Early nutrient goals

[LadyTang2]

For coral coloration and to avoid dinos I plan to aim for around 5 N and 0.5 P when my tank matures. But what about with a new tank with no corals. I dont want 0 nutrients but I dont want to provide to much nutrients for the uglies algae phase. Assume mixed reef with good amount of sps.

How do all of you look at nutrient goals in a young tank, what would your early target N and P be, and what would your mature tank N and P be and why?

 

[Phyber]

I'm in the same boat as you with a < 1 year tank... Just try to keep singing detectable. Keep your skimmer off or dry skin until you can creep up the readings. They are very effecient tools in a new tank.

 

[LadyTang2]

I'm in the same boat as you with a < 1 year tank... Just try to keep singing detectable. Keep your skimmer off or dry skin until you can creep up the readings. They are very effecient tools in a new tank.

how have your uglies been?

 

[S2G]

< 10 no3 & .1 po4

 

[cedwards04]

I'll chime in here as my tank is new and definitely struggling with the uglies. I was aiming for no3 in the 2-5ppm range and po4 in the 0.03-0.05ppm range. Idk if that was right or wrong, but I do know that I definitely have a good bit of gha in the tank (I try manually removing weekly with waterchanges). I went out of town for work and wasnt able to monitor things as close as I should, my no3/po4 ended up bottoming out at 0 thanks to my fuge with chaeto, now I am battling dinos on top of the gha. It's been a struggle. Hopefully someone will provide some insite.

I see a lot of talk about fuge vs algae scrubbers as well, and a lot of claims from people that they have 0 algae growth in their tanks. And then I have had others tell me that algae growth is normal, and you have to use snails/crabs to eat it. I've also been told that snails/crabs do nothing for gha, and you need some tangs (bristletooth or yellow tangs) to eat it. Well, I have the tangs, and I have the snails/crabs, and I have maintained very low nutrients, and I still have gha. So I am coming to the conclusion that until my tank is so full of coral that algae can't get light to grow, I'm going to have algae.

 

[Hemmdog]

First 6-8 months I’d keep it under 10 nitrate , 0.08 PO4

 

[SDK]

A couple of things from my perspective....

If you are trying for a target nutrient level, you should be working toward that from the beginning. Hitting it and stabilizing it earlier will just help things move forward.

Tanks will go through the uglies, so if it’s new, don’t go overboard making changes to fight it. Keep things stable, manually clean and give the tank some time to break in.

I personally would not be running chaeto in a new tank unless my nutrients were rising above my target. Even then I would be managing growth and lighting so as to not let it zero me out.

The bottom line is you need to test frequently and make small adjustments to keep everything stable.

 

[SPR1968]

My new tank is 4 weeks old, I’ve targeted 0 phosphate (actually very low around 0.03) and am running 1kg of rhowaphos to strip out all silicates and phosphate from the water and new rockwork.

But you want some nitrates in the tank and quickly, so for the first 2 weeks the skimmer was off until nitrate started to show. The skimmer was then turned on to try and balance everything and a few days ago I added 8 litres of Seachem matrix.

The tank was started with ATM colony and 30 small fish were added on day 1, with further additions over the last week or so, including larger fish from my existing tank.

My Red Sea S650 runs at virtually 0 phosphate (just above target 0.03) and 20 nitrate, and these will be the targets for this system in a few months time.

This is how I do things anyway, It’s all a fine balancing act

 

[Phyber]

how have your uglies been?

Minimal uglies. Diatom early and it went away. Now suffering thru a bit of cyano despite chemiclean. I'm letting nutrients go up as i test weekly at 0.20 nitrate, undetectable phosphate.

 

[YankeeTankee]

I'll chime in here as my tank is new and definitely struggling with the uglies. I was aiming for no3 in the 2-5ppm range and po4 in the 0.03-0.05ppm range. Idk if that was right or wrong, but I do know that I definitely have a good bit of gha in the tank (I try manually removing weekly with waterchanges). I went out of town for work and wasnt able to monitor things as close as I should, my no3/po4 ended up bottoming out at 0 thanks to my fuge with chaeto, now I am battling dinos on top of the gha. It's been a struggle. Hopefully someone will provide some insite.

