Recommend nitrate

[Perthegallon]

Hello so I can’t seem to find this but what would be the recommended nitrate levels for a tank using the Nyos test kit so it seems pretty accurate I have 3ppm right now and was going to try keeping it in 20ppm is this a good plan or will it hurt corals?

 

[Sosuke]

I would keep nitrates between 5 ppm and 10 ppm in a reef tank

 

[Sosuke]

20 may or may not irritate the corals as I've had SPS LPS and softies survive in nitrates at 25 ppm but IME they didn't thrive.

 

[Perthegallon]

20 may or may not irritate the corals as I've had SPS LPS and softies survive in nitrates at 25 ppm but IME they didn't thrive.

Okay thank you I’ll do water changes if it goes over 15 what do you suggest for phosphate

 

[Sosuke]

I think all of these levels vary between tanks, some people have SPS dominant tanks at 15 ppm while some barely have their corals make it at 5 ppm. (nitrates) The phos I keep on my tank is around 0.1

 

[amcvay]

There's no silver bullet Nitrate level...reefs can thrive at 50ppm down to 0ppm. It just depends on what your corals are using for food. If there's ample fish waste from feeding heavily, you really won't need to worry about testing. Back in the zeovit craze days the goal was zero to get the SPS colors that easter egg pastel color and now that seems crazy to me. Corals won't be hurt by nitrate, some inverts can be harmed though, like some shrimp, etc. For my tank I'm shooting for anything over 0ppm and lower than 20ppm but that's nothing I'm going to stress about.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Hello so I can’t seem to find this but what would be the recommended nitrate levels for a tank using the Nyos test kit so it seems pretty accurate I have 3ppm right now and was going to try keeping it in 20ppm is this a good plan or will it hurt corals?

3 ppm is fine. 20 ppm is fine.

0.01 ppm is not fine.

 

[Rjmul]

5-10 is a good base. It depends. Higher alk dictates higher nitrate and also higher light.