SliceGolfer
Valuable Member
This coming January will be the one year mark for my little Nuvo 20. I've had some ups and downs with SPS, learning more and more as time has passed by. Without much effort on my part, my tank settled in as ULNS mostly on it's own. I stopped using the cheato reactor by month 3 or 4 as nutrients were totally bottomed out, and the cheato was dying anyway. At the point I removed the reactor, my N03 leveled off at 2-5ppm (Red Sea) and P04 was 0.08-0.12ppm (Hanna).
A few months ago I decided to start planning on another nano tank. My Nuvo was built to be SPS dominant, but somewhere along the way I acquired a bunch of Acans and Favias. My goal would be to put the Acans and Favias in a separate tank, and maybe try different salts or equipment or supplements as an experiment. In preparation I added a dozen 1 inch MarinePure spheres into the Nuvo, which would then move into the new tank. Well, this idea never really took off and the MarinePure spheres have been sitting in the back of the Nuvo. As a result, my N03 bottomed out while P04 was still sitting at 0.06-0.10ppm. I had noticed some of the corals not looking as crisp and colorful, so I started feeding heavier. I have only 3 fish in the Nuvo, and my schedule is such that I can't always feed multiple times a day. So I started dosing N03. Color improved, and P04 dropped to 0.05-0.10ppm regularly.
I've been running the tank this way for a while, and recently I lost 3 SPS which were acquired from our local swap meet in October. Disappointing to me because I lost a Strawberry Shortcake, Pink Lemonade, and a Hawkins. These corals STN'd over the course of a couple days, a few weeks apart from each other. When they did, they STN'd from base up, not tips in. After reading some posts, I concluded I was likely phosphate limited and the corals were starving.
This past Sunday (water test day) all parameters were stable and in my sweet spot, except P04. This time it tested 0.03ppm. I had increased the amount of N03 I was dosing by 1ml and this related to another decline in P04. To prevent any additional losses, I dosed P04 and brought it to 0.11ppm. I travel a lot for work, so my tank was on autopilot from Monday to Thursday. When I got home I checked in on the tank and noticed most of my color had returned. I also noticed a few pieces of SPS that did not have much color at all are now showing some flouresence when the deep blues are on, giving me positive signs of zooxanthelle. I test my Alk twice a week regularly so I broke out the Hanna test kit. To my surprise, my tank was sitting at 6.5 DKH, where on Sunday it was 7.4 DKH.
So what did I learn? My tank has been phosphate limited for some time, that I need to adapt and possibly dose P04 if my schedule will prevent me from feeding heavier and increasing nutrients, and I experienced first hand the direct relationship of N03 to P04 to Alk consumption. Running an SPS tank in 14 gallons total water volume, you have to be on your game. Tomorrow is test day, so very interested to see the impact on CA and MG.
If you stuck with this post to the end, thanks all for reading. R2R is a great community and I appreciate all the posts and learnings I have drawn from everyone else along the way!
A few months ago I decided to start planning on another nano tank. My Nuvo was built to be SPS dominant, but somewhere along the way I acquired a bunch of Acans and Favias. My goal would be to put the Acans and Favias in a separate tank, and maybe try different salts or equipment or supplements as an experiment. In preparation I added a dozen 1 inch MarinePure spheres into the Nuvo, which would then move into the new tank. Well, this idea never really took off and the MarinePure spheres have been sitting in the back of the Nuvo. As a result, my N03 bottomed out while P04 was still sitting at 0.06-0.10ppm. I had noticed some of the corals not looking as crisp and colorful, so I started feeding heavier. I have only 3 fish in the Nuvo, and my schedule is such that I can't always feed multiple times a day. So I started dosing N03. Color improved, and P04 dropped to 0.05-0.10ppm regularly.
I've been running the tank this way for a while, and recently I lost 3 SPS which were acquired from our local swap meet in October. Disappointing to me because I lost a Strawberry Shortcake, Pink Lemonade, and a Hawkins. These corals STN'd over the course of a couple days, a few weeks apart from each other. When they did, they STN'd from base up, not tips in. After reading some posts, I concluded I was likely phosphate limited and the corals were starving.
This past Sunday (water test day) all parameters were stable and in my sweet spot, except P04. This time it tested 0.03ppm. I had increased the amount of N03 I was dosing by 1ml and this related to another decline in P04. To prevent any additional losses, I dosed P04 and brought it to 0.11ppm. I travel a lot for work, so my tank was on autopilot from Monday to Thursday. When I got home I checked in on the tank and noticed most of my color had returned. I also noticed a few pieces of SPS that did not have much color at all are now showing some flouresence when the deep blues are on, giving me positive signs of zooxanthelle. I test my Alk twice a week regularly so I broke out the Hanna test kit. To my surprise, my tank was sitting at 6.5 DKH, where on Sunday it was 7.4 DKH.
So what did I learn? My tank has been phosphate limited for some time, that I need to adapt and possibly dose P04 if my schedule will prevent me from feeding heavier and increasing nutrients, and I experienced first hand the direct relationship of N03 to P04 to Alk consumption. Running an SPS tank in 14 gallons total water volume, you have to be on your game. Tomorrow is test day, so very interested to see the impact on CA and MG.
If you stuck with this post to the end, thanks all for reading. R2R is a great community and I appreciate all the posts and learnings I have drawn from everyone else along the way!
