Sea lettuce working too well

[yellow tang lover]

Okay so a couple weeks ago I added some sea lettuce before I added it I couldn’t keep my nitrates below 30 and phosphate below 1 but the sea lettuce made my nitrates zero and phosphate 0.05 I know phosphate is good but how to I increase my nitrate because I have lps and soft corals and they need like at 2 nitrates I think but they are still doing good I dialed back my Fuge from 12 hours to 4 hours should I do anything else

 

[Crabs McJones]

You could trim the sea lettuce and remove some to lower the nitrate uptake, or add more nutrients by feeding more/heavier

 

[Cre8or30]

You could try trimming as mentioned above, and you can try feeding more, and if that fails , dose nitrate. You can order or pick it up from your hardware store

 

[Reeferbadness]

I had the same issue with sea lettuce / chaeto mix in my refugiums (i have 2 tanks). I trimmed both but nitrates were still bottoming out so started adding NeoNitro to slowly get back to bewteen 5ppm and 10ppm. According to the bottle you can safely raise nitrates by .5ppm per day. I immediately noticed more color in my sps once i got nitrates back into a detectible range again and maintain by bi-weekly dosing to keep it there.

 

[Australian_Reef]

Thanks for this thread. I’ve been considering using sea lettuce rather than cheato in my Refugium. Sounds like it does the job.. I’m just slightly worried about if you’ve had any issues with it spreading in the sump or even in to the DT? Or anyone else has?. I know it can spread like this but I assume tangs etc will keep it under control there if it become a problem.

From what I’ve read your issue isn’t unusual as ulva can grow so fast. I think your light reduction will do the job, maybe even too well. I know people having to dose nitrates like has been said above.. also watch out for iron and other metals that will be getting stripped out if it’s growing so well. Britwell do something to fix that side of it too!