bringing up nitrate and phosphate and battling dinoflagellates.

[jandin101]

What suggestions do you guys have for bringing up nitrate and phosphate?

I have a Reefer 300XL and it seems no matter what I do the nitrate and phosphate are extremely low, and now I'm battling dinoflagellates. Even after doubling my feeding and ceasing water changes my nitrate stayed at 0. I started to see some phosphate, but the levels were still negligible until recently.

My tank levels (tested weekly):
KH 9.8 (stable for the last few weeks)
Ca 430 (stable for the last few weeks)
Mg 1390 (first Mg test)
NO3 0.00 (0.00 for the past couple months)
pH 7.8 (down from 8.0 previous week) Advice for keeping pH stable also welcome. . . it fluctuates on me between 7.8 and 8.3
PO4 0.01 (up from 0.00 the previous week)
Salinity 1.025 (Stable since setup)

Maintenance and Equipment:
Bio filtration: 60 pounds of liverock in the display, 5 pounds in the sump. I've recently set-up Refugium with Chaeto and sand in an attempt to help the copepod population in the tank come back because I was worried that it wasn't stable.
Mechanical filtration: Red Sea RSK 300 protein skimmer and filter floss in two filter cups for filtration. I used to change the floss twice a week and now do so every day because of dinoflagellates.
Chemical filtration: 1 cup Activated carbon divided between the two filtration cups underneath filter floss, changed weekly.
Salt used: Red Sea blue bucket
WC Schedule: I did water changes weekly until nitrates and phosphates bottomed out. I stopped doing the water changes in the hopes that my nutrient levels would go back up. No luck.
Dosing: All-For-Reef, paused, because I noticed consumption of KH and Ca stopped when dinoflagellates broke out.

Stocking:
1 Coral Beauty Angelfish
1 Ocellaris Clownfish
1 Lawnmower Blenny
6 Blue Chromis
1 Purple Dottyback
1 Michelin Blenny
2 Cleaner Shrimp
1 Yellow Watchman Goby
Clean up Crew: 10 Nassarius snails. I want hermits too but local stores haven't had them in stock.
Corals: I have a couple of medium-large, growing colonies of zoas with more polyps than I can count, a Kenya Tree leather coral, 4 small frags of Mushrooms, and two frags of Montipora Digitata that I put in right before the Dinoflagellate outbreak. I had a large colony of Stylophora that I bought at the same time as the Montipora that died when I started trying to combat the dinoflagellates.

I'm open to any advice! This tank is my first and it's only 6 months old.

Thanks!

 

[w8lifts]

Auto feeder was a game changer for me, I regulate my two nutrients with time they are on now with micro feedings throughout the day, have never bottomed out nutrients once I started using it

 

[thedon986]

I use NeoPhos and NeoNitro. There are cheaper sources out there, but I have liked these. I typically add less than 30ml of either per week depending on test trends so a 500ml bottle lasts me a while.

 

[bobnicaragua]

I had the same problem with my SPS tank a few years ago. This is what I did:

Nutrients:
Add an auto feeder with pellets. Lower the water level in your skimmer so it barely skims at all and what it does produce is very dry.

Finally, shutdown your fuge. At this point the fuge is contributing to your problem, it’s not helping.

Dinos:
Dinos are much more difficult. The type I had went away when I turned my heater up to 81 degrees.

 

[jandin101]

Auto feeder was a game changer for me, I regulate my two nutrients with time they are on now with micro feedings throughout the day, have never bottomed out nutrients once I started using it

I had the same problem with my SPS tank a few years ago. This is what I did:

Nutrients:
Add an auto feeder with pellets. Lower the water level in your skimmer so it barely skims at all and what it does produce is very dry.

Finally, shutdown your fuge. At this point the fuge is contributing to your problem, it’s not helping.

Dinos:
Dinos are much more difficult. The type I had went away when I turned my heater up to 81 degrees.

Would the auto-feeder get to my bottom feeders or more timid fish? The Watchman goby especially doesn't stray far from his cave and will rarely fight for his food.

Also, for my stocking, how much dry food would be appropriate? I feed 2 cubes of brine shrimp or mysis shrimp a day, one in the morning and one in the evening.

 

[w8lifts]

Would the auto-feeder get to my bottom feeders or more timid fish? The Watchman goby especially doesn't stray far from his cave and will rarely fight for his food.

Also, for my stocking, how much dry food would be appropriate? I feed 2 cubes of brine shrimp or mysis shrimp a day, one in the morning and one in the evening.

