Paglaum22
Aquarium Advice Regular
How can I safely bump my nitrate level? I've been dosing NOPOX everyday, phosphate 0.6-0.8, but my nitrate has always been zero by Red Sea test kit. I know corals also need a little of this to flourish..thanks!
bumping up nitrate
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Sniperhank
Giant Clam Addict
You want your nitrate levels to be as close to 0 as possible for a reef setup. In terms of your phosphate levels, you also want them to be 0. Phosphate not only assists algae growth, similar to nitrates, but also inhibit skeletal growth for LPS and SPS corals use of calcium.
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Paglaum22
Aquarium Advice Regular
Sniperhank
Giant Clam Addict
Yeah, one step forward. As long as you don't see algae issues. Algae will consume nitrates down to 0, so you'll have growth but test 0 and can get confusing. Try to minimize feedings and do water changes with wo/di water to try to get your phosphates down and you should be good to go. In my tank I have 0 nitrates at .03 phosphates and still have algae growth and it browns my sps corals.
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Paglaum22
Aquarium Advice Regular
Instead of dosing NOPOX 3cc in my 34g tank, I'll probably do 4cc in 2 days/week and the rest 3cc/day. I have a deep sand bed and lots of rocks and never had problems with algae from the start in my 3 month old tank just nowadays that I started dosing reef energy to 4cc each A&B/day then when I saw bubble algae coming out, I cut dosing to half everyday. And yes my sps are browning except for the purple acro, seems like purple are the easier to maintain color and yes green, too remained green
Sniperhank
Giant Clam Addict
Well sps browning is from excess nutrients in the water column. So I would cut back the necessary feedings and not feed corals at all. I feed my 55 reef twice a week, one cube of either mysis, brine, or blood worms and some marine snow for my coco worm.
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Paglaum22
Aquarium Advice Regular
This is one thing that I haven't tried yet, I'll try not feeding my corals for at least a month then I'll see the effects..thanks again..
Sniperhank
Giant Clam Addict
It might take more than a month. I have a marshall island latana that is a beautiful yellow with blue polyps that browned so slowly with time I forgot that it was actually yellow until I was comparing prior pictures to see growth. SPS gain/lose color from this effect slowly but can still grow like weeds. Just remember, if your corals are photosynthetic they don't need fed. It is a tough pill to swallow, I want to cram food down there throat like going to a buffet.
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Paglaum22
Aquarium Advice Regular
Yah that makes sense, I don't feed my zoas (blue and red hornets, and bambam), bambam from 3 polyps now they are 9, the hornets I just added them on, but the blue hornet has one more polyp starting to come out. I don't have problems with the lps, softies coloration that I don't feed just most sps. I will definitely try not feeding them for now...thanks again..
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