Taking my Skimmer offline

[Frogger]

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.

[Frogger]

It has been 11 days since I have turned off my skimmer. I have seen no reduction in the amount of nitrates and phosphates I have to add to maintain measurable amounts of nutrients.

I think I might just run the skimmer for 6 hours at night to help oxygenate the tank and to remove some docs.