I have 2 tanks, one has nitrates around 2ppm that has been set up for over 15 years. It is perfectly balanced.
My other tank as is Cujo's is newer. I had added clean rocks with no phosphates (cooked them for a year and a half). It is a 75 gallon tank and I need to add 60mls of homemade sodium nitrate solution and 6mls of Potassium nitrate daily.
It is crazy how much nutrients I have to add just to keep my nutrients from bottoming out. I do grow algae in my turf scrubber and have some algae in the tank since my tang passed away but the algae in the tank is really not growing.
If I let my nitrates zero out I get cyno. I am also afraid I will get dinos if I let the nitrate zero out. I have had it happen in a different tank and zero nitrates and phosphates are not a good thing.
It could be that the rocks are still absorbing nutrients and that is why it gets sucked out of the water.
I have had the skimmer off for 2 days and have not seen a reduction in the nutrients my tank use up. Measured last night 1ppm nitrates. .02ppm phosphates.
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