Jestersix

How do I keep nitrates and phosphates UP?

dochou

dochou

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I've been dosing disodium phosphate and sodium nitrate to my 150 gal mixed reef tank with 8 small fish. I run a calcium reactor to keep CA and Alk up.
I have a reef octopus protien skimmer and no GFO or phosphate reducer. I do not have any macro algea in the refuge; I only have some live rock in there.
I've been dosing every other day for the past 6 months. I thought that after a couple months, I would not need to dose any more, but this is not the case.
Prior to dosing, I tried heavy feeding and reduced skimming but that didn't help any because the readings were still zero and zero.
The reason I wanted to raise these 2 parameters was to color up my SPS. The sps had horrible dull coloration. After dosig the colors hav much improved over time.

So my question is: am I stuck dosing Nitrate and Phosphate forever???

pH:8.2
Phosphate .02 to .06 when dosing every other day; otherwise it's 0.
Nitrate: .2 to 2.5 when dosing every other day. otherwise it's also 0
Alkalinity: 8.0
Cal: 465
Mg: 1250

Thanks.
 
Food. Feed lots of food. Not junk food, but high nutrition food. Red Sea AB+ and acropower (notice and not or) Reef Nutrition Oyster feast, and high quality frozen food like Rods of Reef Frenzy.

If you feed your fish pellet food from an auto feeder daily you get some phosphate from that as well. I feed Reef Nutrition Tdo pellets anywhere from 1-4 times a day. It just depends on my weekly po4 readings.

Nitrates “should“ stabilize after a while.

If your running a Fuge, then either turn it off or significantly reduce the lighting schedule. I completely removed all means of nutrient removal except my gfo reactor.
 
Rostato gave great advice. One thing I noticed is that your bioload seems low for your tank size. You can try getting more fish. Youll end up feeding more and that equals more fish poop. Fish poop is the best coral food.
 
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Be careful with increased feeding, be sure to go slow with changes. I made the mistake of testing daily and continuing to increase the feedings each day. If I did it again I would decide how much to feed each day and stay consistent for a week or maybe 2 and then see what impact that has on nutrients.

I rely on dosing for nitrates, if you want to continue with the dosing Ive been having good success by weekly testing and adjusting the dosage based on the change week over week. If I see the nitrates are lower than the previous week I raise the dosage to keep up with the increased uptake.

you mentioned vibrant in another thread. Did you have algae growth that was keeping the nutrient levels low? I believe that having algae can give a false zero for nutrients because the nutrients are being consumed by the algae as it becomes available in the water
 
A bit more food is a good idea. Fish and coral love that.

But I would actually say that dosing has two large benefits:
1) It is easy to reduce.
At some point, perhaps suddenly, you may have to reduce nutrients.
Reducing feeding can really confuse fish, but a simple doser change is easy.
2) Less detritus
Unfortunately, food produces quite a bit of waste.
If you have a sand bed, this can end up being a large problem down the road.
 
max_nano said:
you mentioned vibrant in another thread. Did you have algae growth that was keeping the nutrient levels low? I believe that having algae can give a false zero for nutrients because the nutrients are being consumed by the algae as it becomes available in the water
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I wouldn’t call that scenario a false zero nutrients situation but rather an explanation for zero nutrients. Our tanks are complex systems with lots of factors contributing to nutrient production and consumption. Algae and bacteria are part of that system, not separate from it.
 
rygh said:
A bit more food is a good idea. Fish and coral love that.

But I would actually say that dosing has two large benefits:
1) It is easy to reduce.
At some point, perhaps suddenly, you may have to reduce nutrients.
Reducing feeding can really confuse fish, but a simple doser change is easy.
2) Less detritus
Unfortunately, food produces quite a bit of waste.
If you have a sand bed, this can end up being a large problem down the road.
Click to expand...
I always forget that not everyone is bare bottom.
 
dochou said:
I've been dosing disodium phosphate and sodium nitrate to my 150 gal mixed reef tank with 8 small fish. I run a calcium reactor to keep CA and Alk up.
I have a reef octopus protien skimmer and no GFO or phosphate reducer. I do not have any macro algea in the refuge; I only have some live rock in there.
I've been dosing every other day for the past 6 months. I thought that after a couple months, I would not need to dose any more, but this is not the case.
Prior to dosing, I tried heavy feeding and reduced skimming but that didn't help any because the readings were still zero and zero.
The reason I wanted to raise these 2 parameters was to color up my SPS. The sps had horrible dull coloration. After dosig the colors hav much improved over time.

So my question is: am I stuck dosing Nitrate and Phosphate forever???

pH:8.2
Phosphate .02 to .06 when dosing every other day; otherwise it's 0.
Nitrate: .2 to 2.5 when dosing every other day. otherwise it's also 0
Alkalinity: 8.0
Cal: 465
Mg: 1250

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Do you have a journal I can look in to your system details, bio load, filtration, husbandry and history?
Are you sure your results are accurate?
Have you done an ICP any time lately?
 
ofzakaria said:
Dude I got a neck pain when you said feed lots of food. This statement is so dangerous if you do not know who is the reader cause it can be subjective what is alot:))
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Yeah I think I need to make a checklist for me to put through my head before I post something. I always assume people are doing the same things I’m doing...because they obviously should be ;)
 
As long as you regularly check your nutrients, increased feeding shouldn't crash your system (although do it slowly but the same could be said for chemical approaches). Phosphate can bind to your rocks (aragonite especially) so I've been skeptical about dosing sodium phosphate. You could run into situations where your free phosphate is deceptively low but spikes after phosphate gets released from the rock.

Nitrate dosing is something I have done and with great success. In the end as long as you are diligent about testing and and you move slowly, you shouldn't run into issues. Also, always keep phosphate and nitrate balanced.
 
myi8909 said:
As long as you regularly check your nutrients, increased feeding shouldn't crash your system (although do it slowly but the same could be said for chemical approaches). Phosphate can bind to your rocks (aragonite especially) so I've been skeptical about dosing sodium phosphate. You could run into situations where your free phosphate is deceptively low but spikes after phosphate gets released from the rock.

Nitrate dosing is something I have done and with great success. In the end as long as you are diligent about testing and and you move slowly, you shouldn't run into issues. Also, always keep phosphate and nitrate balanced.
Click to expand...
Bingo, key is informed decisions and steps..
Do you still dose Nitrate?
 
ofzakaria said:
Bingo, key is informed decisions and steps..
Do you still dose Nitrate?
Click to expand...

100%. I use to dose nitrate to keep my levels between 2 to 4 ppm. Thats simply to serve as a buffer to prevent them from bottoming out. I used to dose twice a week but I made slight adjustments to my fuge lighting schedule concurrently so I could stop dosing altogether. Been steady at 4 ppm for a month now.

My philosophy is to minimize any points of failure and keep my system as simple as possible. The nitrate dosing was just a temporary solution for me.
 
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