Reef nutrition

Ryan’s 40G first reef

Cleaning every pump in citric acid to get a smorgasbords of weird recent algae off.
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My Walt Disney Acro has started to encrust its frag plug and color back up! Its purple tip is slowly returning. Having Alk and calc stable with less water changes seems to be helping.
 
Alk creeped up to 11 so I adjusted my doser. Still 0 nitrate despite dosing a ton. Phos is 0.055 with 3x daily glass cleanings now required.
 
I think you could get away with a lot less. For example, I would ditch the filter floss until you want to storm the tank and get rid of the detritus. You could likely clean the pumps and wavemakers every 6 months. Scraping the glass is just a whenever you want to task. Water changes could likely be every 2-4 weeks, especially with dosing. Carbon changing could be 1-2 months. Salinity shouldn't walk unless you added salt or 2 part. And my list could go on.

Try to simplify in general, it will keep you doing the important stuff more.
 
H2OPlayar said:
I think you could get away with a lot less. For example, I would ditch the filter floss until you want to storm the tank and get rid of the detritus. You could likely clean the pumps and wavemakers every 6 months. Scraping the glass is just a whenever you want to task. Water changes could likely be every 2-4 weeks, especially with dosing. Carbon changing could be 1-2 months. Salinity shouldn't walk unless you added salt or 2 part. And my list could go on.

Try to simplify in general, it will keep you doing the important stuff more.
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I want to ditch the floss but it gets so dirty every 2-4 days that I don’t want to see the results of nothing. I’ll adjust the pumps to twice per year and I’ve only been doing 1 WC every 3-4 weeks. My floss drops my salinity by slowing water down and dropping my return chamber so it bounces between 1.025 and 10.26. That’s why I check it so often. I’ll try to stretch maintenance dates on whatever I can!

I also think I might have Dinos but I’m hoping it’s just weird cyano.
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Looks like you're getting cyano (just appears brownish due to the heavy blue spectrum of your lights). Best way to fix this is higher nitrates/phosphates to allow other things to outcompete. Pull all the mechanical filtration like Mike mentioned, feed multiple times a day, then see how things are going. Rich was talking at High Tide on Sunday about how his phosphate was 2.4!!! and nitrates over 90 on his tanks for months with little issue. The zero/zero mentality of nutrient control from the early/mid 2000s really needs to end. Just feed, feed, feed. The fuel and phyto are actually almost the same thing since Fuel is Chlorella sp. aka liquid Spirulina with some vitamin C, plus the fish aren't benefitting directly from it and the corals not much either, it's more for the microcrustaceans like amphipods or copepods (I would dose phytoplankton only at night too if you can set that up).

Also frozen food (your Reef Frenzy) has much lower nutrient density than flake/pellet due to the amount of moisture, so there's very little waste after all the critters consume it, or a tiny piece drops in a corner uneaten. If you supplement with 1x a day feeding of dry on an autofeeder, you should see higher nutrients, plus these fish will benefit as they are often used to eating small amounts all day long in the wild, rather than one meal.

Your corals look great, but I think you're just a few tweaks away from having everything stronger and healthier!
 
Darkxerox said:
Looks like you're getting cyano (just appears brownish due to the heavy blue spectrum of your lights). Best way to fix this is higher nitrates/phosphates to allow other things to outcompete. Pull all the mechanical filtration like Mike mentioned, feed multiple times a day, then see how things are going. Rich was talking at High Tide on Sunday about how his phosphate was 2.4!!! and nitrates over 90 on his tanks for months with little issue. The zero/zero mentality of nutrient control from the early/mid 2000s really needs to end. Just feed, feed, feed. The fuel and phyto are actually almost the same thing since Fuel is Chlorella sp. aka liquid Spirulina with some vitamin C, plus the fish aren't benefitting directly from it and the corals not much either, it's more for the microcrustaceans like amphipods or copepods (I would dose phytoplankton only at night too if you can set that up).

Also frozen food (your Reef Frenzy) has much lower nutrient density than flake/pellet due to the amount of moisture, so there's very little waste after all the critters consume it, or a tiny piece drops in a corner uneaten. If you supplement with 1x a day feeding of dry on an autofeeder, you should see higher nutrients, plus these fish will benefit as they are often used to eating small amounts all day long in the wild, rather than one meal.

Your corals look great, but I think you're just a few tweaks away from having everything stronger and healthier!
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Thank you for your verbose feedback! I plan to mooch Josh's microscope to hopefully get a correct ID on exactly what I'm dealing with before I take any corrective action. I have kept phos above 0.03 for months and I still struggle with 0 nitrate despite dosing what should be 20ppm every few days. I'm anti 0, 0! I think my All for reef is lowering my nitrates and phosphates. Recently I have been feeding ample pellets along with frozen food. I liked using A/B+ but Neptune advised me to switch to fuel. I think I will switch back after this bottle runs out. I also lowered the daily amino dose from 20ML to 5ML.
 
