Just wondering how to keep nitrate and phosphate low. I was thinking about getting a media reactor and running biopellets, carbon or gfo. I have a IM nuvo 40 and for a while I had hair algae all over my rocks and frags. So I started to treat vibrant. Since that time I had seen a change but than after the first week also started to get cyano. Everything has somewhat gone away but want to keep everything at bay. Is there something else besides a reactor that I can use to keep nitrate and phosphate low.
How to keep levels low?
- Thread starter mraysberg
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ZoWhat
10K Club member
1) have a proper ratio of snails : hermitcrabs ..... 0.5snails : 1 hermitcrab PER GALLON
2) Dont feed an amount of food that the fish arent completely consuming in under 5mins. if food still floating around at the 6min mark. TOO MUCH FOOD
3) have your SKIMMER properly dialed in so its pulling about 1-4 8oz cups of gunk a week
4) Its okay to have NO3 btwn 2-5ppm. its actually preferred not to have them at 0.
5) its okay to have algae film growing in the glass and LR.... ITS A SIGN FROM GOD that things are growing and metabolizing in your system. thats WHY you have a CUC to cleanup algae film thats an awesome sign things are metabolizing available nutrients!!
6) PO4 is usually a result of your food source or your water source. PO4 should be fairly loooow
HTH
2) Dont feed an amount of food that the fish arent completely consuming in under 5mins. if food still floating around at the 6min mark. TOO MUCH FOOD
3) have your SKIMMER properly dialed in so its pulling about 1-4 8oz cups of gunk a week
4) Its okay to have NO3 btwn 2-5ppm. its actually preferred not to have them at 0.
5) its okay to have algae film growing in the glass and LR.... ITS A SIGN FROM GOD that things are growing and metabolizing in your system. thats WHY you have a CUC to cleanup algae film thats an awesome sign things are metabolizing available nutrients!!
6) PO4 is usually a result of your food source or your water source. PO4 should be fairly loooow
HTH
Seems to be the biggest hurdle for many, you should really start with a test kit, understand your levels and what makes them increase. The main things you should watch for are Overfeeding, husbandry changing filter socks etc and good quality Source water. How old is your tank ?
MichaelReefer
2500 Club Member
I agree but also somewhat disagree with this. I actually feed just a tad bit more than the fish eat for two reasons. One, it helps my emerald and hermit crabs eat the leftovers when it gets blown around and goes behind the rocks. And two because I have a Dragonet that is trained to eat Mysis, and he is too shy to come out and grab food himself, so when it gets blown around he grabs it when it goes behind the rock. He's a slow eater because of his tiny mouth and my other fish gobble up a lot of it.
Hemmdog
10K Club member
You don’t need reactors on a tank that size. If you have elevated nutrient grab media bags with carbon & gfo like chemipure elite & chemipure blue. I have very low nutrient on my 90 & 40b when I put in new bags. Not bottomed out, but a safe low nutrient range.
I think this is a fair point, we all have ways of working with our tanks chemistry, first we need to understand the impact of X if we do Y and understand what what we need to do to combat the results IE Export methods. What goes in, needs to come out.
Biggest lesson I’ve learnt is don’t go looking for Zero PO4 and No3 just because you’ve read it somewhere, Coral NEED “some” PO4 and NO3 to survive, also don’t drop your levels quickly. Many chemicals will strip the water faster than the corals can adapt. Algae can also come from other issues like poor lighting, incorrect photoperiod - get a test kit before dosing anything to the tank imo
I would urge you never to do aggressive nutrient reduction if you aren't measuring levels. The bad things that can happen from too low nutrients are more difficult and more harmful than too high nutrients. I am happy if my NO3 is 5 or lower. I really don't want it any lower than 0.5. PO4 I want to be about 0.06-0.08. My PO4 choice is mainly about having had one of the "bad" things from bottoming out my PO4 (dinoflagellates).
A good cleanup crew is far more desirable than carbon dosing, GFO, etc.!
A good cleanup crew is far more desirable than carbon dosing, GFO, etc.!
mraysberg
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Def need to order myself a test kit for nitrate and phosphate. Salifert or Red Sea? Maybe Hanna checkers but not really trying to spend that much. I run now chemipure blue and purigen. I also have a tunze 9004 and a up sterilizer running on the system. I’ve had it up and running for about 6-8 months. Most of this tank was a transfer from my fluval evo.
