Can not get nutrients up, what would you do?

[CMO]

When you nitrate dose you are adding more nitrate than your system can breakdown, until there is a free form in the water you can measure. You can absolutely replicate that with food, obviously if you choose not to than you won't. 'Reasonable' is relative to your tank. If what you are feeding is not meeting the nutritional needs of your system then you are under feeding. That is not over confidence, but merely the nitrogen cycle.

I was referring to feeding fish. I don't feed coral. So no even with a heavy fish stock feeding 3x per day that is not enough (4-6 cubs plus pellets per day on 165g). If you're referring to dumping a bunch of coral food in the tank to make up the difference maybe. But that would likely create PO4 issues. Dosing NO3 is the best way to maintain appropriate ratios IME since that is usually the only thing needing elevated.

 

[Softhammer]

For the life of me I can’t understand why anyone would publicly ask this question. Your tank isn’t magic, it’s producing wastes. Stop removing them if you want more. Case closed.

 

[CMO]

For the life of me I can’t understand why anyone would publicly ask this question. Your tank isn’t magic, it’s producing wastes. Stop removing them if you want more. Case closed.

Running skimmers and fuges are about more than just nutrient reduction so stopping exporting through them would create other issue. For me for 1, my skimmer is used for gas exchange and ph maintenance on a CO2 scrubber, not nutrient reduction. My fuge alone is enough to take nutrients to zero even with only 8 hour cycle. Should I just shut down my fuge? That would create all sorts of issues, especially when running full Triton that has additives specifically for macro algae growth that would build up and cause issue. You'd also lose the benefits of a fuge in terms of amino acids, pods, ph buffering etc.

It's just really not that simple for some tank setups.

 

[JOKER]

My tank also has issues maintaining nutrients. I stopped any large water changes, and just run my small AWC daily to keep trace elements stable. I dosed NO3, PO4 until I started getting readings. I added ATS, and just let the tank go now. I do however add acro power, fuel, and red sea A B C D a few times a week.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Op your bio load is really low for a 140g. I was having the same problem with my 75g for nearly a year. No3 has been undetectable from a few weeks after cycling the tank, po4 has been very low. I run a large skimmer, filter sock and a small fuge section in my sump. I started feeding more ane more, added more fish, decrease the fuge lighting time, shutting off skimmer for 30 min during feeding, dosed Neo Nitro. Nothing was helping with no3. A few days ago I finally decided to totally remove a method nutrient export and the chaeto in the fuge got tossed and the light removed. Within 24 hours no3 was at 0.75 ppm and has been increasing with no other changes. Dont underestimate the effectiveness of a fuge to strip water clean of nutrients. I was pulling out large ziplock bag full of chaeto from my small fuge about every 2-3 weeks and that alone is a lot of export.