Low nutrients.

[wrestle1952]

Are you using a dosing pump. I noticed you mentioned your calcium and mag was pretty elevated. Which the main concern is stability. How old is the system

I considered getting a dosing pump and decided against it. Especially with my alkalinity being so touchy.

 

[Catchemall]

I considered getting a dosing pump and decided against it. Especially with my alkalinity being so touchy.

I think a dosing pump would help you out a lot. I'm a big fan of dosing over the course of the day. I do calcium during the day and alk at night.

 

[chevegan]

I just did a 3 day lights out to handle a minor amount of cyano and a couple spots of diatoms while still dosing amino acids and I was able to get the nitrates to jump from 0.20 to 0.85 (trying to decipher the in betweens on red sea pro kit) Phosphates are still at around 0.007-0.009. Lower than I would like but it could be the low feedings over the last three days. That being said this is the first time nitrates have ever been higher than phosphates and even after the 3 days lights out I see new growth sprouts in my Stylo and fuzzy green acro. My digi seems to have girthed up as well. Birdsnest grew a bunch but really I'm never surprised there. They are the xenia of sps lol.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I wouldn´t care about nitrate. Nitrate is just a kind of waste product of the nitrogen cycle. Only surplus nitrogen which is not taken up by the corals when it has been amino acids and ammonium ends up as nitrate ... and corals are very efficient in taking up ammonium. Besides this corals can make their own available nitrogen by nitrogen fixation of mutualistic bacteria.

I would care more about the dropping phosphate concentration. I recommend not to add nitrate in this situation. In my experience nitrate interferes with phosphate in corals. Acropora spp. but also other SPS are especially prone to phosphorus deficiency. I had bleaching of tabular Montipora after I changed from an organic nitrogen source to nitrate and it was not caused by nitrogen deficiency but by the interference of phosphate with nitrate since nitrate was available in surplus and phosphate was low.

Everyone should read your statement because its correct. I am going through this now and had no idea dosing nitrates would cause my corals to bleach. Having undetectable nitrates and trying everything else including slowing down the skimmer to overfeeding I decided to dose just to bring it up to 3-5PPM. When i started dosing seachem nitrogen I started having an algae problem which never existed before. My phosphates dropped from 0.03-.05 range to about 0.018 and I witness some bleaching at the base of some SPS a week after stopping the nitrate dosing.

I just made a 25% watechange and my system is going back to the way it was. I dose amino acids daily and this was feeding my corals, I still want to bring my nitrates up to 5-10PPM but my biggest mistake was i dosed too heavy on day one feeling my system would just absorb the nitrates (per advice on the forum). I would start with 1/3 dose for the first day and check the next day... Bring up the nitrates over 14-21 days so everything else can catch up. If your system is doing well as mine was with some paling reduce the intensity of your light first before dosing anything.

 

[Hans-Werner]

My problems with nitrate addition also started with a delay. I changed to nitrate dosing 2 weeks before going into holidays for another two or three weeks. When I left the Montipora still looked quite fine, when I came back it was bleached and showed tissue necrosis. I guess the reserves of other nitrogen compounds still lasted for some time, maybe the Montipora had some internal reserves before it had to make use of nitrate.

 

[chevegan]

I wouldn´t care about nitrate. Nitrate is just a kind of waste product of the nitrogen cycle. Only surplus nitrogen which is not taken up by the corals when it has been amino acids and ammonium ends up as nitrate ... and corals are very efficient in taking up ammonium. Besides this corals can make their own available nitrogen by nitrogen fixation of mutualistic bacteria.

I would care more about the dropping phosphate concentration. I recommend not to add nitrate in this situation. In my experience nitrate interferes with phosphate in corals. Acropora spp. but also other SPS are especially prone to phosphorus deficiency. I had bleaching of tabular Montipora after I changed from an organic nitrogen source to nitrate and it was not caused by nitrogen deficiency but by the interference of phosphate with nitrate since nitrate was available in surplus and phosphate was low.

So if both are undetectable is it wise to dose both up to desired levels?

 

[Hans-Werner]

If both are undetectable I would feed the fish more heavily or I would start to feed the corals. Feeding supplies nutrients in a balanced ratio.

 

[Ashish Patel]

After dosing nitrates I lost some of my SPS that where already on the fence (heath wise).. Ironically, they where the more hardy SPS (stylo and porcilipora). However, being my first SPS addition and more for testing they just simply STN. I panic after seeing 4 of my acro bleaching at the new growth area (encrusting).
Since I shocked the system by going to 3PPM overnight I did not want to go back to undetectable overnight so did it gradually over 10 days and yesterday my nitrates where 0.02.. Its crazy because today I see my acro's bleach section regaining color. Almost as fast as it started bleaching.. Phew!