Successful Reef with no Nutrient Export?

[GregOyeah]

Ive had my reef set up for almost 4 years now with little to complain about, but one thing Ive always struggled with and am still trying to find a solution too is getting the most out of my corals, color.

The first couple years my tank has been set up, my nutrient export was the home depot light over my sump and I ran gfo in a reactor. My tank had very little algae issues, it looked good, but the colors on the corals were just ok, they showed decent color but they were kinda faded. Nitrate and Po4 were always undetectable

Just over a year ago, I ditched the GFO and I added the Kessil H380 to my sump. I also started dosing nitrate and phosphate. If I dont dose nitrate and phosphate my nitrates and po4 completely bottom out and it starves my tank (this has to do with the H380 pressumeably) adding it, tripled my chaeto growth rates. My nitrate and phosphate have ALWAYS been undetectable but after adding the H380, Ive noticed the corals will end up suffering if I dont supplement them. Unfortunately when dosing nitrate and phosphate comes unwanted algae in the tank. The corals all start to look great but I come home from work every day and my sand is turning brown and I see other undesirable plant life starting to form on my rocks.

Im at the point where Im just about ready to downgrade the sump lighting back to the home depot light, but even with this light, I never had detectable nitrates and po4. So I was wondering, why even have the light down there? Why grow the chaeto if theirs no nutrients to be reduced? But that got me thinking, has anyone done this and had it work, without employing some other way of exporting excess nutrients? Am I just gonna be trading one problem for another by doing this?

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[brandon429]

your issue is that manual control, grazing, is required across setups and across param details tank to tank these organisms are adapted to finding what they need across params, where simply allowed and no parrotfish beak to bite them off a rock.

we see all these organisms in tank under invasion, in tanks not under invasion, 90% of the time direct hitchhiking is required to express the invader and it has literally nothing to do with nutrients at all, agreed they're more for coral tuning. we should not be changing tank params around anything but coral growth, it is possible to make a reef tank invasion free, and then perpetually low work when in the + coral flesh + coralline condition, after a couple years correct hand guiding.

without a lucky, matched grazer set actively doing what they do in nature, you simply must stand in. lift your rocks out and guide them/it doesn't harm or kill anything. cull off with a knife tip the bad, keep the good etc. hand garden, hand guide

we keep dandelions out by force, then grass growth chokes them out.

corals and coralline are what you are clearing path for....they are bioexcluders to invaders, invasion threads show

so the way tank invasion works is, the more cloudy detritus you have in your system, the more different and variable strength invasions you'll get as new purchases cycle items in and out of the tank. sandbeds hold pure invasion fuel, lets start there.

can you reach in your tank right now, grab sand, drop it, and a death cloud not result

 

[GregOyeah]

i guess i should point out that Ive always had a routine of cleaning the glass a couple times a week and stirring the sand bed on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Ive been more than willing to do my part with manual removal.

Though if I stir my sandbed today and i come back home the next day and its halfway brown again, Id say Im creating more of a problem than a solution in my tank

 

[ZaneTer]

@GregOyeah

Have you considered pruning a little more chaeto and running your fuge light less?

It would be a phenomenal balance to be able to run a tank that consumes all excess nutrients without over consuming at times. This hobby is work and think this particular problem is just part of it for the moment.

We may be able to do something in the near future such as having an active export mechanism capable of fully exhausting nutrients but paired with a self adjusting doser that is fed the current nutrient values. Dosing isn’t the devil when it comes to tank control but it may be one of the best solutions to get things on track.

 

[ReeferReefer]

Why not recuse the photo period over the sump?

 

[GregOyeah]

well right now im running it from 9pm to 11am, maybe I'll cut it in half? 6 hours?

 

[brandon429]

yep that bed is quite the source of rebound, I think we should fully clean it/replace it possibly or remove it. based on the sand rinse thread its 23 pages and tanks quit doing this type of regrowth/diatoms as quickly.

can you post full tank shot, just to consider dinos if possible due to the gfo time

 

[ZaneTer]

yep that bed is quite the source of rebound, I think we should fully clean it/replace it possibly or remove it. based on the sand rinse thread its 23 pages and tanks quit doing this type of regrowth/diatoms as quickly.

can you post full tank shot, just to consider dinos if possible due to the gfo time

I don’t think you have listened to a word from OP. He has low nutrients and wants an effective method of increasing them in a controlled manner. He was also wondering if it’s possible to have an export free tank.

 

[brandon429]

I did listen, and then factored about nine years of tank fixes in two running threads as the recommend.

he's asking in the title about nutrient retention, and mentioning sandbed diatoms possibly..

constant GFO use is a problem in most tanks...causes imbalances. combine that with predictable detritus stores in the sand, rock, and plants that might be overgrowing rock and causing more retention vs detritus expression, worth looking into



if he removes the gfo and focuses on feed input and export, then the colors will clear up Ill bet within 60 days. its likely to have some invader rebound growth then, a plan will be needed Ill bet.

