Need nitrate advice please

Jej34 · May 20, 2016

If nitrates are truly zero (2 different test kits, one just bought today, red Sea nitrate pro)
Do I hold off on my normal 10%water changes until I starts seeing a nitrate rise?
Corals don't look super happy, with 0 nitrates, I can see why.

72 bow with 20 sump, gfo reactor, skimmer
1.026
78 degrees
Alk 9.0
Cal 420
Mag 1480
0 phosphates on Hanna phosphorus checker
Tank is 13 months old, not a heavy bio load, tang, 2 clowns, firefish, blenny , hippo tang, damsel, few softies, LPS an a few sps which seem to be happy.

FLAdaboy · May 20, 2016

You can try dosing animos

brownsalt92 · May 20, 2016

Spectracide stump remover if you wanna go that route @twilliard can chime in he knows a thing or 2

Jej34 · May 20, 2016

What if I skip aa water change?

twilliard · May 20, 2016

Jej34 said:
What if I skip aa water change?

Skipping water changes may increase your doc's and with time will break down into no3 and po4.
The drawback is that you also get the high levels of Po4 depending on what you are feeding.
If no3 is limited but everything else is normal than you can dose no3 to bring up to your target level.

Jej34 · May 20, 2016

Can you recommend what to dose with?

Fudsey · May 20, 2016

Water from my tank j/k..... My nitrates are over 160...

jason2459 · May 20, 2016

If water changes are part of your import/export method I would continue doing them. What changes over time are not an effective control for nitrates.

What else do you do or use for nitrate control? If you do anything like carbon dosing you could try reducing the amount dosed slightly. Or do what I do and feed more. Or dose nitrates.

Or do nothing if everything looks good.

Waterjockey · May 20, 2016

Jej34 said:
Can you recommend what to dose with?

Randy has a post with some recommendations for stock solutions if you want to dose nitrates on this site I am pretty sure. Sodium Nitrate and Potassium Nitrate seem to be the 2 most popular flavours.

Cheers!

Jej34 · May 21, 2016

jason2459 said:
If water changes are part of your import/export method I would continue doing them. What changes over time are not an effective control for nitrates.

What else do you do or use for nitrate control? If you do anything like carbon dosing you could try reducing the amount dosed slightly. Or do what I do and feed more. Or dose nitrates.

Or do nothing if everything looks good.

Chaeto in fuge, what can I use to dose nitrates?

Lasse · May 21, 2016

0 in both NO3 and PO4! How does the Chaeto grows? If they grows well – I would try to lower that biomass until I can read some NO3 and PO4.

Be aware of that macros seems not to follow the normal ratio of N and P. They content a lot of N. Ratios of 60:1 has been reported - dosing of NO3 can be necessary later on.

Sincerely Lasse

Tautog · May 21, 2016

I had the same readings and was told the tank was too clean. I fed the tank twice a day, corals were fed 3X/ week. Now I'm fighting nitrates that were as high as 100 with Nopox for the last week.

FLAdaboy · May 21, 2016

Tautog said:
I had the same readings and was told the tank was too clean. I fed the tank twice a day, corals were fed 3X/ week. Now I'm fighting nitrates that were as high as 100 with Nopox for the last week.

Nopox works very well. Be careful your tank doesn't go through quick changes. You may end up with skeletons.

Randy Holmes-Farley · May 21, 2016

Jej34 said:
If nitrates are truly zero (2 different test kits, one just bought today, red Sea nitrate pro)
Do I hold off on my normal 10%water changes until I starts seeing a nitrate rise?
Corals don't look super happy, with 0 nitrates, I can see why.

72 bow with 20 sump, gfo reactor, skimmer
1.026
78 degrees
Alk 9.0
Cal 420
Mag 1480
0 phosphates on Hanna phosphorus checker
Tank is 13 months old, not a heavy bio load, tang, 2 clowns, firefish, blenny , hippo tang, damsel, few softies, LPS an a few sps which seem to be happy.

No kit can say nitrate is zero, only that it is below the limit of detection of that kit. It may still be adequate for the organisms taking it up.

Randy Holmes-Farley · May 21, 2016

I wouldn't alter the water change schedule based in nitrate, There are many reasons why it is useful that relate to other chemicals (metals accumulating or depleting, for example).

Jej34 · May 21, 2016

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
I wouldn't alter the water change schedule based in nitrate, There are many reasons why it is useful that relate to other chemicals (metals accumulating or depleting, for example).

Thanks Randy, if I am correct( and am probably not ) I would want to have nitrate levels of .5 or in that area to keep corals happy. The fact that some of my acans are not opening anywhere near fully suggest to me that it could be due to that undetectable nitrate level. I was looking for a way to nudge it up to the .5 range and see what happens. What would you suggest? I was thinking of reducing my chaeto in fuge before messing with adding sodium nitrate.

Thanks

jason2459 · May 21, 2016

Jej34 said:
Chaeto in fuge, what can I use to dose nitrates?

Others have suggested good options. I don't know as I've never done it or looked into doing it. I just feed more.

Randy Holmes-Farley · May 21, 2016

The optimal nitrate may depend on many factors, such as availability of other foods with N (such as amino acids or bacteria), the available phosphate and other trace elements, and the coral in question. IMO, a fine target range is about 0.1 to 5 ppm.

How to boost it may depend on whether you want phosphate to rise or fall.
Removing the chaeto may make phosphate rise while adding nitrate may make phosphate fall.