Dosing nitrate and phosphate

Muhammed · Nov 30, 2019

Hello reefers, I have a fairly new tank 3 months old reefer 250 and my nitrates and phosphates are always undetectable so I was wondering if I need to dose phosphate and nitrate or lower water changes?

My rocks were cycling in a brute for 2 months until I moved it in the tank, I have a yellow tang and two clowns so far and I feed heavy twice a day, I do 10% water changes weekly and run refugium light for one hour, I have klari sea filter roller which I thought cleaned the water to well so I opened the gate a little, I have no skimmer, and I have no corals yet.

Bossman · Nov 30, 2019

What test kits are you using for nitrate/phosphate?

Muhammed · Nov 30, 2019

Red Sea for nitrate and phosphate I double checked with nyos nitrate test kit. Do you think they are faulty?

Bossman · Nov 30, 2019

Red Sea has good test kits. Sometimes it's a little hard to differentiate the colors when determining the amount of nitrate. I'm not familiar with Nyos. I use a Hanna Checker for phospate and it's the ULR, Ultra Low Range. Most phospate test kits don't test at the low levels we need.

But, if you have no corals, I don't see the need to dose either. The tank is fairly new so would carry on how you have been. Sounds like you're on track to me.

Muhammed · Nov 30, 2019

Thanks for the quick replies. Ok sounds good I’ll carry on and see how things go.

Idoc · Nov 30, 2019

3 months without any nutrients is a recipe for disaster waiting to happen... I've been down that road....Dinos could take hold.

I would start dosing nitrates slowly to get to around 5ppm and phosphates to around 0.03-0.05ppm. Then hold steady and let other algaes take hold a little. You want to go slowly with the dosing though... could get a little cyano to form but no big deal.

Jason_1982 · Dec 17, 2019

Hello. Hoping not to hijack this thread but I also have some experience to share followed by some questions.

My sps dominated 90g reef tank was doing well when I started to battle a bit of algae. I tried gfo and boom...dinos.

Following all good advice on these threads I realized my low nitrates/phos were a recipe for this and I also realized adding the gfo and stripping the last bit of pho killed my nice Forrest fire digitata.

For the last 3 months of dino battles I have been dosing nitrates and it significantly perked things up for a while. What I witnessed was huge swings in my phosphate( crashing. )

I now dose both nitrates (auto) and phos weekly(manually). Unfortunately 2 weeks on vacation my sitter didn't dose phosphate and now my entire reef is STN/RTN.

So my advice when dosing nitrates pay very close attention to phosphate. As you raise nitrate it is critical to keep phosphate in ratio.

NOW MY QUESTION

I dose pure KNO3 Phospate powders mixed in RO water.

Would it be ok to mix the phos with nitrates in proper ratios so that my auto doser keeps this in check?

Samina · Dec 17, 2019

You could cut back on water changes a bit as a start and see if that makes a difference. But if not, then I agree that you do want to get those nutrients up a bit. You do have a light bioload. I’m sure that YT poops a lot but still seems light for your tank. What do you have in your fuge? Chaeto does really suck up NO3. Maybe harvest some so you can cut back it’s efficiency.
Also, I would suggest a Hanna ULR Phosphorous checker before you decide to dose phosphates. As the color can be a bit difficult to make out on those color card/wheel for it. You may have a low but adequate amount in there.