New 73 gallon tank setup

[tang daddy]

How's the feeding going?

Checked Param's again?

Do the corals look any better?

[Frogger]

Originally Posted by tang daddy

How's the feeding going?

Checked Param's again?

Do the corals look any better?

Feeding heavily, all kinds of foods

Checked the parameters last night phosphates still 0 nitrates 1.5ppm. the last 2 days reduced the nitrate I was adding by 50%. Today I am not going to add any nitrates. I have to get the phosphates up above 0. They have been 0 or close to 0 for a week or more.

Too early to tell about the corals, nothings dead yet but many of them are showing tip dieback and polyps are not extended or fully extended.

Lessons learned 0 phosphate or 0 nitrates are not a good thing. The ideal situation is having the correct balance. Looking at getting phosphates to add to tank.

[Frogger]

I have added 4 smaller pieces of live rock that I have been "cooking" for several months. I treated the rocks with a peroxide dip to remove any remaining unwantables. These rocks came from a phosphate rich tank. Hopefully they slowly leach some phosphate into the tank to help manage my 0 phosphate issues.

I will keep you posted, fingers crossed.

[DKoKoMan]

Wish I could give you some of my .025ppm phosphates lol

[Frogger]

I think I am figuring this out and am beginning to understand where I went wrong.

I have not added any nitrates to the tanks in about 4 days, I did a 20% water change this morning. This afternoon my nitrates are still 1.5ppm and my phosphates are 0. I have used multiple different test kits and different reagents from different packages with the same results. The calcium levels and the alkalinity levels are stable without adding any 2 part solution. This tells me that I have shut down the photosynthetic activity in my tank, including the coralline algae.

There is not a lot of information on the web about the relationship between phosphates and nitrates. Most of us including myself (past tanks) have never had to really think about the relationship because our goals were to lower them as much as we can because they were always high. Problem is I designed a tank that efficiently uses up the nitrates and phosphates so well I have one that is bottomed out at all times.

It appears that your nitrates can only go so high when your phosphate becomes the limiting factor. Because I should have seen a reduction in nitrates with the 20% water change.

I can't get myself to look at my corals. I feel that I have let them down. It is not the cost of replacing the corals that bothers me its that I am in charge of their care. I take great pride in my past ability at keeping corals and fish alive for long periods of time.

I will do another 20% water change tomorrow and will continue to do so until I get the balance of phosphates to nitrates in place

[Bblinks]

Having unbalanced po4 and no3 level is definitely not a good. It limits the growth since po4 in your case contributes to a vital part of it. Here is a one of the speaker from 2016 macna and I think he can explain this better than I can.https://youtu.be/ZRIKW-9d2xI

[Ryanerickson]

That's a very interesting video not to mention the speakers was pretty funny

[Frogger]

Originally Posted by Bblinks

Having unbalanced po4 and no3 level is definitely not a good. It limits the growth since po4 in your case contributes to a vital part of it. Here is a one of the speaker from 2016 macna and I think he can explain this better than I can.https://youtu.be/ZRIKW-9d2xI

Thanks for the video. It kind of opens your eyes to how little we know about what the corals truly need. Many of the top experts in the field have been running their reef tanks with much higher phosphates and nitrates then most of us hobbyist reefers do and had great success with those numbers. They have also had long term stability that few achieve.

I purchased some KH2PO4 yesterday and added it to my tank. I used a calculator that MYKA sent me to figure out how much I needed to add. I ended up adding 1ml of a solution of 1gram of KH2PO4 to 250mls of ro water. My phosphates are now at .02ppm.

I added .5ml of the solution today. I want to get my phosphates to .03 with my nitrates at 1.5ppm. Try to maintain that Redford ratio mentioned in the video. I will take this really slow and try to stabilize my tank to settle my corals down. I am happy I finally have measurable phosphates.