I see a lot of talk about fuge vs algae scrubbers as well, and a lot of claims from people that they have 0 algae growth in their tanks. And then I have had others tell me that algae growth is normal, and you have to use snails/crabs to eat it. I've also been told that snails/crabs do nothing for gha, and you need some tangs (bristletooth or yellow tangs) to eat it. Well, I have the tangs, and I have the snails/crabs, and I have maintained very low nutrients, and I still have gha. So I am coming to the conclusion that until my tank is so full of coral that algae can't get light to grow, I'm going to have algae.

I'm curious, did you start with dead rock and use bottled bacteria? Dead sand also?

Also what conditions existed when the dinos began? Were your nutrient super low then, water change, adding trace, add some new livestock?

 

[LadyTang2]

My new tank is 4 weeks old, I’ve targeted 0 phosphate (actually very low around 0.03) and am running 1kg of rhowaphos to strip out all silicates and phosphate from the water and new rockwork.

But you want some nitrates in the tank and quickly, so for the first 2 weeks the skimmer was off until nitrate started to show. The skimmer was then turned on to try and balance everything and a few days ago I added 8 litres of Seachem matrix.

The tank was started with ATM colony and 30 small fish were added on day 1, with further additions over the last week or so, including larger fish from my existing tank.

My Red Sea S650 runs at virtually 0 phosphate (just above target 0.03) and 20 nitrate, and these will be the targets for this system in a few months time.

This is how I do things anyway, and the tank below is 4 weeks old. It’s all a fine balancing act

DO you not fear dinos? They seem to start at 0 phos and are the worst of all, the reason I want to keep some nutrients is just so I dont get the low nurient dinos

 

[LadyTang2]

Minimal uglies. Diatom early and it went away. Now suffering thru a bit of cyano despite chemiclean. I'm letting nutrients go up as i test weekly at 0.20 nitrate, undetectable phosphate.

Same question for you phyber, do you not fear dinos at such low nutrients? Thanks for sharing!

 

[cedwards04]

I'm curious, did you start with dead rock and use bottled bacteria? Dead sand also?

Also what conditions existed when the dinos began? Were your nutrient super low then, water change, adding trace, add some new livestock?

Dry rock, dry sand. I seeded with turbo start and microbacter7. Dinos popped up while I was away from the tank and it hit 0 no3/po4. I had intended on keeping above 0 but staying close to it. Unfortunately I failed at that attempt haha.

 

[LadyTang2]

Dry rock, dry sand. I seeded with turbo start and microbacter7. Dinos popped up while I was away from the tank and it hit 0 no3/po4. I had intended on keeping above 0 but staying close to it. Unfortunately I failed at that attempt haha.

Were the nutrients all over the place early? How did they drop, just happened or? Were you doing anything to prevent them from bottoming out that you could no do while away?

 

[cedwards04]

I changed my fuge light setup and the chaeto growth exploded. I was dosing small amounts of nitrates, my phosphates at that point had remained pretty steady between 0.03-0.06ppm.

 

[LadyTang2]

I changed my fuge light setup and the chaeto growth exploded. I was dosing small amounts of nitrates, my phosphates at that point had remained pretty steady between 0.03-0.06ppm.

Did you find that in order to maintain some detectable N and P you had to dose both early?

What kind of a chaeto light did you get?

 

[cedwards04]

Did you find that in order to maintain some detectable N and P you had to dose both early?

What kind of a chaeto light did you get?

Yes, and it is just a grow bulb from amazon.

 

[Phyber]

Same question for you phyber, do you not fear dinos at such low nutrients? Thanks for sharing!

Not really scared of it, but I hear it's bad. I'm not trying to keep things this low...dry rock and long cycle keep me low. I'm slacking up on water changes and skimming to get numbers up, but I'm sure there's more in the tank than my tests show since I have glass algae and a few strands of brown hair algae in some crevaces.

 

[SPR1968]

DO you not fear dinos? They seem to start at 0 phos and are the worst of all, the reason I want to keep some nutrients is just so I dont get the low nurient dinos

No, phosphate should really be very low anyway, but I dont want zero nitrates.