Adding nutrients to my system. Your thoughts on my approach.

[mcarroll]

@emvanburen check in with us here – lots of info and help available:
Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

 

[saltyhog]

Beautiful corals Livinlocal! How is your Phosphate level? Seachem Flourish is what I used to raise it.

I agree with @mcarroll that my first step would have been limiting your macroalgae in the fuge. Trimming just allows more room for growth and should lower nutrients not raise them. I reduced my fuge lighting schedule and trim only when I really need to and I've been able to stop dosing with the same feeding schedule. NO3 is running 0.75 and PO4 0.03-0.05 and my tank if finally starting to turn around.

Believe me, you do not want even a small chance of getting a dino problem. It can be a nightmare!

 

[Livinlocal]

Beautiful corals Livinlocal! How is your Phosphate level? Seachem Flourish is what I used to raise it.

I agree with @mcarroll that my first step would have been limiting your macroalgae in the fuge. Trimming just allows more room for growth and should lower nutrients not raise them. I reduced my fuge lighting schedule and trim only when I really need to and I've been able to stop dosing with the same feeding schedule. NO3 is running 0.75 and PO4 0.03-0.05 and my tank if finally starting to turn around.

Believe me, you do not want even a small chance of getting a dino problem. It can be a nightmare!

Thank you. Phosphates and nitrate were both undetectable, so I literally tripled my feeding amount with frozen foods to raise the nutrients, and my phosphate spiked .10 but my nitrates stayed didn’t rise above .25. That’s when I realized dosing nitrate is going to be my best option because I do not want to drive my phosphate that high, but I want my nitrates between 10-15ppm. Even when I would cut back my algae, I wouldn’t really notice a significant rise in nutrients, but yet again I would never take more than half of it out.

 

[Vin's Reef]

Thank you, I will give it a read

I'm having the same exact issue. The only thing is I suffered from Nitrates between 20-50 for a long time. I too have a 180. I started with biopellets. The reactor gets clogged and your nitrates are 10 one day and 25 the next. Then I hook up a denitrator. Get them down to 10 again. Then something happens and denitrator feed line gets plugged. Back to 30 now. I finally have everything running perfectly and almost overnite I go from 25 to 0 nitrates. Now it's been 2 days and I'm scared to shut down the denitrator or the biopellets. I see my LPS are not happy. So anyway Brightwell makes two great additives NeoPhos and NeoNitro. I'm about to introduce them very slowly as I watch readings. I just want 3ppm. Is that too much to ask? Lol. Good luck.

 

[BigJohnny]

So as a update for everybody following along, I started dosing sodium nitrate after all of the research. I started dosing on 22 June, and have slowly been raising my Nitrate each day. In the last nine days I have raised my Nitrate to about 5 to 10 ppm. It’s kind of hard to tell now that I’m actually seeing color and not crystal clear water. I attached a picture but it is a little deceiving becauseThe picture makes the water in the cup look a little darker than what it really is.

I will test again tomorrow at about the same time and see how much My refugium has exported. It’s hard to tell right now, but with my daily testing it looks like I am exporting .5 ppm daily.

Have you noticed any differences in your tank? Have you been keeping tracking of PO4? Be careful, dosing nitrate can plummet po4

 

[BigJohnny]

I have tried this several times on different tanks under the theory that my tank lacked growth due to too few nutrients. All I can say is every time I have added nutrients I have been disappointed in the results. At this point, I kind of think that our tanks reach an equilibrium of organisms consuming these nutrients vs not enough organisms consuming them. For example, think if I were to judge whether or not you were starving based on what I saw(tested for) in your refrigerator, and your refrigerator was only full of beer, id assume(incorrectly) that you were starving, even though you go to the grocery store daily and eat everything and never use the refrigerator for storage.
Your tank could be using up these nutrients added by feeding and produced by fish immediately, and your test kits tell you that you have 0 nitrate and 0 phosphate and its just not so.

That being said, ill probably try adding nutrients again at some point to see if I get different results, but thus far, just has not panned out.

Hilarious but great analogy. This can definitely be true but you can also test 0 and actually have too little. The point is testable results don't tell the whole story, which is something I say to anyone whenever I hear they want to raise their no3 number. I believe that is why many people run into issues ESPECIALLY when trying to target a specific testable number. Usually it takes them a lot more nitrate than they expected to get there and meanwhile po4 plummets and bacterial populations shift drastically.

 

[Livinlocal]

I'm having the same exact issue. The only thing is I suffered from Nitrates between 20-50 for a long time. I too have a 180. I started with biopellets. The reactor gets clogged and your nitrates are 10 one day and 25 the next. Then I hook up a denitrator. Get them down to 10 again. Then something happens and denitrator feed line gets plugged. Back to 30 now. I finally have everything running perfectly and almost overnite I go from 25 to 0 nitrates. Now it's been 2 days and I'm scared to shut down the denitrator or the biopellets. I see my LPS are not happy. So anyway Brightwell makes two great additives NeoPhos and NeoNitro. I'm about to introduce them very slowly as I watch readings. I just want 3ppm. Is that too much to ask? Lol. Good luck.

Wow That’s a lot to fluctuate.

 

[Livinlocal]

Have you noticed any differences in your tank? Have you been keeping tracking of PO4? Be careful, dosing nitrate can plummet po4

Yes I have noticed more color out of some of my picky Zoas so I am happy with it so far. I have not tested my phosphate in the past few days, but honestly I want my phosphate next to undetectable so I don’t really mind if it drives it down, even though it was pretty low before until I started feeding extremely heavy which is when my phosphate jumped to .1 and my nitrate stayed at .25. This is when I realizedFeeding more is not going to help my issue with low nitrates.

 

[Livinlocal]

Have you noticed any differences in your tank? Have you been keeping tracking of PO4? Be careful, dosing nitrate can plummet po4

OK so I just tested my phosphate and it is extremely high, at least way higher than I want it. It is at .14 And I believe this is because I have not stopped the heavy feeding. I am going to back off now and just let my automatic feeder, feed three times a day. It has pellets, Reef roids, and reef frenzy.

I just tested these parameters right after my last message.

 

[Livinlocal]

Everything is looking extremely happy.