Ideal Alk level relative to nitrates (nutrients)

[Charlie’s Frags]

Maybe you have not read a lot of the thread, but the parameters have been provided before. Here they are again:
Nitrates - Zero to 1ppm (1ppm very recent)
Photosphate 0.06 - 0.08 (0.08 being very recent)
Alk 7.5 to 7.7
Calcium 400
Mag 1280-1300
Lots of feeding
Light intensity high - Acros are at 300-380 par; anemones get a bit more like 400-420.
Anything else i missed?
thanks

How high are your reefbreeders mounted?

 

[Rick5]

I never knew there was a ratio of nitrate to alk. I thought alk was only related to ca and mg because all 3 were needed for coral growth. Interested to learn about this.

It isn’t a ratio (as far as I know). This isn’t a redfield scenario, rather, if you run lower nutrients, you’ll want to run lower Alk.

 

[Lovefish77]

Maybe you need to re-read my posts. Not a big deal if you can’t.

If you are soliciting free and altruistically-provided info/advice, it may make sense (maybe) to make it easy for folks to find (maybe).

Best of luck, though. If you were rubbed the wrong way by @Chaswood79 ugly tenius, take it up with him (maybe).

Your Alk is a bit high. Your mag is a bit low. You seem to prefer low nutrients. So drip lanthanum, carbon dose and run a bit of GFO. Best of luck.

It is not about being rubbed the wrong way really. Often times people here give contradicting advise and i need to distill through it and make up my mind and decide where i go from here. This is a biological system at the end of the day and not just like lowering or raising the temperature of your room.
Now when you say i seem to "prefer low nutrients" what do you mean by that? It is not about my preference, i am looking for others' experience about the sweet spot between N and P. And you are recommending carbon dosing? i cannot raise my nitrates even a little bit even if i feed like 8 cubes a day!! Sometimes i feel that people are recommending courses of action here after just reading the last 2 posts (no offense).
I never had to dose lanthanum and definitely do not need to dose carbon, so not entirely sure where you are trying to go.
I will try to lower alk slightly and gradually.

thanks

 

[Lovefish77]

How high are your reefbreeders mounted?

Exactly 8" above the water surface

 

[Rick5]

It is not about being rubbed the wrong way really. Often times people here give contradicting advise and i need to distill through it and make up my mind and decide where i go from here. This is a biological system at the end of the day and not just like lowering or raising the temperature of your room.
Now when you say i seem to "prefer low nutrients" what do you mean by that? It is not about my preference, i am looking for others' experience about the sweet spot between N and P. And you are recommending carbon dosing? i cannot raise my nitrates even a little bit even if i feed like 8 cubes a day!! Sometimes i feel that people are recommending courses of action here after just reading the last 2 posts (no offense).
I never had to dose lanthanum and definitely do not need to dose carbon, so not entirely sure where you are trying to go.
I will try to lower alk slightly and gradually.

thanks

No!! Don’t dose ANYTHING. It was a bad joke.

 

[Lovefish77]

No!! Don’t dose ANYTHING. It was a bad joke.

Yes, it was BAD.. i agree lol

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Maybe you need to re-read my posts. Not a big deal if you can’t.

If you are soliciting free and altruistically-provided info/advice, it may make sense (maybe) to make it easy for folks to find (maybe).

Best of luck, though. If you were rubbed the wrong way by @Chaswood79 ugly tenius, take it up with him (maybe).

Your Alk is a bit high. Your mag is a bit low. You seem to prefer low nutrients. So drip lanthanum, carbon dose and run a bit of GFO. Best of luck.

You want me to blue those ugly Tenuis out for you next time @Rick5

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Exactly 8" above the water surface

8” is really low for the reefbreeders. Those have the same laser beam diodes as my hydras. You might be hot spotting your acros. I keep my hydra 52s 16” above the water. @SeaDweller uses reefbreeders and his are 15” above the water. @therman uses them too but I don’t know how high his are mounted.

 

[Lovefish77]

8” is really low for the reefbreeders. Those have the same laser beam diodes as my hydras. You might be hot spotting your acros. I keep my hydra 52s 16” above the water. @SeaDweller uses reefbreeders and his are 15” above the water. @therman uses them too but I don’t know how high his are mounted.

