Best way to raise Nitrates?

[mds5000]

Tank has been up for about 9 months and I'm still getting very little coralline growth and faded colors on corals. After reading a number of other threads, my guess is that they're both starved of nutrients (consistently read 0.0ppm phosphate (Hannah checker) and 0.0ppm nitrate (Salifert, looking through the side method). About a month ago, I started feeding more but that lead to a cyano outbreak that seems to be finally clearing up. I've since gone back to feeding less (one pinch one time a day, and a frozen misis cube spread out over a few days.)

Should I try a nitrate supplement, or just feed more and see what happens?

 

[Gatling]

Tank has been up for about 9 months and I'm still getting very little coralline growth and faded colors on corals. After reading a number of other threads, my guess is that they're both starved of nutrients (consistently read 0.0ppm phosphate (Hannah checker) and 0.0ppm nitrate (Salifert, looking through the side method). About a month ago, I started feeding more but that lead to a cyano outbreak that seems to be finally clearing up. I've since gone back to feeding less (one pinch one time a day, and a frozen misis cube spread out over a few days.)

Should I try a nitrate supplement, or just feed more and see what happens?

Im no expert and i'm having similar problems to you but I am improving with my nitrate/phosphate levels every week by feeding more. If you're giving a small pinch a day, make that 2 for a few days. Then add a bit more next week.

Do you have a refugium/GFO running? Those could strip your levels flat if you have a small bio load. Even with feeding a single pinch, you shouldn't have flat 0's for nirtate/phosphate. Something is removing it

 

[Katrina71]

Just let me tank sit.

 

[mds5000]

Im no expert and i'm having similar problems to you but I am improving with my nitrate/phosphate levels every week by feeding more. If you're giving a small pinch a day, make that 2 for a few days. Then add a bit more next week.

Do you have a refugium/GFO running? Those could strip your levels flat if you have a small bio load. Even with feeding a single pinch, you shouldn't have flat 0's for nitrate/phosphate. Something is removing it

Thanks, I'll try this approach. I think it's at a flat 0 due to the cyano outbreak. As soon as I seem to get any measurable NO3-, then cyano crops up and consumes it all. Perhaps, slowly increasing feeding over a longer period of time will do the trick.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

If your levels are that low you could also dose amino acids like acropower. That will raise nitrates quickly...

I doubt you are truly zero if you have fish. You're just lower than the test kit can read; if you do decide to dose nitrates or acropower then dose a very small amount and slowly increase until you see the first sign of color.

 

[bsr2430]

Seems I need to be doing this!
talk about new tank phase over here...
0 on every scale but looks like the algae is sucking many up. I’ll try and start adding a bit more.

 

[Mr Fishface]

Like others have said, I would feed more or dose some aminos. Start slow though; slowly ramp it up. If you have a refugium or carbon dosing going on, you could decrease lights or dosing amounts. If refugium you could lower lights quite a bit, if carbon dosing just slowly reduce. If neither of those things are going then just slowly ramp up some food would be the easiest way I would think.