My Nitrates and Phosphates bottomed out...again!!!

[Avengerx77]

My tanks is about 1.5 months old after completing its cycle and is a 60 gal tank. I have a pair of clownfish, 1 royal gramma and a cleaner shrimp. I am running chaeto under 10.5 hour period and Skimmer is an Octopus INT110S running 24/7. Feeding is twice a day, mainly pellets and occasionally frozen mysis. I have filter floss which I change about every 3 days and a couple of days ago put Carbonit-P (50gms) to clear water. I once got to raise my Nitrates to 4.5ppm / Phosphates to 0.18ppm, but I think those were the highest I was able to get. Right now I am at 0.00ppm Nitrates and 0.00ppm Phosphates, which I want to avoid a bacteria bloom if these numbers continue and also that I can't introduce any corals until I get them up.

Question is what can I do to consistently up my nutrients? Here are some thoughts:
- Overfeeding, maybe by doubling the food the fish consumes and increase mysis feedings.
- Not sure if I can lower the chaeto photoperiod even further, as now Fuge lights stays only for 10.5 hours
- Stopping or hold skimmer to just a few hours a day?
- Chemicals such as Neo-Nitro and Neo-Phos? This is the only product for this purpose I can get around here. But not sure, how long the effects will last before bottom up if continue with current tank operation. Feels like it would be too costly if need to keep adding this indefinitely to keep up.
- Do water changes every month instead of bi-weekly. Not too concerned on trace elements as I don't have corals yet.

Which would be the most effective way to increase my nutrients.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Feed more, or dose sodium nitrate and sodium phosphate, both food grade from amazon (not sure what you have locally)..

The Brightwell stuff can work if you cannot get food grade products.

 

[Avengerx77]

Yeah, not sure how easy would be to get food grade products from Amazon, as I think those type of products have quite a few import restrictions on my country, will need to ask around. So, you think that feeding more is the most effective way from all those options? I am thinking that maybe I can start feeding 3 times per day instead of 2 until I start introducing more livestock.

 

[TheDragonsReef]

Sounds like youre over filtering for the bioload. Turn the refugium light down to 8hrs a day, put the skimmer on a timer to only run half the day, and let your filter socks go a little longer before changing

 

[Avengerx77]

Yes, sounds like that since I only have 3 small fish, so not much of a bio load yet. Ok, will try that and will also go with the Brightwell products. At least with that I can have a better estimate on how long does it take for the filters to consume the nutrients and adjust accordingly until I start to add more livestock.

 

[Piker]

First, phosphates of 1.8 are outside of every coral's target range. Aim for .05 or less.

My refugium runs 4 hours a day and I still get great growth with AI fuge at about 80% intensity. You can easily bring it down from 10 hours. Some people will run them every couple days, I've never tried this.

To maintain nitrate/phosphate in a low nutrient system you are going to have to test and adjust slowly until you get it right.... then keep testing because chaeto grows and so do coral.

I've tried running my skimmer only at night, but the tank got a bit cloudy during the day.

What I do is test 3x a week or so, before feeding. I also dose reef roids to the few LPS I have every other day and give my tangs nori on those days as well, both will bump up phosphates. Frozen food will produce more nitrates so I use that as well, and have to dose nitrate (brightwell) occasionally to keep this up as I only feed once a day.

Just my experience, this tank is my first SPS dominant tank in my 4 years in the hobby but I feel it's solid advice as this is something I had to nail down to conquer Dinos with this low nutrient tank.

 

[Acrofiend]

Remove everything but the skimmer. I’m dosing phosphate daily on a skimmer only system.

 

[Spare time]

Yes, sounds like that since I only have 3 small fish, so not much of a bio load yet. Ok, will try that and will also go with the Brightwell products. At least with that I can have a better estimate on how long does it take for the filters to consume the nutrients and adjust accordingly until I start to add more livestock.

I would just turn off the skimmer at this point and keep the refugium on a shorter light period.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Yeah, not sure how easy would be to get food grade products from Amazon, as I think those type of products have quite a few import restrictions on my country, will need to ask around. So, you think that feeding more is the most effective way from all those options? I am thinking that maybe I can start feeding 3 times per day instead of 2 until I start introducing more livestock.

Feeding more will certainly work.

I'd personally prefer that to turning off the skimmer since you will lose aeration capacity.

 

[ReefGeezer]

Make sure your test kits are capable of reporting low level nutrients. Some kits will show 0 when there is actually a few hundredths present, particularly phosphate. I use a Salifert kit for nitrate and a Hanna ULR checker for phosphate. They seem pretty reliable at low levels.

 

[Avengerx77]

Thanks everyone. I will do the following for starters:
- Adjust the Fuge light from 10.5 hours to 8 hours
- Continue overfeeding
- Will add another fish today to start increasing bio load (Starry Blenny or Bicolor Angel, still deciding but leaning more towards the Blenny)
- Start adding slowly some Neo-Nitro and Neo-Phos
- Change filter floss every week instead of every 3 days
- Skimmer I will keep running 24/7, was not a fan to shut it down as I need to keep some continuity on how it should supposed to run in the future
- Water changes monthly until I start introducing some corals

Observed how levels behave with these changes and how stable nutrients get and adjust accordingly. Goal is Nitrates in 5-10ppm range and Phosphates at 0.03-0.05ppm.

 

[Avengerx77]

Make sure your test kits are capable of reporting low level nutrients. Some kits will show 0 when there is actually a few hundredths present, particularly phosphate. I use a Salifert kit for nitrate and a Hanna ULR checker for phosphate. They seem pretty reliable at low levels.

Yes, I do have both Hanna tests (Nitrates ULR and Phosphate (LR/ppm). Also have the Salifert Nitrites/Nitrates one.