High Nitrate & Phosphate but sps look great

bonomo53 · Mar 15, 2016

So i recently upgraded my tank from a 57 to a 93 and after the upgrade had a big spike in phosphate. My sps started to stn but recovered nicely. My phosphates were .26 a week after the upgrade.
Now one month after the upgrade my phos is .12 tested with hanna and my nitrates are around 50 tested with salifert yet my sps look great have had amazing growth the past few weeks. This is really making my head spin since i know this shouldn't be happening. I have always kept my phos around .05 and nitrate around 5. I'm not really sure what to do since everything looks great. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

fox flame growth first picture was taken 2/22 second picture was taken today.

twilliard · Mar 15, 2016

Looking good!
I support no3 and po4 awareness

Tom Blevins · Mar 15, 2016

Yes they look great, your P.M. looks awesome, I have mine in very high light and it
seems to be dole & my tank is low nutrients though.

see your tip on the bottom of the frag sticking out right at you, that's how the top half of mine looks.

Mr. Microscope · Mar 15, 2016

Do you have a massive refugium?

bonomo53 · Mar 15, 2016

Mr. Microscope said:
Do you have a massive refugium?

Nope just a 20 gallon sump with a nyos 160 and ball of chaeto

bonomo53 · Mar 15, 2016

twilliard said:
Looking good!
I support no3 and po4 awareness

thank you

Naiad · Mar 15, 2016

If it's not broke don't fix it!

bonomo53 · Mar 15, 2016

Tom Blevins said:
Yes they look great, your P.M. looks awesome, I have mine in very high light and it
seems to be dole & my tank is low nutrients though.

see your tip on the bottom of the frag sticking out right at you, that's how the top half of mine looks.

Thank you.. If your talking about the first pictures its actually the cc hellboy

KingTriton · Mar 15, 2016

My sps love nitrates and phosphates... So does my algae :mad:

Tom Blevins · Mar 15, 2016

bonomo53 said:
Thank you.. If your talking about the first pictures its actually the cc hellboy

My Bad, looks good very close though.

twilliard · Mar 15, 2016

KingTriton said:
My sps love nitrates and phosphates... So does my algae :mad:

Sally Lightfoot crabs loves algae

Todd31 · Mar 15, 2016

I'm curious on this topic as well. Why can some good looking SPS tanks have high phosphate when most people on forums tell you they need to be at .03 and below? Are certain phosphates better than others? Maybe i'm wasting $, effort, and starving corals by running GFO to keep phosphate down unnecessarily?

twilliard · Mar 15, 2016

Todd31 said:
I'm curious on this topic as well. Why can some good looking SPS tanks have high phosphate when most people on forums tell you they need to be at .03 and below? Are certain phosphates better than others? Maybe i'm wasting $, effort, and starving corals by running GFO to keep phosphate down unnecessarily?

This is more of a touchy subject.
IMO it's about balance and what is implemented for algae control.
A good read would be about what zooxanthellae utilizes for survival.

Sabellafella · Mar 15, 2016

Looks to be as your tank benefited from that lol. Personally i wouldnt go crazy over it, but do a bunch of 10-20 % waterchanges to get it down a little just for the sake of the inverts(if you have any) i keep my tank about 5-15 ppm nitrate and 0.03- 0.1 p04

McMullen · Mar 15, 2016

bonomo53 said:
So i recently upgraded my tank from a 57 to a 93 and after the upgrade had a big spike in phosphate. My sps started to stn but recovered nicely. My phosphates were .26 a week after the upgrade.
Now one month after the upgrade my phos is .12 tested with hanna and my nitrates are around 50 tested with salifert yet my sps look great have had amazing growth the past few weeks. This is really making my head spin since i know this shouldn't be happening. I have always kept my phos around .05 and nitrate around 5. I'm not really sure what to do since everything looks great. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

fox flame growth first picture was taken 2/22 second picture was taken today.

If it ain't broke don't fix it!
Beautiful tank and coral!!

Randy Holmes-Farley · Mar 15, 2016

Todd31 said:
I'm curious on this topic as well. Why can some good looking SPS tanks have high phosphate when most people on forums tell you they need to be at .03 and below? Are certain phosphates better than others? Maybe i'm wasting $, effort, and starving corals by running GFO to keep phosphate down unnecessarily?

IMO, the absence of algae in such a tan k (the biggest problem from elevated nutrients) is either because of very robust herbivores, or something else is limiting iron, such as possibly iron (which may not be optimal for other reasons).

That topic is discussed here in the context of a very nice looking reef with super high nutrients. Last update I saw from a month ago has phosphate at 1.88 ppm and nitrate at 62 ppm, and it still looks great, but there was an RTN event in the past year.

https://www.reefs.com/forum/reefs-m...g-ix-test-kits-chasing-numbers-phosphate.html

from it:

"What we do know is the corals in this tank are healthy and growing, and experimenting to find out the details might have a detrimental effect on the system. For instance, if we start adding iron to the tank and the algae blooms, all the coral might get wiped out, and Rich is not sure he wants to take that risk."