Unreadable nitrates.. Help

[Dan_P]

So I have always stuggled to keep detecable nitrates in my 40 gallon tank. Mainly stocked with softies with maybe 4 lps corals. Problem is i think its starting to effect growth of the corals now. I have nyos nitrate on order and should be here in a few days but before i started to dose i would like to know why im always at 0. I run a skimmer and usually do 10% water changes once a week. I am a heavy feeder between frozen food and pellets. After a week of even doubling up on food adition its still 0. The only algea problem i have is bubble algea. I will say theres a pretty good amount through out my tank. but no dinos or hair algea nothing like that. Does anyone know why its so hard to get detectable nitrates and if so should i go ahead and dose?

If this is a system less than a year old, your observation of undetectable nitrate is not uncommon. Also not uncommon is the average aquarists does not know how much nitrogen is actually being added via feeding to know how much nitrate might be produced daily. If you are adding an equivalent of 1 ppm ammonia everyday via feeding to a newish aquarium, you might never see nitrate. Between coral and micro algae, ammonia is likely depleted within hours of appearance.

 

[ItouchedThebutt]

Tank is around a year and half at this point. Im going to try dosing nitrates for a month to keep them readable unless for whatever reason i cant seem to get them readable by dosing. see how that effects the tank in a months time. better or for worse. i just hope my bba plauge doesnt get worse by doing this.

 

[Dburr1014]

Tank is around a year and half at this point. Im going to try dosing nitrates for a month to keep them readable unless for whatever reason i cant seem to get them readable by dosing. see how that effects the tank in a months time. better or for worse. i just hope my bba plauge doesnt get worse by doing this.

You can pull the bba out by hand.
Did we ever see a picture of effected coral?

I have some specimens for 11 years that have mostly been in 0 nitrate reading. I'm sure they are getting ammonia from the fish. I feed them well! :)

In this picture the gargonian and the two sps behind it are at least 10 years old in low nitrate environment. They are at the top of the rock.

I tried dosing no3 and ammonium only to end up with cyano mats. Something to look for if you dose.

Good luck!

 

[ItouchedThebutt]

Almost a week now after dosing nitrate and keeping it around 10ppm. Also learned today after over 8months to a year ive been using my hannah Phosphate checker wrong and not waiting the three min. My phosphate was actually .02 today. Luckily i have some TM Plus NP on hand. Also trying to steady my alk out. I will say The alk is probably making my mature toadstool angry, but since the nitrates have been up another random leather that used to open maybe once a week or two has been open for a week straight now. So some im provment. Im going to work on getting all major parameters where they need to be then work diligently on mainting them see what happens in a month.

Ps. idk if you can bump nitrates to high to fast so i did do it 5ppm at a time. i also dont know a proper ratio so im just going to try and shoot for around 10ppm Nitrate and .1ppm Phosphate. Adjust from there based on corals. I also now that i look closer really wonder if i had dinos in my sand bed all along and my sand sifting star and conch have just been "cleaning it up"

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Those target levels solemn good to me. :)

 

[ItouchedThebutt]

Nitrates seem to drop about 2-3ppm a day. Im on the third day in a row now of trying to raise Phosphate and its staying at .02ppm. Super hard to try and raise.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Nitrates seem to drop about 2-3ppm a day. Im on the third day in a row now of trying to raise Phosphate and its staying at .02ppm. Super hard to try and raise.

Why is it hard? Just add more.

 

[ItouchedThebutt]

Im only saying hard just because i was close to the recomended dosage. Sorry for not posting, but heres an update. Figured out my Tank consumes about 5ppm ish of nitrates a day, so im dosing 2ml of Nyos Nitrates. Phosphates finally are elevated to .06ppm, With the proper testing procedure now i swear. I found reef roids is a good natural way of increasing them. So ill set up a doser for the nitrates and feed roids atleast once a week or as the tank seems fit. Currently some corals are recovering, i did have some expolsion of somthing organic. Maybe spawning? cause my tank got all cloudy and my skimmer just went balistic. Just about everything is coming back from whatever that was except a leather and colony of bam bam zoas. I did hunkner down and remove a good bit of BBA till my back hurt, down side is. It still looks like i did nothing after pulling out so much. Another topic, pretty sure i do have dinos as they disapear from the sand at night. I know raising nutrients will help push them away. But i wonder, are they toxic? and if so to what extent? Can this be why hammers and torches hate my tank? Can this explain certain crusteans deaths? Like pithos or emerald crabs?

I plan on getting a micro scope just not in the instant future due to cash constraints. But i want one for the dinos along with just seeing what else is in the tank, seems pretty neat.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I would never give much thought to a company recommended dose of n or P if you are tracking them yourself. Those sorts of recommendations are for folks who assume if some is good, more must be better.

I can't say if what you are seeing are dinos, or whether the crabs are having an issue with it.

 

[ItouchedThebutt]

Fair enough. I see where your coming from. Either way I’ll stick to reef roids, corals get to feed and my phosphates get bumped up.

As far as the “Dino’s” I’ll read into them and learn more. Seems like a lot of people bring up the nutrients and dose micro bacteria 7 which works for me since I have that already and usually see results in about a month. I know people also dose sponge to encourage diatom blooms to compete with them to. But I am curious to what harm if any they do to the tank or inhabitants.

 

[ItouchedThebutt]

So the past two weeks ive had two seperate bacteria blooms. Im assuming at least. Everytime the bloom happens my nitrates are 75ppm or higher. Whats causing this bloom? High nitrates? or is the bloom causing the high nitrates? Just did a test now after the bloom occured and left and got a nitrate reading of 73. Reperforming the test to double check the accuracy.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

No, high nitrate will not cause a bloom of suspended bacteria.

Organics will. Have you added any or are you exporting organics?

 

[ItouchedThebutt]

What do you mean by organics? The only thing I’ve done is dose liquid nitrates, phosphates, all for reef and microbacter 7. I do have a skimmer running and regular filter sock replacements as it gets clogged. I noticed the “Dino’s” as nutrients go up have been spreading to more of the sand bed.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

What do you mean by organics? The only thing I’ve done is dose liquid nitrates, phosphates, all for reef and microbacter 7. I do have a skimmer running and regular filter sock replacements as it gets clogged. I noticed the “Dino’s” as nutrients go up have been spreading to more of the sand bed.

Organics mean compounds that contain carbon and hydrogen, and all foods are mostly organics. Sugars, fats, proteins, carbohydrates, wood, etc. are all organics. AFR also contains organics, though not enough to cause a bloom that I have seen.

MB7 is bacteria itself, I'd stop dosing it.

 

[ItouchedThebutt]

I can stop dosing it but I’d prefer not to as it’s recommended in helping get rid of Dino’s per many people’s recommendations