Low Nutrients Causing Issues but can I avoid dosing them?

[mattshell81]

I have had this issue in the best but eventually my old 65 stabilized and my heavy feeding found a balance where I had good acropora growth and no unwanted pest/algae taking over. In my new 140 upgrade that has been running for two months I’ve just run into the issue again except this time I feed super heavy and have a massive bio load. I have a foxface, gold rim, court jester goby, a pair of clowns, a pink bar goby, and 18 clownfish living in the refugium(born in February). I feed pretty heavy upstairs and then feed pellets every night but my phosphates are still .01 on Hanna ultra low and nitrates are testing from 1 to 1.9. I wouldn’t worry normally and even with low nutrients things seemed to be going great at first but a few of my encrusting montipora have lost a lot of color and 2 of my acropora gave no PE now after doing great for nearly 2 months. Evens my card bonsai that has encrusted over all the glue since switching tanks is super pale now. I checked par for everything and nothing is beyond low 300 to the point I’d think they’d be getting bleached by light alone but I could see excess light and lack of nutrients maybe being an issue. I just have to add the hassle of dosing nitrates and phosphates if there’s other methods people have found successful like coral feeding or running skimmer less.

 

[blaxsun]

What are the rest of your water parameters like? You can always add more fish - that usually does the trick naturally.

 

[mattshell81]

What are the rest of your water parameters like? You can always add more fish - that usually does the trick naturally.

Alk sits 8.5 to 8.7 daily, calcium stays around 430 and mag is 1400. Dosing pumps and auto testing just keep that all failed steady now so I just manually check occasionally to make sure trident is calibrated properly. The biggest issue with adding more fish is system is only 140 gallons with a 50 gallon stock tank and that stock tank has 18 8 month old clowns in it now. I figured with them added into the equation and feeding them on a separate schedule and so much daily that it would have a pretty big impact on bioload. It’s just such a head scratcher that nutrients are so low.

 

[blaxsun]

Alk sits 8.5 to 8.7 daily, calcium stays around 430 and mag is 1400. Dosing pumps and auto testing just keep that all failed steady now so I just manually check occasionally to make sure trident is calibrated properly. The biggest issue with adding more fish is system is only 140 gallons with a 50 gallon stock tank and that stock tank has 18 8 month old clowns in it now. I figured with them added into the equation and feeding them on a separate schedule and so much daily that it would have a pretty big impact on bioload. It’s just such a head scratcher that nutrients are so low.

I have 42 or so odd fish in my 160-gallon (200-gallon total) system. They seem to provide enough nutrients.

 

[mattshell81]

I have 42 or so odd fish in my 160-gallon (200-gallon total) system. They seem to provide enough nutrients.

I’m starting to think the worst. Might be some sort of pest. See small bugs on a few of my acros. Seems everything on the left side of my tank is doing well and everything in the middle and right is slowly fading and losing or even though they have shown decent growth in the month and a half since the frags were added. I’d think they just need time to adjust still if it wasn’t for the great growth and pe they all had before now.

 

[mattshell81]

So I’ve been doubling up on feeding and feeding coral food every other day and still can’t seem to get out of this bottomed out situation. Skimmer is barely pulling anything and I have gold rim, foxface, pink bar goby, court jester goby, yellow wrasse, 2 adult clowns upstairs, and 18 8 month old clowns in the refugium. I was starting to think this mat of algae growing in the fuge that i believe is either Dino’s or cyano was keeping me bottomed out so I vacuumed that all out last weekend and it hasn’t come back much but I’m still just stuck at 0 after a week of very heavy feeding. No signs of algae growth in the main display other than a few patches on power heads. Hannah checkers seems consistent so I believe them but I am going to have an lfs test and buy some new manual kits to make sure I can fully trust the results before I start dosing.

 

[Kfactor]

So I’ve been doubling up on feeding and feeding coral food every other day and still can’t seem to get out of this bottomed out situation. Skimmer is barely pulling anything and I have gold rim, foxface, pink bar goby, court jester goby, yellow wrasse, 2 adult clowns upstairs, and 18 8 month old clowns in the refugium. I was starting to think this mat of algae growing in the fuge that i believe is either Dino’s or cyano was keeping me bottomed out so I vacuumed that all out last weekend and it hasn’t come back much but I’m still just stuck at 0 after a week of very heavy feeding. No signs of algae growth in the main display other than a few patches on power heads. Hannah checkers seems consistent so I believe them but I am going to have an lfs test and buy some new manual kits to make sure I can fully trust the results before I start dosing.

i have the same problem but i find when i dose it makes things worse for me i just dont know what to do . i was going to try a icp test to double check