Flippers4pups
Fins up since 1993
Definitely start with test kits. Salifert or red Sea are good.
my 10cents , Salifert is fantastic and great value with the exception of their Phosphate kit, for that I would use Red Sea Pro. Worth keeping on top of it as it’s easier to maintain it than to have to fight it, once No3 and Po4 become unbalanced the doors open to a whole host of issues from brown corals, Dinos, Cyano
Tuffyyyyy
2500 Club Member
I had that tank for 2 years, make sure you're vacuuming out the back. 90% of my water changes would be getting the detritus out of the back chambers.
The main answer to your question is to feed less. A lot of us have a problem doing this, but pellets are more like protein shakes than Doritos and fish only need a couple.
The main answer to your question is to feed less. A lot of us have a problem doing this, but pellets are more like protein shakes than Doritos and fish only need a couple.
For me I had success with very frequent (excessive) monitoring until I could narrow down just how much to feed , what feeding fish and my corals did to my levels. Was then able to get a really good idea of what happened before and after feeds and how fast my CUC and skimmer leveled things off. Was lots of testing and experimenting but learned a lot about what happened in my tank when I did something. Did lots of before and after testing , food, water change affect etc. Good luck!
Aaron iReef2
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Aaron iReef2
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I am the long time owner of a LFS in Colorado. The last 2 years I have been testing the effectiveness of ceramic bio media plates. Once the ceramic block becomes established with dense loads of beneficial bacteria. These extra heavy loads of billions of bacteria will reduce nitrate and even phosphate . (Slowly but naturally) The ceramic blocks we have been testing, are made by Marine Pure. They have small , dice size gems, golfball sized ceramic balls, 8x8x1 plates and 8x8x4 ince blocks. The plates and Blocks house enormous amounts of bacteria. Recommended putting the ceramics in a bucket of circulating saltwater with a choice blend of beneficial bacteria overnight to seed the ceramic before placing in the aquariums filtration.. (iReef2.com chose to seed with Brightwell's Nitrobacter 7 bacteria) Within 6 weeks or so, the nitrates and phosphate levels in all of the systems we tested began declining. Almost down to non detectable. Pretty impressive so far.
Note* slowly the caulerpa and or chaeto started to not thrive as well in our sumps tested. And even died off in 1 system. These were healthy beds of filtering algae. Suprisingly the nitrates and phosphates have remained very low, even without the help of the caulerpa of chaeto.
Also, you can easily cut the plates to fit into backfilters, cannister filters, any kind of sump. Just do not rinse the plates in tap water or freshwater, or you will kill the healthy beneficial bacteria. If you have to remove detritus from the plates or blocks, try to clean em up in saltwater from the system it was in. Do the cleaning of any and all biological substrates in saltwater during a water change using the discarded tank water the media is housed in. It is not required to clean the ceramic media but maybe 1 or 2 x per year, depending on your bio load.
Hope this helps !
A-a-ron B-Lake
iReef2.com
Note* slowly the caulerpa and or chaeto started to not thrive as well in our sumps tested. And even died off in 1 system. These were healthy beds of filtering algae. Suprisingly the nitrates and phosphates have remained very low, even without the help of the caulerpa of chaeto.
Also, you can easily cut the plates to fit into backfilters, cannister filters, any kind of sump. Just do not rinse the plates in tap water or freshwater, or you will kill the healthy beneficial bacteria. If you have to remove detritus from the plates or blocks, try to clean em up in saltwater from the system it was in. Do the cleaning of any and all biological substrates in saltwater during a water change using the discarded tank water the media is housed in. It is not required to clean the ceramic media but maybe 1 or 2 x per year, depending on your bio load.
Hope this helps !
A-a-ron B-Lake
iReef2.com
Chris Villalobos
Active Member
You will need to get good low level NO3 and PO4 test kits. I would suggest going straight for the Hanna ULR Phosphate checker since nobody I know can accurately read the PO4 color tests.
I tried battling GHA and killed my tank with low nutrients but still the GHA hung on. Be really careful when using Biopellets and GFO. I found the best GHA killer was H2O2 and a toothbrush.
Cyano can also be caused by N : P ratios being out of balance. Currently I have to dose both NO3 and PO4 to keep my tank healthy.
If i only had a 40 i would do 5 gallon water changes using rodi water each week for a few weeks (sure fire way to lower levels of no3 and po4 slowly as well as making sure all other levels are correct since you dont have test kits currently), as for the cyano make sure you have enough flow in the tank and maybe try 24-48 hours lights off. For test kits imo spend the money on the hanna checkers even if you buy one at a time. So much easier than guessing at color charts.
