Let's talk nutrient import/export

[Potatohead]

OK, so a bit of information:

My tank is 95% acros, it seems to be doing decently, but I feel it could be doing better. I would say I get slow, but consistent growth. Colors are ok, perhaps slightly pale. Polyp extension is great on some acros, mediocre on others.

My main concern is phosphate. It has been a solid year or more since I have tested anything above single digits on the Hanna ULR tester, and a lot of the time it's below 5 (last night was 1). My last ICP test came back at .02. My nitrate was in the 6-8 range but recently I have allowed my chaeto ball to grow a bit, and it is now in the 2-3 range. For a solid six weeks now I have been trying to feed more. I have about 70 gallons water volume, and five 2-3" fish. I feed about 3/4 cube a day or the equivalent in flake. A small bit of nori twice a week.

In terms of export I use a filter roller, a small skimmer, and a chaeto fuge. I get good chaeto growth with the light on ten hours per day (which I reduced from 16). I added the filter roller just to help with water clarity and keeping my sump cleaner and since adding it my skimmer pulls far less, I only empty the cup every three weeks or so.

I do get some dusty red algae growth, which mainly grows on the sandbed and on any stagnant turf algae on the rockwork. Bare rock and coralline it doesn't grow. It blows off very easily with a turkey baster and also my conch likes to eat it. I do get some bubble algae as well but nothing too bad, and I have to clean the glass every 3-4 days. So I don't feel my phosphate it all that low but based on what I see in some corals, it seems it is. I have been hesitant to decrease my export because when I do, I get more of this red dusty stuff everywhere. So I have been trying to feed more but it doesn't seem to actually be increasing phosphate at this point. I am hesitant to dose strictly phosphate, I have done it in the past but it ended up going really high due to a testing error, and I don't want to do that again.

Any other thoughts of where to go from here, or just stay the course and continue to try to slowly increase feeding over time?

Thanks

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Tank size?

 

[Potatohead]

Tank size?

32x24x20, about 70 gallons total water volume

 

[TangPolice]

Do you feed reef roids/reef chili or any amino acids? That might be a good way to get your corals some more nutrients.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Feed more. I have about the same size tank and bio load as you and I feed 3 times a day and have issues with undetecable no3. I needed to remove my chaeto and filter socks, feed more, no wayer chanhe for over a month and dose no3 to get any kind of no3 in my system. So yeah, feed more, add more fish, shorten fuge lighting, less wayer changes. Water chanhes are great but if your water is clean and elements are balanced you are wasting good water imo. If you let your nutrients get low or unbalanced bad things start to happen.

 

[Potatohead]

Do you feed reef roids/reef chili or any amino acids? That might be a good way to get your corals some more nutrients.

I feed phyto two to three nights a week, aminos and powdered foods maybe once, but all of that is small amounts, like 1-2 ml. The powdered food and aminos really get the algae going though.

Feed more. I have about the same size tank and bio load as you and I feed 3 times a day and have issues with undetecable no3. I needed to remove my chaeto and filter socks, feed more, no wayer chanhe for over a month and dose no3 to get any kind of no3 in my system. So yeah, feed more, add more fish, shorten fuge lighting, less wayer changes. Water chanhes are great but if your water is clean and elements are balanced you are wasting good water imo. If you let your nutrients get low or unbalanced bad things start to happen.

I was doing 10% a week, I am going to cut that back to maybe every 10-14 days and see if that helps. I am really hesitant to stop skimming, I’d rather get rid of the fuge. I dropped lighting from 16 to 10 hours as well as reduced intensity by about 1/3, and it didn’t seem to do much other than the chaeto is darker green now.

I’m going to try to feed more consistently for a while, maybe a couple more months, let things balance out and then reassess from there if I should remove any export methods. I’d prefer to do the heavy in heavy out thing if I can get away with it.

 

[ScottR]

Sounds like your chaeto is doing its job. Can you pull most of it out so it’s almost nothing. If the chaeto is growing that fast like you said, it’s eating up all of your PO4 and NO3.

 

[Hemmdog]

When you say feeding 3/4 cube do you mean 3 or 4 cubes? Because 3/4ths of a cube is nothing for a tank that size. I feed 4-6 cubes throughout the day in my 90 with 6 fish. It all gets eaten. Nitrates stay 5ish for me, 0.005 PO4.
Hakari mysis 3
Pe mysis 2
Lrs reef frenzy 1

 

[ScottR]

When you say feeding 3/4 cube do you mean 3 or 4 cubes? Because 3/4ths of a cube is nothing for a tank that size. I feed 4-6 cubes throughout the day in my 90 with 6 fish. It all gets eaten. Nitrates stay 5ish for me, 0.005 PO4.
Hakari mysis 3
Pe mysis 2
Lrs reef frenzy 1

Some people say they filter/rinse out the cloudy water when they prepare frozen. I dump all that stuff in. You?

