Do we need Nitrate in a reef tank?

[GARRIGA]

Heavy feeding and heavy export of the backend is very much the goal, IMO. The backend being po4 and no3. This still leaves nitrogen in many forms like ammoni[a,um], nitrite and small organics - as well as a trace of no3. Phosphorous in the forms of metaphosphate and small organics - as well as a trace of po4. This keeps all of the seemingly preferred forms of building blocks around while taking away the ones that can build up and possibly cause cellular disruption.

Light is a topic that amazes me. Corals need light for energy through the zoox. Lots of people are all worried about dosing no3 and po4 thinking that they are coral "food" and all the while looking to see how low that they can keep PAR and spread for their corals. Counterproductive. This is another thread that would get 20 pages, but spectrum from about 350 to 850 from UV all the way through IR to move energy between all photosystems, create energy and also pigments (sunscreen type too) is a good idea for growth and color.

You need building blocks and energy. You don't need much phosphate or nitrate.

Some of the best tanks for many decades have been high import, high export and high throughput.

Forget about dinos or GHA for this discussion, IME. The main reason for them is uninhabited ground for the quicker squatters to settle... in our case, sterile rock and sand. Even a coating of film bacteria, coralline or the like can keep nearly anything from catching hold. These were nearly no issue when people used live rock since there was no undeveloped land... dinos in the sand for a quick ugly phase, for example. Hair can take over and spread and kill off the surrounding parcels, but it is not nearly as fast or voracious as settlement on sterile ground. The whole tie in with "nutrients" is mostly wrong, IMO, unless you want to talk about raising po4 and no3 to growth limit (poision) dinos, but this does not work well with GHA until you get higher levels.

Heavy in. Heavy out. What makes sense to me. Much simpler than chasing exact tolerances. Rather enjoy my box of water than slave over it. Not shaming those who prefer both but I have little time to do that not needed.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Randy this is kinda the same between measuring alkalinity to determine how much "buffer" capacity a system has? Is that correct?

Sort of, yes. Alkalintiy is a surrogate measure for bicarbonate availability and nitrate is a possible surrogate measure for availability of N.

 

[Sdot]

Sort of, yes. Alkalintiy is a surrogate measure for bicarbonate availability and nitrate is a possible surrogate measure for availability of N.

Got it... thanks bud.

 

[SDchris]

I haven't followed many dino threads, but there are a lot of cases where people have multiple centrally connected tanks, yet a dino bloom exist in only one tank. So the conditions for dino's to bloom are local to the substrate and not the bulk water column, although the bulk water column can obviously influence the nutrient dynamics of the substrate.
When people dose nitrate (or phos) are the changes we see in corals the result of direct uptake by corals or influences on water quality by changes in the substrate microbiome (the filter)?