I still feed by hand as well fyi. Depends on the type of food you put in the auto feeder, freeze dried, pellets, flakes to answer this question. I use freeze dried with avast plank feeder so gets saturated first and my power head pushes the food around so I don’t really have to worry about anything. I feed slow sinking pellets for my crabs/CUC

 

[bobnicaragua]

Would the auto-feeder get to my bottom feeders or more timid fish? The Watchman goby especially doesn't stray far from his cave and will rarely fight for his food.

Also, for my stocking, how much dry food would be appropriate? I feed 2 cubes of brine shrimp or mysis shrimp a day, one in the morning and one in the evening.

I would keep feeding exactly what you are feeding now, but add the auto feeder. You are just adding in some junk food along with the more nutritious frozen food you are already feeding.

I feed sinking pellets so they don’t get sucked into the overflow.

My auto feeder goes off before and after lunch. At dinner time I feed 2 frozen cubes. Nori in the evening.

 

[Uncle99]

Neo nitro and Neo phos were easy to use for me.
Food works over time, dosing was just faster to get them up into range.
Always test.

 

[vetteguy53081]

What suggestions do you guys have for bringing up nitrate and phosphate?

I have a Reefer 300XL and it seems no matter what I do the nitrate and phosphate are extremely low, and now I'm battling dinoflagellates. Even after doubling my feeding and ceasing water changes my nitrate stayed at 0. I started to see some phosphate, but the levels were still negligible until recently.

My tank levels (tested weekly):
KH 9.8 (stable for the last few weeks)
Ca 430 (stable for the last few weeks)
Mg 1390 (first Mg test)
NO3 0.00 (0.00 for the past couple months)
pH 7.8 (down from 8.0 previous week) Advice for keeping pH stable also welcome. . . it fluctuates on me between 7.8 and 8.3
PO4 0.01 (up from 0.00 the previous week)
Salinity 1.025 (Stable since setup)

Maintenance and Equipment:
Bio filtration: 60 pounds of liverock in the display, 5 pounds in the sump. I've recently set-up Refugium with Chaeto and sand in an attempt to help the copepod population in the tank come back because I was worried that it wasn't stable.
Mechanical filtration: Red Sea RSK 300 protein skimmer and filter floss in two filter cups for filtration. I used to change the floss twice a week and now do so every day because of dinoflagellates.
Chemical filtration: 1 cup Activated carbon divided between the two filtration cups underneath filter floss, changed weekly.
Salt used: Red Sea blue bucket
WC Schedule: I did water changes weekly until nitrates and phosphates bottomed out. I stopped doing the water changes in the hopes that my nutrient levels would go back up. No luck.
Dosing: All-For-Reef, paused, because I noticed consumption of KH and Ca stopped when dinoflagellates broke out.

Stocking:
1 Coral Beauty Angelfish
1 Ocellaris Clownfish
1 Lawnmower Blenny
6 Blue Chromis
1 Purple Dottyback
1 Michelin Blenny
2 Cleaner Shrimp
1 Yellow Watchman Goby
Clean up Crew: 10 Nassarius snails. I want hermits too but local stores haven't had them in stock.
Corals: I have a couple of medium-large, growing colonies of zoas with more polyps than I can count, a Kenya Tree leather coral, 4 small frags of Mushrooms, and two frags of Montipora Digitata that I put in right before the Dinoflagellate outbreak. I had a large colony of Stylophora that I bought at the same time as the Montipora that died when I started trying to combat the dinoflagellates.

I'm open to any advice! This tank is my first and it's only 6 months old.

Thanks!

I'd caution doing this as when we see zero readings, automatically we assume this is the cause but by the time you see zero numbers, its because the dino has consumed the po4 and no3 and are multiplying and in turn many dose no3 and po4 to bring numbers up not realizing they are feeding these flagellates even more.
Its biological deficiencies that are causing the dino structure

 

[jandin101]

Its biological deficiencies that are causing the dino structure

This was my first thought when I saw the dinoflagellates, that my tanks ecosystem had gone awry, and I dosed probably way more copepods than reasonably required and have been dosing bacteria for a few weeks now. I know setting up the refugium was not recommended because my nitrates were ALREADY plummeting, but I wanted to have a safe place for copepods to propagate and hopefully benefit the tank's biome. In short, I set up a fuge as a pod hotel moreso than for the macro algae and nutrient export. I've also been changing filter floss daily and have been using a toothbrush to scrub it off of rock every few days.

The Dinoflagellates have diminished, but still persist in a small way. At one point it was covering literally everything and was stressing my corals out; now it comes back on the sand and there are some small patches on the rockwork that are receding.

I think, and hope, that what I've been doing might have been the right move and I was just getting impatient because I wasn't seeing overnight results. Especially these past couple days it's looking really good.