Do I *need* to do anything with high nitrate?

[dnprall]

RedSea Reefer 200 G2 - 43 gallon display, 53 gallon total. Established early December 2022. I have a skimmer and Reef Mat.
I admittedly have been complacent on testing and water changes as the tank appears to be happy (it's bad; I haven't done a water change for >3 months).
I have many soft (zoas) and LPS coral. I have two clown fish, two threadfin cardinals, and a watchman goby with its pistol shrimp. I have two peppermint shrimp and one skunk cleaner and assorted CUC.
I feed a small amount of a mix of herbivore and carnivore pellets twice daily. I feed 1 frozen cube (1/2 inch) of brine shrimp twice daily.
I dose 9 mL daily of All for Reef and 2.8 mL daily of magnesium.
I give the tank Benepets about twice a week.
I have no visible algae.
I tested today as my female clown (she's about 14 months old) started acting funny. I don't think my water parameters are to blame.

All testing via Hanna except salinity.
Nitrate 52.9
Phosphate 0.28
Mag 1405
Calcium 400
Salinity 1.024
Ammonia 0.04
pH 8.3
Alk 7.5

I did increase my All for Reef dosing to 10 mL/day.

Do I *have* to do anything about the nitrates and phosphate if the tank looks ok?

I did take away one of the pellet feedings (I was doing it so that the fish get used to that during vacations and realize now that twice a day is likely over kill; maybe I should stop it all together). I also dosed 5 mL of Microbacter today.

Thoughts/constrictive criticism welcome.

 

[ReefStable]

Personally, I would feed a bit less and do 20% water changes weekly to bring it back down. Its not "too high" but if it keeps building you may see coral loss and algae growth that may be mich harder to deal with when it gets higher.

Don't do anything drastic though. That could shock the system. If everything is okay, now is the time to prevent it from getting out of hand.

Hope that helps!

 

[Pod_01]

I did take away one of the pellet feedings

Personally I would go the other way, keep or increase pellet but cut back on the frozen food.
From my experience frozen does lead to elevated NO3 and PO4. Nothing wrong with frozen but I did have issue with NO3 that I just could not address.

Also for pellets consider ones with minimal or no fillers like Fauna Marin Soft Multimix.

Fish gets the protein and less of other stuff (fillers) ends up in the water.
I am not fan of keeping fish hungry, when fed well I observed there is lot less of aggression as well.

As a bonus the fish poop will feed your corals.

Just my suggestion,

Good luck,

 

[dnprall]

Personally I would go the other way, keep or increase pellet but cut back on the frozen food.
From my experience frozen does lead to elevated NO3 and PO4. Nothing wrong with frozen but I did have issue with NO3 that I just could not address.

Also for pellets consider ones with minimal or no fillers like Fauna Marin Soft Multimix.

Fish gets the protein and less of other stuff (fillers) ends up in the water.
I am not fan of keeping fish hungry, when fed well I observed there is lot less of aggression as well.

As a bonus the fish poop will feed your corals.

Just my suggestion,

Good luck,

Very interesting thought! Appreciate it and I’ll look into it more. My pellets are a mix of Saki-Hikari’s Marine Carnivore and Seaweed Extreme.

 

[Dan_P]

Very interesting thought! Appreciate it and I’ll look into it more. My pellets are a mix of Saki-Hikari’s Marine Carnivore and Seaweed Extreme.

I worry about using fish “starvation“ as a nitrate control.

If you have healthy well fed but an overstocked system, it does not make sense to risk fish health to control nitrate.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

nitrate starts to be harmful to fish at about 80 nitrates, so you are pretty darn close to that. So for your fishes health and comfort, you should consider water change, or find a way to export the nitrate.

If you have corals, it will also catch up to you at some point, water changes replenish elements in the water that might be missing.

But I would definately not feed less, if you are just lazy about water change, why should the fish starve? That doesn't make sense to me. Its a small bioload so no need to do weekly water change, but have to do something at sometime, or else why be in the hobby? Feeding twice a day is not overkill, your just convincing yourself that its ok to starve the fish to avoid water change.

 

[00W]

I do not think you would be asking this question if you were not worried about it.
Feed your fish and change some water.
I over feed and over change and everyone is happy, including me.

 

[Gill the 3rd]

Your nitrates and phosphates aren't terrible, but they are definitely on the high end where I personally would start getting concerned. I agree with the others, keep feeding your fish and do some water changes. Your tank isn't that large so you can get those numbers down pretty easily with a few water changes.

 

[ReefStable]

To be clear, I don't think anyone is suggesting starving the fish. I think it comes down to 3 daily feedings. (Minus one pellet feeding now).

The fish are plenty fed! There is a source of waste and that's likely it...

Water changes help but only so much if you keep adding more nutrients.

 

[GARRIGA]

NoPox solves my nitrate concerns and to some extent phosphates. I purposely overfeed. Filtration large enough to solve decomposition and if phosphates remain elevated then lanthanum chloride I’ve used in the past although GFO can also solve that from all that over feeding. Reefs aren’t starved and seems food constantly available therefore never made sense to me to put life in a box on a strict diet. Might lead to other deficiencies and encourage disease.

