm to hit the hobby and more specifically the SPS world

[RichReef]

There has been a shift. In the past it wasn't easy to bottom out N and P if not impossible. You older guys know exactly what I'm talking about.

RODI equipment is better.
Salt is better.
Bio Pellets.
Scrubbers.
Fuges.
Wave makers and flow.
Aquascapes. No more walls.
The ease of INFORMATION sharing. Which is probably the biggest difference.
Better filters and media.
Even the availability and diversity of corals. They do use N and P. So having more increases N and P filtration.

So I wouldn't say it was a paradigm. More like an evolution that has led to this new epiphany? Or understanding?

 

[anth]

I run full triton with 0.05 phosphate and 1 nitrate. I do see cyano when nitrate drops below this and would prefer it around 5 but what ever i do i cant seem to get there.
I have tried feeding more skimming less but this just raises phosphate which comes with uglies.
All in all i think that as long as i dont hit absolute zero it will be fine having low nutrients all though i would prefer slightly higher nitrate to act as a buffer for any swings that may occur.

 

[NS Mike D]

Love the paradigm shift discussion. Filtration has gotten so good that we now have this thread. IMO, SPS in a ULN tank is threading a small needle and we have gotten so good at driving down NO3 and PO4 that we are not spending money to put those back in out tanks. Crazy.

But as mentioned, the ULN and it being the blind solution to algae has many reefers (myself included) bottoming out levels only to make things worse - like dinos in my case. This is also an issue in that NO3 and PO4 are very different in their need to be managed. I think it's clear that the parameters for NO3 can vary greatly but that PO4 has a much more narrow window for success - yet we lump the two together when we advise to lower nutrients.

I think the other thing and as rightfully noted, IMO, is connection with dry rock and the lack of information about what really is happening at the macro level as it relates to coral health. this is especially true for beginners who are understandably heavily focused cycling a tank and establishing the nitrifying bacteria with very little guidance, let alone measurement abilities) of the microfauna that develops, that I am certain is just as important as measuring NH3 - NO3.

 

[marquitos]

The worst paradigm to hit the hobby is getting your nutrient levels as low as possible?

Is trying to get your nutrients as low as possible the worst paradigm to hit the hobby? Is it me, or is every other "corals" struggling/dying post always seem to come with either nitrates, phosphate, or both completely bottomed out?

 

[TheKyle]

I’ve observed in my system it’s the lps not the sps that will alert me when phosphates are bottoming out. When lps corals start shrinking and starting to pale out it seems to correlate with my phosphates getting too low. Sps doesn’t really seem to care in the short term for me. When I raise phosphate back up lps recovers pretty quick. I suspect this is probably due to the relatively high lighting levels in the tank. If I’m not mistaken, I’ve seen a lot of very smart people claiming that there is a direct relationship between lighting levels coral can tolerate and amount of nutrients in the tank. More light requires more nutrients.

 

[Bpfor3]

I have been on both sides of the time line. I kept a reef probably 20 years ago with rock straight out of the ocean, skimmer, water change. that was all we did. Corals did fine and never heard anything about starving corals or corals getting pale. i got back into it last year and set up a tank with dry rock. Sooo much more info. Had a few fish for a month and then had to go fallow bc of ich outbreak. the corals i had, including such things as mushrooms, euphyllia all started getting pale. SPS frags would make it about a month and just die. My nutrients were undetectable so started dosing NO3. i also had a refugio and the chaeto grew very little, if at all.

I am about 4 months since i started adding fish back in. QT'd of course. i feed a good bit. Slowly but surely, my skimmer started skimming, my chaeto started growing and my corals started darkening up and getting more colorful, and coralline algae took off. The two SPS frags i have added, have also done fine and are visibly growing. My NO3 is very low, although i will admit my test kit is not great, but my PO4 is .04 and under, per Hanna. I have a lot more nutrients going in and out, but test kits stay about the same.

I also bought ocean sand and mud and put in my refugium to aid diversity.

I like the comment above about wiping the glass about 2-3 times a week. thats about what i do. Pre-fish it was like 1 every 10 days.

Interesting discussion. Just my experience.

 

[aqua_code]

I’ve observed in my system it’s the lps not the sps that will alert me when phosphates are bottoming out.

For me it's Green Hair Algae. After awhile you will see the phosphate indicators - just can take 6 months.
Also SPS will start to lose color if the light is too high or food sources are too low (low phosphate).

