Any advice on leaving Triton method & salt switch?

[ChaseBurke]

So long story short I am regretting my decision of going with the triton method on a bare bottom tank. I am really struggling to keep N03 and P04 up. Im running my fuge for 1 hour a night and still not getting anything above 0 and my corals are starting to show it. I was thinking 3 options, use the triton "other methods" and take my fuge offline, take the fuge off and go with BRS 2 part, and last, no fuge and run kalk ( i know nothing about kalk and how to dose/maintain levels) The other thing i need to do is switch salts. Been using Neomarine, and the last 2 buckets i have received the alk and cal levels have been way off and brightwell wont give me an answer as to why. Was looking at HW, Tropic Marin, or Red sea Blue. Any advice on if i should go through with this and how you would go about it or something else you would do?

 

[Hermie]

If you aren't deadset on switching off a refugium...

Have you considered removing the majority of the plants from your fuge, (instead of limiting the light to 1 hr) ?

Where is your tank "getting" its nitrates and phosphates from?

For example, even taking the refugium away won't increase nitrates/phosphates if there is no source for them (feeding and a healthy nitrogen cycle).

Sorry if this sounds rudimentary... I have a "semi" Triton setup, and heavy feed and don't have problems with nitrates (only some algae).

 

[ChaseBurke]

I took out about half of my chaeto 3 weeks ago. Now maybevolleyball size.
Feed 4 cubes of mysis, feed pellets and dose N03,N04. It will get up to 5 No3 and .05 P04 and by the next morning i am back to 0.

 

[ChaseBurke]

90 gallon system (FYI)

 

[Hermie]

I took out about half of my chaeto 3 weeks ago. Now maybevolleyball size.
Feed 4 cubes of mysis, feed pellets and dose N03,N04. It will get up to 5 No3 and .05 P04 and by the next morning i am back to 0.

are you unhappy with your coral growth? it sounds like an efficient system... Why change what works

 

[ChaseBurke]

Yeah im not getting 0 growth, my LPS (Acans/favias) are just slowly fading away. Ive checked Par, flow, alk/SG every day, cal/ mag twice a week. everthing looks great as far as that goes.

 

[ChaseBurke]

its like 80% of what i put in my tank is worse off from when i got it in like 3 weeks to a month

 

[Hermie]

maybe increase dosage until you start to see algae growth and then back off a little and see if that does it... the tank has zero or minimal nuisance algae?

 

[Guttersnipe]

Stop using triton method. That is the ultimate numbers game. I have a 90 gallon tank full of sps only using instant ocean salt. I dose esv 2 part. I feed one cube of mysis a day. There’s 5 fish, a handful of snails, 2 starfish, and maybe 5 shrimp. I have chaeto in my sump I don’t use carbon, gfo, filter socks. The only thing I test is alk, cal, mag.
My system really started thriving when I simplified it.

 

[Crustaceon]

Switch to dosing the big three, don’t run the fuge for a month or longer, keep feeding and do regular but a small water changes to keep nitrates at a normal range AS NEEDED. Test test test! If the water change amounts get excessive, bring the fuge back online but only start with a little bit of chaeto (baseball sized). I used to struggle with low nutrients too and it was only after I cut down on how much nutrient exporting my system was doing (No more algae scrubber for me) and started controlling nitrates and phosphates through the amount I was feeding did I start getting more of a “hands off” experience that I wanted. When I had that crazy level of
nutrient export up and running, I was feeding it first and hoping the tank got what it needed to keep the system from crashing. Not a good way to do things.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Can you tell us more about your system? What do you have for lighting your tank? How much flow?

 

[Pete_the_Puma]

I had the EXACT same issue on my 140G barebottom Triton tank (see this thread)

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/can-not-get-nutrients-up-what-would-you-do.611006/

I recently did a number of things (dosing N and P, removed 50% of the cheato from the fuge and am running the skimmer motor at 60% intensity) and finally have detectable N and P. I think in the long run I might ditch the fuge altogether and switch to "Triton other methods" (really trying to avoid those water changes lol). My impression is that in the setting of a barebottom tank and efficient skimmer it all might just be too much export, and it certainly feels silly to be dosing nitrate and phosphate when I have instruments designed to extract those from the water...

I'm curious to see what you do!