 

[ZaneTer]

I did listen, and then factored about nine years of tank fixes in two running threads as the recommend.

he's asking in the title about nutrient retention, and mentioning sandbed diatoms possibly..

constant GFO use is a problem in most tanks...causes imbalances. combine that with predictable detritus stores in the sand, rock, and plants that might be overgrowing rock and causing more retention vs detritus expression, worth looking into



if he removes the gfo and focuses on feed input and export, then the colors will clear up Ill bet within 60 days. its likely to have some invader rebound growth then, a plan will be needed Ill bet.

He ditched the GFO over a year ago! I’m a firm believer in running high nutrients and bare bottom but that has zero to do with this thread.

 

[GregOyeah]

I did listen, and then factored about nine years of tank fixes in two running threads as the recommend.

he's asking in the title about nutrient retention, and mentioning sandbed diatoms possibly..

constant GFO use is a problem in most tanks...causes imbalances. combine that with predictable detritus stores in the sand, rock, and plants that might be overgrowing rock and causing more retention vs detritus expression, worth looking into



if he removes the gfo and focuses on feed input and export, then the colors will clear up Ill bet within 60 days. its likely to have some invader rebound growth then, a plan will be needed Ill bet.

i havent ran GFO in over a year. I did mention that in OP.

I do appreciate your input though

 

[GregOyeah]

here are the full tank shots. These arent gonna be much help, I stirred the sandbed up about 2 hours ago and cleaned the glass. This doesnt look bad, but Im trying to prevent a full on outbreak before it happens

 

[GregOyeah]

i think for right now Im gonna cut the photoperiod in half for the H380 in the sump and stop dosing nitrate and phosphate and see what that does for me

 

[ReeferReefer]

i think for right now Im gonna cut the photoperiod in half for the H380 in the sump and stop dosing nitrate and phosphate and see what that does for me

Seems like the best place to start.

 

[ZaneTer]

That tank is gorgeous! Well done

 

[GregOyeah]

thanks for the compliment and thanks for the advice as well

 

[SereneAquatic]

...
Im at the point where Im just about ready to downgrade the sump lighting back to the home depot light, but even with this light, I never had detectable nitrates and po4. So I was wondering, why even have the light down there? Why grow the chaeto if theirs no nutrients to be reduced? But that got me thinking, has anyone done this and had it work, without employing some other way of exporting excess nutrients? Am I just gonna be trading one problem for another by doing this?

Any advice would be appreciated.

I read through all the posts, and see that you have arrived at a decision, however I wanted to let you know that you aren’t alone. We also have a H380 over our sump, in addition to a protein skimmer. I have tried reducing the photo period, reducing the skimmer run time... and I always end up back in the same boat. Constant diatoms on the sand and rocks, and undetectable nitrates. Once it goes so far toward reducing run times, algae pops up. There seems to be no happy medium. I only bought a phosphate test last week and haven’t used it yet... but it was primarily because my corals were dying in that tank and I can’t explain why. I wondered if I had a situation on my hands of low nitrate + high phosphate as the culprit. Since then though I have moved the corals to a different tank in preparation for our 210 gallon build.

It’s frustrating because we have a nano tank with no skimmer running and no real nutrient export (a ball of very green chaeto hangs out in the back corner of the tank, but it never grows bigger, it just stays green) and the corals do fabulous in that tank. I don’t even do water changes all that much on it. The 90 gallon tank with the great lighting in the refugium, giant protein skimmer and great flow cannot keep a coral alive for anything. To be completely fair, the nano has been set up about a year longer than the 90 at this point but it seems very strange nonetheless.

The H380 is almost too good at growing Chaeto, and I have also considered downgrading it.

 

[GregOyeah]

sorry to hear about your troubles. sounds like we do have a similar problem, though I havent dealt with any coral mortality, at least not yet I havent.

you mentioned that you reduced the photoperiod and once you entered a threshold, the algae would start to appear again. I wonder if at this point it would be worth incorporating a bacteria into the tank. Like using light carbon dosing or to a lesser degree trying light doses of Vibrant every other week to outcompete the algae before it can establish itself.

Im definitely not having a sand bed in my tank ever again because I have a feeling its part of the problem here, but I have a two wrasses in my tank that I dont want to get rid of. So the sands gonna stay until they pass

 

[SereneAquatic]

sorry to hear about your troubles. sounds like we do have a similar problem, though I havent dealt with any coral mortality, at least not yet I havent.

you mentioned that you reduced the photoperiod and once you entered a threshold, the algae would start to appear again. I wonder if at this point it would be worth incorporating a bacteria into the tank. Like using light carbon dosing or to a lesser degree trying light doses of Vibrant every other week to outcompete the algae before it can establish itself.

Im definitely not having a sand bed in my tank ever again because I have a feeling its part of the problem here, but I have a two wrasses in my tank that I dont want to get rid of. So the sands gonna stay until they pass

The sand bed may be part of it. I will say that the nano has a rather deep sand bed, and I rarely touch it. Even then, it’s only the top layer. There is a conch that digs around in it a bit though.

Good luck with your efforts!

 

[hubble]

Add more fish, they can dirty up the water.