 

[Hemmdog]

Some people say they filter/rinse out the cloudy water when they prepare frozen. I dump all that stuff in. You?

Usually it all goes in. Sometimes the pe mysis will have these specks float to the surface when I’m thawing it in tank water. Sometimes if the shrimp settles to the bottom and that stuff(carapace material I think) is floating on the top, I will drain off the top inch of water from my thaw container. Lrs & hakari all goes directly in after thawing for me.

 

[homer1475]

Wow @Hemmdog, really 3 or 4 cubes a day?

I have an 80G cube with a 30G sump(roughly 85G total water volume) with 5 fish, and only feed roughly 2 cubes a day(PE mysis, small chunk of LRS, and a couple NLS pellets). I feel I feed heavily though.

 

[Potatohead]

Sounds like your chaeto is doing its job. Can you pull most of it out so it’s almost nothing. If the chaeto is growing that fast like you said, it’s eating up all of your PO4 and NO3.

I had the ball really small, like the size of a baseball for months, then I also reduced the photoperiod and turned the intensity down. Nitrate stayed 6-8 and I got a fair bit of that red dusty algae. I let it grow back out now to a pretty decent size, nitrate is now 2-3 and phosphate seems about the same, but definitely less of the algae.

When you say feeding 3/4 cube do you mean 3 or 4 cubes? Because 3/4ths of a cube is nothing for a tank that size. I feed 4-6 cubes throughout the day in my 90 with 6 fish. It all gets eaten. Nitrates stay 5ish for me, 0.005 PO4.
Hakari mysis 3
Pe mysis 2
Lrs reef frenzy 1

Yeah I mean three-quarters (or three-fourths if you're an American ;Happy) of a cube.

Ok wow I am going to up my feeding game here then, lol. To be honest I only upped it to 3/4 cube in the last few weeks also, it was less than that before. I'll slowly increase to maybe 1.5 cubes and go from there. I put my auto feeder back on the tank last night to feed once with a very small amount of pellets for now as well.

 

[Potatohead]

I almost feel like this is a eureka moment, I had no idea people fed that much. Mind you my tank isn't exactly packed to the gills like some tanks at this point, but hopefully one day...

Thanks guys

 

[Hemmdog]

I almost feel like this is a eureka moment, I had no idea people fed that much. Mind you my tank isn't exactly packed to the gills like some tanks at this point, but hopefully one day...

Thanks guys

Anytime! Hopefully that will fix your low nutrient

 

[Potatohead]

So I am deciding to bump this up with an update, and another question...

I tried feeding more for a couple months, and my corals did color up better. However I also got an absolute explosion in cyano growth. So, about three weeks ago in cut feeding way back and cyano is still present but receded a fair bit.

I'm wondering if I should consider a larger skimmer. I have an E-Shopps S120 which I really do like, but I was watching the recent BRS skimmer videos and this thing only pulls about 40% the air that something like an Octopus 150SSS pulls. I have about 70g of water volume. I also run a refugium as well as a filter roller. Obviously I don't want to spend money if it's not going to help much, hence the question.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

I would expect the cyano to fade as your system adjusts to the amount of food being processed. It’s probably actually helping keep nutrients down. Is it all over the tank or growing around corals?

 

[Potatohead]

I would expect the cyano to fade as your system adjusts to the amount of food being processed. It’s probably actually helping keep nutrients down. Is it all over the tank or growing around corals?

All over the sand, covering about 30% of the rock and some grows on the overflow as well. The tank really looks like crap and I am sick of dealing with this, I hit it with some chemiclean this afternoon.

Even with feeding more my growth is really slow, colors were better. I'm just about ready to hit reset button on this thing (again). I just cannot get my phosphate in the water column up without it immediately being turned into algae. Everyone says get phosphate to. 06-.08 and I can't even sniff 1/3 of that. I do get growth on the glass every 3-4 days, maybe my checker is broken.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

What kind of growth are you expecting? Acros typically take 3 months to encrust. I have some that I fragged within 6 months and some that took 9 months to encrust.

 

[Potatohead]

What kind of growth are you expecting? Acros typically take 3 months to encrust. I have some that I fragged within 6 months and some that took 9 months to encrust.

Most that have been in the tank about five to eight months (I had a mini crash due to long power outage last winter) have encrusted on average about maybe 1/2 - 3/4'' around the base. Like a little more than enough to cover an average frag plug. The fastest growing coral I have is the pink lemonade in my sig which is about the only coral that is actually branching out. Most started as about 1.5'' frags or so. Also in the last four months or so my polyp extension is virtually non existent. Overall the tank is three years old. Right now I'm only dosing 5ml of alk a day and the highest its ever been was around 15.

I went on vacation last month, came home and things weren't good. I almost wonder if my tank sitter got something weird in the tank. Been doing water changes and running extra carbon, not much help to this point.

 

[jda]

Heavy import, heavy export with lower residuals. Looks like you mostly do this. Beyond this, look at overall stability and lighting.