How does everyone maintain such low nutrients?

[mbarber87]

I've been trying to figure this out, but most people say they keep their Nitrates at around 5-10ppm and then Phosphates at .03 or .02..

My question is, how are you maintaining them at such low numbers? Do you feed the exact same amount of fish/coral food every week? I feel like my numbers swing constantly.

 

[Waters]

I've been trying to figure this out, but most people say they keep their Nitrates at around 5-10ppm and then Phosphates at .03 or .02..

My question is, how are you maintaining them at such low numbers? Do you feed the exact same amount of fish/coral food every week? I feel like my numbers swing constantly.

Once your tank balances out and you figure out your water change and feeding schedule, everything starts to maintain at their current levels. With testing, you can make small adjustments to keep them in line.

 

[DeniableArc]

I've been trying to figure this out, but most people say they keep their Nitrates at around 5-10ppm and then Phosphates at .03 or .02..

My question is, how are you maintaining them at such low numbers? Do you feed the exact same amount of fish/coral food every week? I feel like my numbers swing constantly.

I have biological surface a good skimmer and I carbon dose small amounts that keeps me at 3-5 nitrate and 0.03-0.06 phosphate. But It comes down to how many fish and how much you feed and I find coral food like reef roids is very good but in small amounts as it really affects nutrients in my tank.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I've been trying to figure this out, but most people say they keep their Nitrates at around 5-10ppm and then Phosphates at .03 or .02..

My question is, how are you maintaining them at such low numbers? Do you feed the exact same amount of fish/coral food every week? I feel like my numbers swing constantly.

How much "swing" do you see, and how do you know it isn't testing variability?

 

[mike550]

For a long time my nitrates were running around 15-20 and zero phosphates (at least I couldn’t measure them). But I wanted to get the nitrates down and phosphates up so I could start maintaining corals. I ended up doing 30% water changes for three days in a row (cleaning sand bed, blowing stuff off rocks, etc) and was able to get my nitrates down to 10.

Now I’m using NoPox and added bio media to my sump and my nitrates are holding steady at 8 and phosphates around 0.1-0.2

 

[BlennyTime]

I have 40 gallons in my sump growing chaeto (and pods) that has done wonders for keeping my nitrates/phosphates stable and low.

 

[brandon429]

I recall seeing threads that show a fifty ppm spread on name brands as the final reading. some of them you have to wait nine minutes for the read, people report them in three.
some of them you have to shake the reagents and read them only in the backyard, no clouds. The variation seems to be consistent between three brands ran on a given sample, so whats in a stated reading anyway/

its a neat option to simply keep low detritus, high system throughput design vs stagnancy, and target feed corals until your algae cleaning sets the upper limits while coral growth is highest it will ever be (the tendency is to back off)

 

[smacbride]

I try not to stress out about it. My wife made the comment the other day "you spend more on the test kits than the actual fish"... lol

 

[PatW]

My nitrates run at .75 ppm and are pretty stable. I dose food grade sodium nitrate but not that much.
Phosphates are less stable. They range from 0 tp .06 ppm changing by the day. I dose phosphates to keep them above 0.

I run filter socks. I run a skimmer. And I have Chaeto.

I feed the same amount every day and I have a pretty light fish load.

 

[Treefer32]

My nitrates run at .75 ppm and are pretty stable. I dose food grade sodium nitrate but not that much.
Phosphates are less stable. They range from 0 tp .06 ppm changing by the day. I dose phosphates to keep them above 0.

I run filter socks. I run a skimmer. And I have Chaeto.

I feed the same amount every day and I have a pretty light fish load.

what do you use to dose phosphates?

 

[Treefer32]

I run an algae turf scrubber. which is at max hair algae within 6 days. I run a large skimmer, and a nu-clear cannister filter - I change the 25 micron filter every 3 weeks, and do weekly 11% water changes. When I did water changes every other week I had algae growing in. I switched to weekly water changes, changed my RO Membrane, and sediment filters, and within a month of weekly water changes I've eliminated all algae other than on the ATS.

I suspect some silicates were being leached into my display from the 6 year old RODI filter I had. All those changes, my nitrates are less than 8, and phosphates barely detectable.

I saw a big change in my water chemistry and loss of the last bits of algae when I added two more MP40s and increased my fish by 30-40%. Suddenly phosphate and nitrates seemed to achieve a new balance where they're exported equally. With less fish I always had some type of briopsis or fuzzy algae growing in somewhere. Once I increased my bio load and dialed in my water changes and water quality, the last remnants of algae vanished.

I run with a bare minimum CUC because I have a CBB and a Dragon Wrasse that like to hunt. The dragon wrasse flips over any snail he can find. . . I don't think he eats them, just likes to flip them over... After a dozen times of being flipped over, they kinda just die. . . .

 

[Labora]

Keeping a bare bottom helps. Very easy to pickup any uneaten food etc.

 

[Lawpoke87]

50g fug full of chaeto, 50 lbs of LR in the fug and sump, all on a 155g display. My issue is keeping detectable phosphates. I absolutely love my fug.

 

[Tired]

Corals will use up those nutrients. Some people, especially those with only a few fish, just have hungry enough coral to use most of it up.

Bear in mind, you don't necessarily want super low nutrients. Zero of either one is particularly bad. Your corals need both to perform photosynthesis, and will suffer and eventually die if they can't get enough of either or both.

 

[HB AL]

With my limited space of tank in my bedroom nopox is my friend, and thats with a huge bioload of 15 fish and a tank full of corals, its not that difficult, and lots of live rock.

 

[HighBallNano]

I’ve set up a fuge in the back of my biocube and grow chaeto. Like @BlennyTime ‘s sump setup, it has lowered and maintained my nitrates and phosphates

 

[reef]

I struggled with both for a long time then decided to start dosing home made NOPOX daily. Nitrates didn't budge for a month but then started dropping. Went from somewhere around 80 to 3 in 4 months. Phosphates dropped, but I had to go with GFO in a reactor to get them down to the .03 target. Has been a game changer for me, I went from only being able to grow softies to getting great growth and color from SPS.

 

[JohnnyBeagle]

refugium helped out a lot for me

 

[MabuyaQ]

I've been trying to figure this out, but most people say they keep their Nitrates at around 5-10ppm and then Phosphates at .03 or .02..

My question is, how are you maintaining them at such low numbers? Do you feed the exact same amount of fish/coral food every week? I feel like my numbers swing constantly.

The low numbers and stability game is all about total number of consumers versus total number of producers and number of different consumers (diversity).
If values are hard to keep/get low increase the total number of consumers (in the order 1: more bacteria, 2: more algae, 3: more corals of what consumers you want to stimulate in growth).
If stability/swing is hard to keep/get low (whatever that may be as fluctuations are natural, even more so with fluctuations in feeding and testing patterns common in this hobby) increase diversity of consumers (same order).

 

[Kfactor]

I think for me I keep my tank to clean and keep bottoming out my Nutrients and I pay for it lol. I’m having to does now and still can’t get them up and hold . My skimmer pump quit on me about 2 weeks ago and ordered a new one never had my skimmer going and I think that was the best thing to happen to me as I see my nutrients starting to come up so I think I’m only going to run my skimmer for 4 to 6 hours 3 times a week now and see