Am I dealing with an ULN issue?

[adam84]

I went through a very similar issue a while back, I dosed calcium nitrate to bring the no3 up a bit and it worked like a charm. I now keep no3 around 5 ppm and things look great.

[DKoKoMan]

Judging by the change of skimmer I think your most likely experiencing a ULNS without the addition of amino acids.

[Myka]

Sometimes, guessing what the problem is in your leads everyone down the wrong path. I'm not convinced it's an ULN issue because you're still getting some color on the NO3 and PO4 tests. Maybe double check that. Maybe you're not getting accurate tests, and maybe NO3 and PO4 are both undetectable. If you stop using GFO, what does PO4 get to? What was PO4 at before you added the GFO?

FYI, provided the KH reading of 7.6 dKH is accurate, that is not high enough to cause burned tips from ULN in my experience. I've mainly seen KH of about 8.5 dKH and higher cause that problem.

So...how big is the tank and what do you have for fish? How often do you feed them?

Are you sure there are no pests in the tank? Which dips are you using? Are there ANY Acros that are doing well? If so, which species are they?

What do you have for lights? How many hours at what intensity? Have you used a PAR meter?

[DorySaid]

Originally Posted by Myka

Sometimes, guessing what the problem is in your leads everyone down the wrong path. I'm not convinced it's an ULN issue because you're still getting some color on the NO3 and PO4 tests. Maybe double check that. Maybe you're not getting accurate tests, and maybe NO3 and PO4 are both undetectable. If you stop using GFO, what does PO4 get to? What was PO4 at before you added the GFO?

FYI, provided the KH reading of 7.6 dKH is accurate, that is not high enough to cause burned tips from ULN in my experience. I've mainly seen KH of about 8.5 dKH and higher cause that problem.

So...how big is the tank and what do you have for fish? How often do you feed them?

Are you sure there are no pests in the tank? Which dips are you using? Are there ANY Acros that are doing well? If so, which species are they?

What do you have for lights? How many hours at what intensity? Have you used a PAR meter?

I think he said 125 gallon. The thing I'm wondering is when we're testing and getting ultra low values, is the color really meaningless because of the degree of inaccuracy of test kits in general? i.e not much difference between .001 and 0.000