One other point is you cant talk about phosphate without knowing if nitrate is relatively higher or lower. You always want nitrate higher than phosphate or you are due for trouble.

 

[marquitos]

My 60g tank is still a young 2 months old. Started with live sand and rock and inoculated with some red sea starter cultures. Nitrates from day 1 have been high at 30-50 and i was doing quite a few water exchanges (no protein skimmer) and have watched the algae come and go, but the nitrates seemed to always be staying high. Now I have a little bit of filamentous brown-haired algae and some green algae here and there. Nitrate, now with fewer water exchanges is staying close to 10-20. I've started paying closer attention to my corals, clowns (2), a blenny and a tang to let their behavior dictate how the water is doing. Fish are healthy, eating and active. Most of my corals are thriving and even some starting to grow quite well. Early on, some acropora's died, but I'll try introducing them again later on as my tank matures a bit more and I learn more about lighting. Oh, one more thing, my little sea urchin is an algae devouring machine!!

 

[Juslen]

In my opinion, every tank is an isolated case. The most important thing isn’t so much the number, but the deviations from it, or in other words, the stability. Since tanks are biological marvels, they will grow around what they have to work with. The safest thing anyone can do is keep providing those parameters so the tank has time to stabilize and work around it. Obviously there are extremes in both ways, but I’m speaking from what is commensurate.

New tank algae booms are as inevitable. Starting a tank is the polar opposite of stabilizing it, so that’s to be expected. If you feed a cube of shrimp a day, keep feeding a cube of shrimp a day and your tank will work around that, and eventually (if you’re following some regiment correctly) the numbers will come around. Likewise, if you want to increase some part of the routine, it has to be done slowly.

I don’t know who said it, but I’ve always followed this advice when it comes to a reef tank;

”Nothing good happens quickly.”

 

[aqua_code]

Oh, one more thing, my little sea urchin is an algae devouring machine!!

Very nice solution to the GHA problem. When you re-introduce SPS make sure to monitor ALK. My guess is that might have been the culprit.

Also my guess is that right now, you have high phosphates getting locked into your live rock. You will find when you lower phosphates - you will continue to need that urchin as the rock releases phosphate and stimulates GHA growth.

From my experience I like to keep low nutrients to "purge" the rocks of phosphate as early as possible and try to get to an equilibrium where the rocks are no longer releasing anything into the system. This is especially important with dry rock.

 

[tonyvan]

Sure would you like a pic of one of my dying colonies from phosphate being too low for weeks lol

I would like to know what people think about bringing in new corals from say an environment that has low nutrients to a tank that has very high phosphate and nitrate. Would that shock the corals? If nutrients gradually build up in a tank that is a different matter.

 

[aqua_code]

I would like to know what people think about bringing in new corals from say an environment that has low nutrients to a tank that has very high phosphate and nitrate. Would that shock the corals? If nutrients gradually build up in a tank that is a different matter.

You can experience something called "browning out." It's not as scary as the other end of the spectrum - bleaching when they turn ghostly pale - but both are concerning.

 

[Ike]

+1. I had a fight with Dino's a little while back and I chose to start dosing Nitrate and Phosphate during that time. My dino's did clear up(I think this was related to other issues) but it seemed to throw the growth off for a couple of months.

@Ike why do you recommend against carbon dosing? I am curious to hear what you say as I currently dose 80ml of Vinegar to my ATO with Kalk. 80ml is on the low side for my tank and I use it to help the Kalk along with a little bump for my bacteria.

Without getting into all of the dynamics, it often ends up being too difficult for people to maintain sufficient nutrients levels after they've been dosing for a while. Just monitor closely as it's not much of a difference between all is well and corals being damaged.

 

[Hecticdude]

