Phosphate/Nitrate imbalance (no nitrates)... run GFO?

[i_declare_bankruptcy]

Just wondering what to do here. My tank is 4 months old and has never seen "a nitrate" lol. But my phosphates have crept up to 0.2ppm. Certainly nitrates are present in the system due to the bits of algae I have but I can't register a reading on any test kit. I'm worried this is where bad stuff is going to happen.

I have some GHA growing and other funky algae on the rocks but nothing to cause alarm. Starting to get some weird algae on the glass that is brown in color (not stringy) that I have to use the razor to get off. Tank is definitely still in the ugly phase.

Oh and the tank is relatively lightly stocked. Running the skimmer super dry -- it's not doing a whole lot tbh. No other export other than light carbon and filter socks. Very infrequent 20% water changes.

I'm worried things will worsen rapidly if I don't figure out how to balance this.

I have an empty reactor -- should I used GFO to bring the phosphates down? I can't figure out how to get my nitrates up. I feed (frozen) heavily and dose the recommended dose of acropower every day and no luck.

Would it be better to have this imbalance of 0.2 phosphate to 0 nitrate or just have both at zero?

 

[RobZilla04]

Couple of questions.

The tank is 4 months old total? Started with live or base (dry) rock? Sand bed or no? Coral or no?

 

[i_declare_bankruptcy]

Started with fully cured reef savers rock. Thin 0.75-1" sand bed and some coral -- an assortment of SPS frags, medium sized soft corals and LPS. Tank is only like 20% stocked with coral though.

 

[RobZilla04]

Compare the nitrate test kit with another brand. Red Sea can measure low or try a Salifert. If you have algae in the tank that's a sure sign you've got phosphate and some measurable nitrate. More phosphate present than what the test kit is reading, I assure you of that.

GFO will help quickly strip the tank of phosphate. Backing off on feeding will help tremendously also. Turning off the skimmer will help to raise the nitrate if indeed your test kit is correctly measuring none.

You don't want 0 Nitrate and 0 Phosphate. Nothing would survive. Phosphate .08 or lower and Nitrate less than 5 are good targets. Many folks, myself included, don't worry so much about nitrates until >20ppm. Phosphate under .08 seems to be a common value accepted.

 

[i_declare_bankruptcy]

I have the Red Sea nitrate test as well as NYOS. Will try the red sea again (a pain in comparison to NYOS). It's just the imbalance that worries me. Oh I realize I made a typo in my test note board -- phosphate is 0.02 lol. Whoops. So I guess not really something to worry about.

Dang nitrates though.

 

[RobZilla04]

I wouldn't worry so much about the imbalance at this point. They should begin to stabilize out over time as the bacterial population diversifies and grows. Control phosphates to reduce the algae. Manual removal of algae works best since whatever you kill off by reducing phosphates will leach more back into the water.

If this were my situation, I'd run GFO in a reactor for a couple of weeks, cut the skimmer for a few days then retest nitrates, feed a little less, and manually remove whatever algae I could.

Other folks may have some advice, so hopefully they join in.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

The Red Sea NO3 test kit says to use 5 ml of water. Try using 10 ml of water for the test and still only use 5 drops of reagent A, 1 scoop of reagent B, and 1 scoop of reagent C.

Run the test exactly the same as you would, only use 10 ml of water. Then divide your result by 2. I.E., if you come up with 1 ppm from the test, you actually have 0.5 ppm.

If you show any color at all, you have available nitrates in the tank.

Edit:

Your PO4 is fine at 0.02 ppm. I would leave it alone.