 

[Reefer Matt]

I don’t think you have to do anything, but if you want the tank to thrive long term, preventative maintenance like water changes help. All too often Reefers wait until a problem arises instead of preventing it to begin with. Most of us know what to do, we just don’t do it, imo.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

There certainly are great tanks with nitrate higher than 53 ppm.

Would those same tanks be better in some way if the nitrate were 10 ppm? I'm really not sure.

If I wanted to lower the nitrate, I'd consider organic carbon dosing since the driven bacteria may also feed filter feeders.

 

[jda]

If your current coral list is doing well, then I would look more to arrest the rise rather than lower.

Some corals would not be happy at 50 ppm of no3, but many others do not care at all. If you are happy with what you have, there is zen in that. If you want corals that do better in lower no3 water, then you have work to do.

I also would never cut back on fish feeding. This is the only for-sure way to get nitrogen to all of your corals. Some corals can covert nitrate back to ammonia for nitrogen, but not all.

 

[dnprall]

I do not think you would be asking this question if you were not worried about it.
Feed your fish and change some water.
I over feed and over change and everyone is happy, including me.

Agree with not asking if not worried about it but also just wanting to learn what others do. IOne sees so many different opinions it’s hard to know what direction to go.

There certainly are great tanks with nitrate higher than 53 ppm.

Would those same tanks be better in some way if the nitrate were 10 ppm? I'm really not sure.

If I wanted to lower the nitrate, I'd consider organic carbon dosing since the driven bacteria may also feed filter feeders.

This hobby is amazing. When I first started I thought with a smaller tank I wouldn’t have to do much (yes naive). And then I got an ATO and then a doser and more tools and testers and more and different corals and now looking at doing carbon dosing. It seems never ending but not in a bad way.

I just need to get back on a schedule for water changes. Will look up carbon dosing (I briefly see threads on this and it looks like a rabbit hole at times lol!).

 

[00W]

Understood.
Different opinions, different tanks, different ways of doing things all of which can produce awesome results.
Look forward to what you do in the future.
Joel

 

[vetteguy53081]

RedSea Reefer 200 G2 - 43 gallon display, 53 gallon total. Established early December 2022. I have a skimmer and Reef Mat.
I admittedly have been complacent on testing and water changes as the tank appears to be happy (it's bad; I haven't done a water change for >3 months).
I have many soft (zoas) and LPS coral. I have two clown fish, two threadfin cardinals, and a watchman goby with its pistol shrimp. I have two peppermint shrimp and one skunk cleaner and assorted CUC.
I feed a small amount of a mix of herbivore and carnivore pellets twice daily. I feed 1 frozen cube (1/2 inch) of brine shrimp twice daily.
I dose 9 mL daily of All for Reef and 2.8 mL daily of magnesium.
I give the tank Benepets about twice a week.
I have no visible algae.
I tested today as my female clown (she's about 14 months old) started acting funny. I don't think my water parameters are to blame.

All testing via Hanna except salinity.
Nitrate 52.9
Phosphate 0.28
Mag 1405
Calcium 400
Salinity 1.024
Ammonia 0.04
pH 8.3
Alk 7.5

I did increase my All for Reef dosing to 10 mL/day.

Do I *have* to do anything about the nitrates and phosphate if the tank looks ok?

I did take away one of the pellet feedings (I was doing it so that the fish get used to that during vacations and realize now that twice a day is likely over kill; maybe I should stop it all together). I also dosed 5 mL of Microbacter today.

Thoughts/constrictive criticism welcome.

A series of water changes with addition of chemiPure blue will help but ive been doing 2 gals a day water changes and nitrates and po4 well under control. Takes less than 10 mins daily

 

[dnprall]

There certainly are great tanks with nitrate higher than 53 ppm.

Would those same tanks be better in some way if the nitrate were 10 ppm? I'm really not sure.

If I wanted to lower the nitrate, I'd consider organic carbon dosing since the driven bacteria may also feed filter feeders.

Blast from the past. I found this by old thread @Randy Holmes-Farley . I wasn't able to go through all 40 pages but it looks like this was written when carbon dosing was starting out. Interesting read from what I got through in terms of the theory on how carbon dosing may work.

dosing vodka to bring down N and P - Reef Central Online Community

dosing vodka to bring down N and P The Reef Chemistry Forum

reefcentral.com

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Blast from the past. I found this by old thread @Randy Holmes-Farley . I wasn't able to go through all 40 pages but it looks like this was written when carbon dosing was starting out. Interesting read from what I got through in terms of the theory on how carbon dosing may work.

dosing vodka to bring down N and P - Reef Central Online Community

dosing vodka to bring down N and P The Reef Chemistry Forum

reefcentral.com

lol

Thanks for finding that. I've recently been asked how much sugar I dosed to brown up corals, and did not recall. But there it is: 1 teaspoon.