This a super article! My experience is very limited but I ran a 72gl bowfront for about 8 years and this was in the early 2000.
I had a 20 gallon sump and refugium. Had MH and t5 dosed 2 part religiously and to be honest I never ever had a problem with low nutrient levels. I battled high numbers forever and my habit of doing water changes saved the day on many occasion.
Took a hiatus for about 10 years or so then 4 months ago I got the itch and bought a used 75 gallon tank with a 30 gallon sump. Stand and 2 sb reef lights 16 led for 300 bucks.
Came with a Eishopp s200 4 gen skimmer.
Well after plumbing, realizing those LEDs sucked,50lbs of live sand 60 lbs of life rock, the purple stuff sprayed on it, A 3 week cycle with DrT magic juice. And 2000.00 for assorted dry goods and livestock including buying small frags this is my dilemma.
Temp 78F
Salinity 1.024
Nitrate 1
PH 8.2
Alkalinity 7.8
Cal 443
Mag 1360
Phos 0.01.
My Alkalinity fluctuates between 7.4 and 8.0
Nitrate usually 0
Phosphate usually 0.01
Have fish,feed 3 times a day. No more than they can eat in 5 min.
Have fuge with cheato.
Dose 2 part x2 per week
Do testing 1x week
Water change 10 gallons weekly.
If i feed more or use RR or CF for corals i get diatom explosion. No hair algea.
This is all to say that with a young tank this will be a constant challenge until the tank matures.
Equipment is so much more advanced now that my only casualty was a super small clown who had flukes and starved to death. Unfortunately Yes it really sucked.
And 10 or so hermit crabs. Thats it.
Everything else is growing slowly but growing. I have a mixed tank and in the past I would have never even attempted LPS or SPS at 4 months.
I love this hobby! It might be that the challenges is part of what makes it so awesome. Fighting for the perfect environment for these beautiful living organisms that we are responsible for.
Happy Fish,Happy Corals Happy Dude.
Crabs Suck!

 

[waterskiguy]

I don't think it is the absolute worse thing. I feel like the people telling others to dose everything to get their corals healthy and colorful is one of the top also. it seems like most people are more concerned about what little bottle they need to put in their tank than their nutrient level / load.

 

[James Johnson]

If you have 0 nutrients your tank is starving

 

[Ardeus]

My tank is a little over 1 year old, but it's an upgrade from the previous system.

I got extra live rock from someone that had sold the tank and kept the rock outside during winter without heating. When I went to pick up the rock, a large dead tang appeared.

When I added that rock to my system, it exploded with algae. It took me many months to get rid of it while PO4 hang around 0.1 and NO3 undetectable.

Dinos showed up. I dosed nitrates and 99% of them went away over the next weeks. I still have them but they don't look like they want to conquer the world.

Fast forward to today, my phosphates vary between 0.2 and 0.4 and the tank looks cleaner than ever.

Would it be better if I brought the phosphates below .1? I don't know because when I dose lanthanum chloride (I drip it into a 5 micron sock), the anemones hate it and bubble up furiously and stay like that for weeks.

I have a few hardy acros and some of them were a little bit more colorful when the PO4 was lower. I am going to try my first finicky acro (red dragon) tomorrow.

 

[MightyMO]

All the rock in my tank is old school matured live rock. My tank crashed about 6 months due to my lighting failing and me not being in a financial place to fix it, it turned into a hair algae paradise!!! Lol I have since turned it around to find myself growing a dark red form of coralline algae... (Same color as red slime) Really bothers me honestly.... But I got told it was healthy and the coloration was due to my nutrient levels in the tank... I put some GFO in and I'm waiting to see some results along with my weekly water changes, hoping my sps start taking off... Waiting on a check and I'm gonna pick up a Hanna instruments checker bundle so I can no for sure where I'm at in the future. This post has given me some good numbers to strive for... Can't wait till I get my new sump in with refugium to start being able to control nutrient level with huge light intensity! Thank you all for the good thread! Really enjoying this reef2reef site!

 

[MightyMO]

All the rock in my tank is old school matured live rock. My tank crashed about 6 months due to my lighting failing and me not being in a financial place to fix it, it turned into a hair algae paradise!!! Lol I have since turned it around to find myself growing a dark red form of coralline algae... (Same color as red slime) Really bothers me honestly.... But I got told it was healthy and the coloration was due to my nutrient levels in the tank... I put some GFO in and I'm waiting to see some results along with my weekly water changes, hoping my sps start taking off... Waiting on a check and I'm gonna pick up a Hanna instruments checker bundle so I can no for sure where I'm at in the future. This post has given me some good numbers to strive for... Can't wait till I get my new sump in with refugium to start being able to control nutrient level with huge light intensity! Thank you all for the good thread! Really enjoying this reef2reef site!

*fuge

 

[nornicle]

My mixed reef nano I bought from someone came in at 0.5ppm phosphate, I’ve brought it down to 0.12-0.19 (I’m not sure if my Hanna checker is not precise).

Can someone explain what happens when phosphates start to drift above 0.05-0.1 (which is what I see in most people’ s recommendations as not to go too far above or below this, but also to ensure good feeding of corals).