High nitrate but 0 phosphate - how to fix it?

[Lyngsaa]

Hi,

I have a 4 month old tank, and have just gotten rid of a diatom outbreak in the tank. Diatoms cleared out in the last few days and I see a little Brown hair algaes. Bit have cuc ready to battle it.

For the past week my phosphate has been 0 (Hanna url checker) however my nitrate is normally around 10 (although today i read 25 with salifert test kit) all other parameters are fine. I have tried to increase phos by feeding reef roid every 2-3 day. Og helps for a day then my phos drops to Zero again.

I am dosing aqua forrest nitraphos minus daily to control nitrate/phosphate.

I am assuming the low phosphate is due to algae consuming it. But my tank is rather clean in terms of algae growth.

Corals look puffy and happy to my eyes and my zoas are growing pretty well

Question for me is should i dose phosphate to get it to 0.03-0.05 or just sit it out and wait for algae to absorb it?

Obviously worried to run Into a dino outbreak, why im a bit obsessed maintaining phosphate and nitrate.

Thank you for any advise
Soren

 

[Bfragale]

It’s probably the aqua forest that’s reducing po4. Maybe scale back a bit and see if po4 increases.

 

[Lyngsaa]

I did actually reduce my dosing which lead to the rise in nitrate. Guess i could get that down via wc

 

[Auqaman]

Did you start your tank with dry rock? I'm in the same boat you are. Just completed a 5 day black out with dosing H2O2 for dinos. Now my nitrates are high and phosphates undetectable. Someone mentioned that if you start with dry rock then all the phosphates will get absorbed by the rocks, until it reaches a point of saturation and the rocks will then leach the phosphates into the tank
Maybe someone with more experience can confirm this.
On a side note, I've decided to get a UV sterilizer to combated the dinos rather then dose.

 

[Lyngsaa]

Yes i did start with dry rocks. Bit my phosphate har been quite stable for the past months only this last week it dropped to Zero, why i am a bit puzzled.

I got diatoms 3 month after i started the tank. Up until this point i had no algaes at all i the tank.

Been doing 10% wc weekly all along.

 

[Tired]

Stop dosing to reduce anything. If you actually need nitrates down, you can do a water change. See if not dosing the nitraphos brings your phosphates up. If not, dose phosphates intentionally.

Corals will use up phosphates, so that may be contributing.

 

[Lyngsaa]

Ok, thanks. I will stop the dosing and see it it helps my phosphate otherwise i will dose phosphate.

 

[Tired]

Sounds good.

Your nitrates are numerically a bit high, but some tanks are perfectly fine with 25 nitrates. As long as your corals all look happy, I wouldn't worry about the nitrates.

Some people have diatoms show up when they feed a lot of reef roids. For better results, don't just dump the roids into the water. Turn the pumps off, mix the roids with a tiiiiny bit of tank water to make a thin paste, then drip them directly onto your corals. Leave the pumps off until the corals engulf the food.

 

[Lyngsaa]

Still do not quite understand why all of a sudden phos drops to zero as it has not been a problem since the beginning (quite the opposite as i have used gfo from time to time to reduce phosphate).

Added a few corals but only have 5 corals (lps, zoa and ricordea).

 

[PatW]

Still do not quite understand why all of a sudden phos drops to zero as it has not been a problem since the beginning (quite the opposite as i have used gfo from time to time to reduce phosphate).

Added a few corals but only have 5 corals (lps, zoa and ricordea).

Phosphates are odd. I can get my nitrates to run steady pretty easily at .75 ppm. Yeah, a bit low, but it seems to work in my tank, even my LPS are happy with it.

But my phosphates bounce around from 0 to .06 ppm to anywhere in between. I dose them when they get low but the levels are always erratic. I would not worry. Either increase feeding which would have the side effect of possibly increasing nitrates or dose phosphates to keep them at a detectable level. In my tank, I don’t have problems unless phosphates stay at 0 for some time.

 

[Lyngsaa]

Thanks a lot for the advise. Will cut my carbon dosing for now, do a wc and buy Some phosphate. Then I will see how it develops over the next few weeks.

Hopefully i can get the nutriens stabilized

 

[Backreefing]

Following

 

[Cbones1979]

Actually think my nitrates and phosphates are starting to bottom out in new 45 gallon tank with adding corals and dropping to 3 fish. Worried about dinos.
I run a skimmer that maybe I should keep off until I need it.

 

[Tired]

Good plan. Skimmers are for when you need nutrients removed, many tanks run fine without them on.