Yes i checked with Logan from RB as well and some people have them at 8", i have had them like this for like at least 2.5 years so that is not the culprit i believe. I can take the acro down in the aqua scape. But I need to keep the nems happy with high par.
I also lowered them as recommended by Logan as i have the 50+ fixture. So i lowered them partially to avoid the excess light spill on the glass and on the ground.

 

[Rick5]

You want me to blue those ugly Tenuis out for you next time @Rick5

Do you even blue, though?

Asking for a neighbor.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Do you even blue, though?

Asking for a neighbor.

Nope. My blue pics are even worse

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Yes i checked with Logan from RB as well and some people have them at 8", i have had them like this for like at least 2.5 years so that is not the culprit i believe. I can take the acro down in the aqua scape. But I need to keep the nems happy with high par.
I also lowered them as recommended by Logan as i have the 50+ fixture. So i lowered them partially to avoid the excess light spill on the glass and on the ground.

Just in case you haven’t watched this


What size is the tank?

 

[Lovefish77]

Just in case you haven’t watched this


What size is the tank?

I did watch that video. Tank is 75 gallons. I Think par 350 for that type of acro is not going over board, right? And the acro was raised gradually over few weeks to that level. The only problem is probably a bit high light with low nutrients (as they go hand in hand per Jason Fox from the video that Jake Adams made in his house).

Just to add if you post the reefbreeders as high as recommended in this video you will never get above 200 PAR like 4-5" below the water surface unless you ramp up the whites A LOT (and the tank will look like someone peed in it lol)

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I did watch that video. Tank is 75 gallons. I Think par 350 for that type of acro is not going over board, right? And the acro was raised gradually over few weeks to that level. The only problem is probably a bit high light with low nutrients (as they go hand in hand per Jason Fox from the video that Jake Adams made in his house).

Just to add if you post the reefbreeders as high as recommended in this video you will never get above 200 PAR like 4-5" below the water surface unless you ramp up the whites A LOT (and the tank will look like someone peed in it lol)

I don’t think 375 is too much light unless you’re over stripping the ammonia/ammonium from the water. Over stripping the water is possible no matter what your no3/po4 tests say.

I added some seachem matrix to my 2nd/qt tank with the 50/0.55 to see what would happen. 3-4 weeks later I noticed many of the sps looking really stressed but the no3/po4 was still 25/0.30. I removed the matrix and the looked better within 3-5 days.

 

[Lovefish77]

Just an update after increasing nitrates by 2ppm over like 8 days or so:
- overall less than optimal look to all sps and lps
- big acro colony peeling off from the tops down more everyday. Dead exposed skeleton taken over by algae
- other acro frag is in the same bad shape
- huge birdnest colony has bad pe and couple of white patches in the middle branches
- cyphastrea started changing color from green to bluish base, but now showing some recession in several places across the colony
- lobo coral starting to show some signs of recession at the edges
- two small acans showing significant recession too
- big green nepthea colony and gorgonians are unchanged
- anemones are showing no stress

So given that this is the second time I try to raise nitrates and start crashing things, maybe I need to accept my tank as low nutrients tank and not change it? I am pulling my hair here. Is there such a thing as a tank gears itself in a certain way that you cannot change it?

Any thoughts appreciated

Sorry for the frustrated tone, but just want to emphasize nothing was changed at all except nitrate dosing using food sodium nitrate. Just to make it easy and you dont have to scroll a lot through the entire thread. If you flip through the recent several posts you will get the hang of the whole thread.

 

[Lovefish77]

Anyone? Is it too hard to crack?
Has anyone had drastic effects on his tank especially sps when raising nitrates by 2ppm?!!