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rdriggett said:
Thank you for your verbose feedback! I plan to mooch Josh's microscope to hopefully get a correct ID on exactly what I'm dealing with before I take any corrective action. I have keep phos above 0.03 for months and I still struggle with 0 nitrate despite dosing what should be 20ppm every few days. I'm anti 0, 0! I think my All for reef is lowering my nitrates and phosphates. Recently I have been feeding ample pellets along with frozen food. I liked using A/B+ but Neptune advised me to switch to fuel. I think I will switch back after this bottle runs out. I also lowered the daily amino dose from 20ML to 5ML.
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Shoot just realized you were running AFR. Lou Ekus mentioned in his last presentation that since it uses Calcium Formate, bacteria consume that, leaving waste products that provide your Ca/Alk, and corals can consume the bacteria. However, that also means the bacteria consume N and P in your tank since the calcium formate isn't a good energy source! They recommend using Plus NP to correct that: https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/200-ml-plus-np-tropic-marin.html

In a way AFR is carbon dosing.
 
Darkxerox said:
Shoot just realized you were running AFR. Lou Ekus mentioned in his last presentation that since it uses Calcium Formate, bacteria consume that, leaving waste products that provide your Ca/Alk, and corals can consume the bacteria. However, that also means the bacteria consume N and P in your tank since the calcium formate isn't a good energy source! They recommend using Plus NP to correct that: https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/200-ml-plus-np-tropic-marin.html

In a way AFR is carbon dosing.
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Well that explains a whole lot about my 0, 0 issue! I dose 18-21ML/day of AFR to maintain 10alk 450 calc. I do have detecable phosphates from over feeding. I just need to get my nitrates up. I'll try a crazy dose of sodium nitrate to see if it rises to detectable levels.
 
Just be careful because if you're not balancing out your sodium with chloride, you could end up with an ion imbalance over a long period of time. Things like 2-part are balanced ratio wise, but increase salinity over time with heavy dosing. If you're imbalanced with dosing, Na+ could get way out of whack.

Water changes fix that, but you could always do an ICP with Reef Labs since they monitor that ratio of Na to Cl as well. Amino acid dosing or feeding won't affect salinity or ions when trying to up your nutrients, but the AA's are much more expensive than your sodium nitrate.
 
Darkxerox said:
Looks like you're getting cyano (just appears brownish due to the heavy blue spectrum of your lights). Best way to fix this is higher nitrates/phosphates to allow other things to outcompete. Pull all the mechanical filtration like Mike mentioned, feed multiple times a day, then see how things are going. Rich was talking at High Tide on Sunday about how his phosphate was 2.4!!! and nitrates over 90 on his tanks for months with little issue. The zero/zero mentality of nutrient control from the early/mid 2000s really needs to end. Just feed, feed, feed. The fuel and phyto are actually almost the same thing since Fuel is Chlorella sp. aka liquid Spirulina with some vitamin C, plus the fish aren't benefitting directly from it and the corals not much either, it's more for the microcrustaceans like amphipods or copepods (I would dose phytoplankton only at night too if you can set that up).

Also frozen food (your Reef Frenzy) has much lower nutrient density than flake/pellet due to the amount of moisture, so there's very little waste after all the critters consume it, or a tiny piece drops in a corner uneaten. If you supplement with 1x a day feeding of dry on an autofeeder, you should see higher nutrients, plus these fish will benefit as they are often used to eating small amounts all day long in the wild, rather than one meal.

Your corals look great, but I think you're just a few tweaks away from having everything stronger and healthier!
Click to expand...

Chlorella isn't Spirulina. Spirulina is a cyanobacteria (Arthrospira), Chlorella is a singe cell green alga (Chlorella). They have similar nutritional values and uses. Corals do eat both.
 
It took over 50ML of 45g nitrate per 750ml RODI to raise my nitrate to 12ppm. I’m going to dial in a maintenance dose over the next few days to hold 10ppm. I don’t plan on dosing phosphate as it’s already in an ideal range.
 
rdriggett said:
It took over 50ML of 45g nitrate per 750ml RODI to raise my nitrate to 12ppm. I’m going to dial in a maintenance dose over the next few days to hold 10ppm. I don’t plan on dosing phosphate as it’s already in an ideal range.
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You may see an increase in phosphate consumption if metabolism picks up for bacteria or corals now that they aren't N limited so definitely keep testing.
 
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