Excess Nutrient Help

ScottyD36 · Oct 13, 2020

So I have a 13.5 gallon Fluval Evo tank. I have had my tank running for 5 months now. Once my tank was cycled my Nitrate has always been at 20ppm no matter what I do. Water changes, less feeding and even have a nano skimmer in one of the chambers. I tested everything yesterday and my Nitrate was at 20ppm and phosphate was at 0.25. My tank has a clown fish, wheeler shrimp goby, a pistol shrimp and a few snails. I currently have 4 corals in my tank. Everything in my tank is healthy and doing fine but my corals are not growing but just staying as is I believe this is to do with the excess nutrients. I wanted to see if their is any trick people with nano tanks have used to lower excess nutrients. I do water changes every 4 days. I just purchased Phosguard and will be arriving in next few days. Below is my tank parameters. I tried even adding macro Algea to tank to try and absorb some nutrients but it has not worked. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

chipmunkofdoom2 · Oct 13, 2020

What corals do you have, and which ones aren't growing? NO3 and PO4 could potentially be a problem, but tanks with NO3 and PO4 much higher than yours grow corals just fine. There's also the risk of dinos when dropping nutrients. I had high NO3 and lowered it over the course of several months. This worked fine, until I got dinos. I've been battling for weeks and have no indication that I'm making any progress.

I think your tank looks really nice. I personally wouldn't change anything. Maybe add a different coral or two to see if you can find one that likes your tank conditions better.

ScottyD36 · Oct 13, 2020

chipmunkofdoom2 said:
What corals do you have, and which ones aren't growing? NO3 and PO4 could potentially be a problem, but tanks with NO3 and PO4 much higher than yours grow corals just fine. There's also the risk of dinos when dropping nutrients. I had high NO3 and lowered it over the course of several months. This worked fine, until I got dinos. I've been battling for weeks and have no indication that I'm making any progress.

I think your tank looks really nice. I personally wouldn't change anything. Maybe add a different coral or two to see if you can find one that likes your tank conditions better.

Thanks. So the corals I currently are 2 zoas, juicy fruit acan, ultra ricordea, forest fire rodactis and ausie fat head candy cane and a Duncan coral. And apparently I can’t count lol I have 8 corals in tank now 4. In general I just feel I would see some better growth from my Duncan coral.