I have a dino bloom now after I noticed nitrates had bottomed out. However, I only have a few frags and maybe a baseball sized chunk of xenia in the tank (7 gallons). I did not expect the nitrates to fall from 10 to 0 within a week. Is this normal? I don't have fish in there. I have been feeding reef roids to produce nitrates.
Are corals big nitrogen sinks?
- Thread starter jeffww
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rkpetersen
walked the sand with the crustaceans
Rapidly growing xenia can be an effective nutrient exporter.
I've even heard of people setting up fuges with xenia rather than chaeto.
I've even heard of people setting up fuges with xenia rather than chaeto.
Daniel@R2R
Living the Reef Life
Yep. Xenia can almost act like macroalgae in that regard. I've even heard of guys running xenia in refugiums...not very often, but it is a thing.
vetteguy53081
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I have luscious balls of xenia in my tank. Beneficial and healthy they are
Randy Holmes-Farley
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All growing photosynthetic organisms are a sink for N.
malacoda
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Question: How long has the tank been up?
If it's been running for a while and the nutrients were steady until you added the Xenia, then based on the feedback above, the Xenia is probably sucking up the nitrate (being baseball-sized in a 7g, it would likely be the main culprit).
However, if you just set up/cycled the tank a couple of weeks before adding the coral, could it be that your biofilter is still establishing itself and growing as more nitrate becomes available for the bacteria to consume?
If it's been running for a while and the nutrients were steady until you added the Xenia, then based on the feedback above, the Xenia is probably sucking up the nitrate (being baseball-sized in a 7g, it would likely be the main culprit).
However, if you just set up/cycled the tank a couple of weeks before adding the coral, could it be that your biofilter is still establishing itself and growing as more nitrate becomes available for the bacteria to consume?
