Nitrates almost 0, gonna pull out the chaeto but...

[BanZI29]

I have been fighting low nitrates for a while now. It never gets above 2, but now it's barly 1. I have done more feeding to the 5 fish I have but no increase. I have a 25 gal AIO and all the.other params are good and stable, except for phos. Its usually around 150. But everyone is happy at that level so I don't mess with that. Dont really have an alge problem, spot her and there of short green alge, so thinking of pulling the chaeto out fir a while. It grows like crazy too. Just halfed it 4 weeks ago and its back where it was. So, if I do take.it all out, how do I keep it alive to put back in later if I need to? And any other advice to raise nitrates a bit?

 

[Gtinnel]

I fought low nitrates and for me the solution was to just dose a nitrate solution. You can either buy store bough (NeoNitro) or make your own with sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate (Randy always recommends the sodium one though).

 

[Quietman]

If your system looks good and you don't have any issues why do you want to mess with it. It's in balance and working. Cheato is taking up the nitrates and growing. If you had low nitrates and no cheato growth or die back that might be cause for concern. But good growth and low nitrates - it's working as it should. You do have nitrates and probably quite a bit based on your growth, it's just being taken up by cheato. Congrats!

 

[BanZI29]

Actually the growth seems to have stalled a bit. My zoa rock is ok but my tall frogspawn and duncan don't open as much as they used too. I just want to raise it a bit so they don't start to starve.

 

[Quietman]

Realize that nitrate consumption rates vary widely by organism. In general - bacteria (cyano) and filamentous algae (GHA and other similar) take up nitrates the quickest by orders of magnitude normally out competing everything else, hence ATS popularity. Next comes some macroalgae (cheato, caulerpa). Last will be corals at a much reduced rate.

Messing with an established balanced will likely have unintended consequences. If you remove chaeto too much, too quickly, GHA will be happy to take up the nutrients.

If you feel the corals are not opening due to low nitrates (and I'm not sure that's the case - other things could cause that). Corals are predominantly photosynthetic and are not going to starve as long as you have detectable nitrates. I would go very, very slowly on removing chaeto a little at a time. But first, I'd look for other things. Spot feeding perhaps, maybe adding some amino acids or other coral food supplements.