High Nitrate and Phosphate

[HankstankXXL750]

You’d think anyways.. I’m dumbfounded myself this go around! I know the tanks I’m getting my corals from are pretty pristine and displays etc from trusted friends.. I have zero clue what their parameters are but the only thing I’ve noticed when adding corals is they don’t do much for a week or 2 then start coloring up like crazy and take off…. I’m not trying to spread false info but this really seems to work and think today people are way to obsessed with chasing numbers and do drastic things I stead of just letting the tank do it’s thing and the corals speak for them selves.. my tank was a fowlr I purchased used and is about 10 years old.. first corals we’re added a couple months back and I never looked back..

What’s your phosphate numbers. I started carbon dosing as I was struggling with algae. Dosing homemade no-pox has me hanging around 15-20. Not looking to be near zero. However my phosphates remain well above 1. I’ve read a lot about high phosphates being harmful to corals as it affects their internal algae.

Only thing I have had problems with has been torches. That is why I am trying to control them. I don’t chase though. Test once a week, adjust dosing based on two week average. But I heavily stock and feed my tanks. Just rebooted my S1000 as I wasn’t happy with the scaping.

I credit my algae control to my clean up crew.

Before and after reboot pics.

 

[Troylee]

What’s your phosphate numbers. I started carbon dosing as I was struggling with algae. Dosing homemade no-pox has me hanging around 15-20. Not looking to be near zero. However my phosphates remain well above 1. I’ve read a lot about high phosphates being harmful to corals as it affects their internal algae.

Only thing I have had problems with has been torches. That is why I am trying to control them. I don’t chase though. Test once a week, adjust dosing based on two week average. But I heavily stock and feed my tanks. Just rebooted my S1000 as I wasn’t happy with the scaping.

I credit my algae control to my clean up crew.

Before and after reboot pics.

Which comes out too .54. Lol… I’ve been trying to get them down and nothing! It’s driving me crazy so I gave up! I just let the tank do it’s thing.. vodka, mb7, chateo, and rawaphos currently running and nothing wants to budge… I think the rocked locked up a ton of po4 and no3 over the years of heavily feeding before I got it.. I have millions of bristle worms and huge pods also!

 

[Dave1993]

calcium is also very high should be 400-450 range

alk is low should be 8-10

mag should be 1250-1350

what salt are you using to get these levels?

start using the red sea blue bucket

 

[Dan_of_Earth]

With numbers such as what’s posted I would assume testing error .
how did you get cal 640 are you dosing any calcium products ?
I would get a second opinion for all
Tests

I keep my parameters at
Alk :7.5dkh
Cal :425 ppm
Mag : 1350-1450 ( I rarely ever test )
Ph : ( never test )
Nitrates acceptable range for nsw alk 5-10ppm But mine is <5ppm
Phosphates 0.03-0.1 ppm mine is always closer to 0.1

i use an apex system. for the first few months the system was running I was dosing 1ml of CAL/ALK to bring those up to a baseline in prep for adding coral at the suggestion of an LFS. Problem was si let them dos for far too long without adjusting and the numbers got way high. Could still be an error though. I recently calibrated though.

 

[Dan_of_Earth]

Can we all take a step back here? I read the first post and skimmed through a lot of the rest.

Unless I missed something, you're N and P seem to be fine. Your current fish and invert stock is keeping the main display free of algae. And despite popular belief your N and P are prime for corals. They actually want nutrients. Artificially lowering them to achieve some arbitrary number is asinine, following that advice will lead you down a rabbit hole of problems.

My advice is to dip your toe and add a coral, see how it does, after few weeks then you can start to develop a game plan.

this makes me much more positive. My intent wasn't to chase numbers necessarily, I just assumed that these numbers are astronomical. I had my system installed by a local shop, the gentleman who owns and runs it is pretty knowledgable so I had been going off of his advice. When I recently told him my numbers he advised I should get those numbers down before adding coral. But your advice, and others here is appreciated. I feel more confident to add some tester frags and see how it goes.

I don't plan on doing any super high maintenance corals anyway, my interest lies in LPS and softies which as I understand are more tolerant to swings and higher params. Thanks for the input!

 

[fish farmer]

this makes me much more positive. My intent wasn't to chase numbers necessarily, I just assumed that these numbers are astronomical. I had my system installed by a local shop, the gentleman who owns and runs it is pretty knowledgable so I had been going off of his advice. When I recently told him my numbers he advised I should get those numbers down before adding coral. But your advice, and others here is appreciated. I feel more confident to add some tester frags and see how it goes.

I don't plan on doing any super high maintenance corals anyway, my interest lies in LPS and softies which as I understand are more tolerant to swings and higher params. Thanks for the input!

Adding a few testers is fine. Especially softies.

I will add more to this conversation, my softies like discoma mushrooms, ugly palys, colt coral, nepthia seemed to not care about being overgrown with hair algae, aiptasia, salinity swings and probably evelated N and P. I had laxed on many things 10 years ago. All my pretty zoas and LPS like brains, candycanes, frogspawn died and they were growing well for a time until they weren't.

I started taking control of my tank in 2017 and had added a pinky size frammer coral. It did surprisingly well, putting on skeleton and new heads. I started to fiddle with kalk again and routine WC's. By the middle of 2018 I was ready to try some new corals, purple monti, brain and some zoas. The monti pretty lost most of it's tissue in a couple of weeks, I was able to salvage a few polyps which I had encrusting well this year, but feel PAR is too low in the places I had it.

Soon after the monti addition, I bought a new phosphate kit (Salifert), it was 1ppm and nitrates were up to 40 ppm. I still added a few corals this time since "Hey all these others ones are doing great." I added a few more brains and a couple of hammers. Both hammer looked great for a couple weeks fully extended at the bottom of the tank, but both lost one head each. Both the hammers I still have today. Mixed results on the brains, couple died, but one did really well for several years. I started using chaeto in my sump late in 2018 and always have some in the refuge today.

I think my tank really took off when my N and P were practically undetectable which was 2020 and 2021.....my chaeto actually stopped growing. Now I don't keep a super spotless tank, I have old rock from the start of the century, some in tank algae and lots of coral biomass. I feed heavier now but am not trying for some magic number....Salifert kits aren't that accurate.

 

[Dan_of_Earth]

based on a lot of the advise here I think I'm in some kind of sweet spot in terms of having these high nutrients with no algae. Im going to put a few tester frags in this week and see how they do. I changed my trident's reagents and calibrated, and have since reprogrammed the Apex to Dos more alk as per the direction on the esv product. So we'll see how it all goes. Thanks again for everyone who gave their input!

 

[Troylee]

You can run your alk a little higher with higher nutrients.. just be careful as n03 drops it will rise naturally.. I just had to change salts cause I’ve been using reef crystals and I can’t get mine below 12… hoping to get it down to 9-10 with water changes… I have lots of Sps and they don’t mind the high alk but I’m trying to bring my n03 and p04 down so my alk will rise naturally