 

[Brandon McHenry]

Just an update after increasing nitrates by 2ppm over like 8 days or so:
- overall less than optimal look to all sps and lps
- big acro colony peeling off from the tops down more everyday. Dead exposed skeleton taken over by algae
- other acro frag is in the same bad shape
- huge birdnest colony has bad pe and couple of white patches in the middle branches
- cyphastrea started changing color from green to bluish base, but now showing some recession in several places across the colony
- lobo coral starting to show some signs of recession at the edges
- two small acans showing significant recession too
- big green nepthea colony and gorgonians are unchanged
- anemones are showing no stress

So given that this is the second time I try to raise nitrates and start crashing things, maybe I need to accept my tank as low nutrients tank and not change it? I am pulling my hair here. Is there such a thing as a tank gears itself in a certain way that you cannot change it?

Any thoughts appreciated

Sorry for the frustrated tone, but just want to emphasize nothing was changed at all except nitrate dosing using food sodium nitrate. Just to make it easy and you dont have to scroll a lot through the entire thread. If you flip through the recent several posts you will get the hang of the whole thread.

Anyone? Is it too hard to crack?
Has anyone had drastic effects on his tank especially sps when raising nitrates by 2ppm?!!

Did you ever switch to dosing 24 times per day? I’m still inclined to believe that alkalinity swings are to blame here. I highly doubt raising your nitrate by 2ppm has caused your SPS to have such pronounced impacts. At least not directly. Two potential indirect effects (to look at only after we have eliminated alkalinity as an issue) are that if you are dosing potassium nitrate, then potassium could be high, or the addition of nitrate is causing your phosphate to bottom out. Again I would focus on alkalinity stability before anything else as that is far more likely to cause ill effects on your SPS than nitrate.

 

[Lovefish77]

Did you ever switch to dosing 24 times per day? I’m still inclined to believe that alkalinity swings are to blame here. I highly doubt raising your nitrate by 2ppm has caused your SPS to have such pronounced impacts. At least not directly. Two potential indirect effects (to look at only after we have eliminated alkalinity as an issue) are that if you are dosing potassium nitrate, then potassium could be high, or the addition of nitrate is causing your phosphate to bottom out. Again I would focus on alkalinity stability before anything else as that is far more likely to cause ill effects on your SPS than nitrate.

I am not dosing potassium nitrate but sodium nitrate.
Splitting all dosing is impractical really. I am currently dosing like 8ml a day, splitting 8 ml to 24 doses cannot be done by my doser and most dosers as far as I know.
Plus I want to note that before raising nitrates there was no issue. I could have an issue with zero nitrates and bit high alk but not slightly higher nitrates (2-3ppm), right?

 

[Brandon McHenry]

I am not dosing potassium nitrate but sodium nitrate.
Splitting all dosing is impractical really. I am currently dosing like 8ml a day, splitting 8 ml to 24 doses cannot be done by my doser and most dosers as far as I know.
Plus I want to note that before raising nitrates there was no issue. I could have an issue with zero nitrates and bit high alk but not slightly higher nitrates (2-3ppm), right?

Ok did you ever double check your salinity and recalibrate your refractometer? I remember that was also a concern. And I didn’t realize how little you were dosing. Is it split between day and night then? And there are a slew of thing that SPS can have issues with but I’ve never personally seen any with zero vs 2-3 ppm nitrate. I am honestly convinced that’s not the issue. I think there is something else at play here especially since SPS can respond poorly to something that happened a month ago.

 

[Lovefish77]

Ok did you ever double check your salinity and recalibrate your refractometer? I remember that was also a concern. And I didn’t realize how little you were dosing. Is it split between day and night then? And there are a slew of thing that SPS can have issues with but I’ve never personally seen any with zero vs 2-3 ppm nitrate. I am honestly convinced that’s not the issue. I think there is something else at play here especially since SPS can respond poorly to something that happened a month ago.

No I did not calibrate the thermometer using the saline solution. But I figured out if it was really off by a huge margin it would have had a big impact on lps and all of my black widows as they sensitive to salinity swings.

All my all dosing is done at night or when lights are off. But dosing 8ml or 10 ml a day is not gonna make a huge impact.
Raising nitrates was done over like a week ago and not a month.
No other changes were made to the tank, no additive or salt change or anything. I dosed red sea ab+ for a few days at 1ml a day for a 85 gallon system then started noticing some very slight burnt tips on the acro colony so I stopped it ever since. No other new thing introduced to the system.