High Nitrate

[GammaYankee]

I have had nitrates this high like forever, I can understand it making you nervous but nobody has ever established a hard line threshold where good is vs bad

yes, I went back and re-read …
I was wondering if you were thinking the growing nitrates were the issue or just the 50 nitrates…
I even re-read it again, and you never actually stated an issue after your nitrate rebound.
Please pardon, there is no negative tone but I’m trying to find an issue …what does your livestock look like?
Numbers are numbers, they could alert you to trends but they are numbers…what your tank looks like and how it is doing is what matters..

I can get with dealing with elevated phosphate but
It VERY debatable if 50 nitrates is actually a bad thing per se

Thanks! Things are fine. But after a massive die-off in my other system, I am super nervous when the trend doesn't look good. Here is my system.

And the trend.

 

[GammaYankee]

Thanks everyone for the help.
I was dosing phosphorus brightwell when I saw my phosphate depleted. After that there was a big algae boom. What would be the recommend phosphate for a mixed reef. I have read so many different answers. I am thinking of aiming for 0.05 ppm phosphate / 0.16 ppb phosphorus. But I am really worried about algae, since with my small tanks there is almost nothing I can do to get rid of GHA, other than dosing chemicals like reefRX.

 

[I never finish anythi]

I would be wary of carbon dosing when you have extremely low po4.

1) it will drive it to zero, then
2) it will stop working, you need no3 and po4 for it to work.

Water changes is the easiest. Control your food, dose phosphates.

100% agree with this . You need phosphate or nitrate will not come down .

 

[Subsea]

I am pretty consistent with my water change. 10-15% every week.

For the 25 gallon, I have 2 clownfish, one sixline wrass and a yellow goby. The 10 gallon frag system only has a damsel. I already have two DIY chaeto reactors, one on each system with grow lights coiled around the reactor, and I harvest my chaeto probably every three months.

Harvest every three months is not much nutrient export.

When I grew Red Ogo commercially, it doubled in biomass every 3 weeks.

 

[GammaYankee]

100% agree with this . You need phosphate or nitrate will not come down .

I can start to dose phosphate. How often would you recommend me to test nitrate and phosphate? Those are quite tedious to test. Maybe once a week?

 

[Dburr1014]

So the hypothesis is that I am low on PO4 and that limits the amount of NO3 the corals can take in? Dosing PO4 to get the nutrition intake going sounds reasonable but a little bit counter intuitive.

No, not quite.

We are talking about carbon dosing. You can't have effective carbon dosing without the 3 components. N,P,C.
Nitrogen,phosphorus,carbon.
You are/may be missing the P component. It won't work too good.

Coral take in N and P just fine by themselves as long as it's available.

 

[Spare time]

I am pretty consistent with my water change. 10-15% every week.

For the 25 gallon, I have 2 clownfish, one sixline wrass and a yellow goby. The 10 gallon frag system only has a damsel. I already have two DIY chaeto reactors, one on each system with grow lights coiled around the reactor, and I harvest my chaeto probably every three months.

You need more phosphate otherwise the chaeto won't grow. You should be able to harvestg more frequently than that.

 

[Spare time]

Thanks everyone for the help.
I was dosing phosphorus brightwell when I saw my phosphate depleted. After that there was a big algae boom. What would be the recommend phosphate for a mixed reef. I have read so many different answers. I am thinking of aiming for 0.05 ppm phosphate / 0.16 ppb phosphorus. But I am really worried about algae, since with my small tanks there is almost nothing I can do to get rid of GHA, other than dosing chemicals like reefRX.

Snails and such should control algae, not you starving the tank. Turbo snails are a good choice.

As for the phosphate level, I like mine between 0.03-0.05ppm but no more than 0.1 and no less than 0.03ppm.

 

[GammaYankee]

Snails and such should control algae, not you starving the tank. Turbo snails are a good choice.

As for the phosphate level, I like mine between 0.03-0.05ppm but no more than 0.1 and no less than 0.03ppm.

0.03-0.05 is also the range for both with and without carbon? I guess with carbon dosing, I probably need to dose more P, and that's the only difference?
And how often should i test?

 

[Spare time]

0.03-0.05 is also the range for both with and without carbon? I guess with carbon dosing, I probably need to dose more P, and that's the only difference?
And how often should i test?

The range would be the same with carbon dosing and how often you test is up to you, but I prefer at least once every other week if not more frequently.