New to testing my water

[Amstar]

Have a 30 gallon AIO tank. Have only been testing ph, ammonia, nitrate, and nitrate

tank has 1.5” Fiji sand, 25 pounds of established live rock

tank has zoas, hammers, frogspawn, acans and a kenya tree.

got a free anacropora to try sps. Tested for the first time my alk and phosphate

alk: 8.2
Phosphate: between .1 and .2

Thoughts on my alk and phosphate? Seems I may want to lower my phosphates

corals and my two fish look good

 

[andrewey]

Those values are reasonable. The only real risk with lowering your phosphate here (beyond the risk of lowering them too quickly) is that if you overshoot and your alk increases at all, you might deal with burnt tips. In any event, I would focus on the stability of those parameters above all else at this point. Sure, you can always lower your phosphate down a bit (if that's what you chose to do vs. keeping them where they are), but I would do so slowly and this would still be a distant secondary objective behind stability and keeping your alkalinity, salinity, and pH stable.

 

[Amstar]

So if I were to lower my phosphate (cheto reactor) do it slowly and not to much more? Lowering my phosphate May drive my alk up? Was thinking I want to aim for 8-8.3 alk and pho’s closer to .05-.1 range - I do not have any algae issues rig now either

More worried about my “learning” sps than my lps, zoas - I think they can handle swings more

 

[Amstar]

Also thanks for the inputs and things to think about

 

[andrewey]

Maybe I should clarify- with SPS, there is a risk that with low nutrient tanks (low phosphate) and higher alkalinity that the tips can get burnt. This is usually more apparent at the extremes, so the lower your nitrate/phosphate levels and the higher your alkalinity, the higher the risk of dealing with this issue. I just wanted you to be aware of this issue- it's not something you necessarily need to worry too much about, but it's why you don't often see people targeted 0.05 phosphate and say, 10dkh. While you are still dialing in your phosphate and alkalinity, there is a chance you could overshoot one or the other, hence the warning. So long as your levels are stable and you make slow adjustments with both, I think the levels you selected are pretty reasonable.

You're absolutely right- most LPS/zoas are much more forgiving. Even within the SPS "classification", there are hardier SPS that are more forgiving and ones that are really advanced as they are much more sensitive to the absolute level of various parameters within the tank and much more sensitive to fluctuations of these parameters.