How do you feel about Nitrates and what's the limit for you?

[cnaegler]

I noticed my reef always did best at 20 ppm nitrate back in the day. But, the leading philosophy was to have 0 nitrate and phosphate back then, 2010, 2011. I always wondered why cyano kept popping up. Now I know.

 

[Reefer Matt]

I had trouble with dino. My nitrates were zero - newish tank. Now nitrates are 10-20 ppm and dino problem has gone away.

What's the "official" lower limit at which they'll come back, so I can stay above it (or have I got it all wrong) ?

I get ostreo dino at 25 ppm nitrate sometimes. I’m not convinced it’s a nutrient issue.

 

[EricR]

If I had a magic "reset" button that I could push periodically, I'd have it set at:
10 ppm NO3
0.10 ppm PO4

My reality is that they both just slowly fall and when I notice them much lower than that, I haphazardly dose (DIY stuff) to get them above those levels,,, and then the cycle repeats.

 

[betareef]

If I had a magic "reset" button that I could push periodically, I'd have it set at:
10 ppm NO3
0.10 ppm PO4

My reality is that they both just slowly fall and when I notice them much lower than that, I haphazardly dose (DIY stuff) to get them above those levels,,, and then the cycle repeats.

What do you dose? Can you just feed more food to the fish to raise nitrates?

 

[Garf]

I noticed my reef always did best at 20 ppm nitrate back in the day. But, the leading philosophy was to have 0 nitrate and phosphate back then, 2010, 2011. I always wondered why cyano kept popping up. Now I know.

Oh no you don't, lol

 

[EricR]

What do you dose? Can you just feed more food to the fish to raise nitrates?

Feeding more never worked for me and I've struggled much more with LOW nutrients than high.

I buy direct from Loudwolf website (free shipping so cheaper than Amazon):
- Calcium Nitrate
- Trisodium Phosphate
*mixed to roughly similar potency as NeoNitro and NeoPhos

I have a pretty decent grasp on how much of each mixture causes what ppm rise in my tank,,, but I pretty much let things bounce around more than most would like (just because I'm lazy).

 

[Miami Reef]

I get ostreo dino at 25 ppm nitrate sometimes. I’m not convinced it’s a nutrient issue.

Dinos are more indicative of a phosphate deficiency. I think your experience aligns well with phosphate deficiencies equating dinos.

I wonder if you’ll have less dinos now that your PO4 is a bit higher.

 

[00W]

My goal is 15.
Think I got to 18 once.
Tank seems best @20-30.

 

[radiata]

Forty-five plus years back I wished my nitrates would get way below 40. That was back in the days when Bio Balls were just coming to be considered to be "nitrate factories". I've been trying to lower my nitrate readings ever since. Be careful what you wish for ~ I'm now hitting zero nitrates all too often. I think this is due to my excessive macroalgae use to try to limit them (a scrubber and my DIY algae "spinner"). Unfortunately, this macro usage doesn't also get my phosphates down to a lower level as one might expect. (A 0.1 PO4 level occasionally occurs.) Shouldn't one reasonably hope there would be a dual drop, with both nitrates and phosphates impacted? [Please don't suggest any comparisons to the Redfield Ratio!] I now have to hit the system with the likes of Neo-Nitrate, while simultaneously searching for an etheral and yet fully functional phosphate removing process based on Lanathum Chloride. Where has our ultimate N03~PO4 reducing methodology been hiding all this time?

 

[ryanjohn1]

My tank floats around 10. I get a bit nervous when it’s 3-4. Have had to dose nitrate till the tank could stabilize its own. I have a skimmer that I basically never run. Maybe like 2 nights in a month.

 

[PotatoPig]

What do you dose? Can you just feed more food to the fish to raise nitrates?

Feeding more is tricky - skimmers and filtration will remove a lot, you might also raise nutrients you don’t want to, and a lot of it will just go to boosting your bristleworm population, and you’ve got to wait for the food that doesn’t get removed to break down.

Dosing, OTOH, lets you have a lot of control over quantity - eg I dose Ammonium Bicarbonate (It’s a baking ingredient - theres a DIY thread on here about ammonia dosing with the recipe and instructions) and can pick down to small fraction of a PPM how much to dose, and then once it’s dosed I know it’s all available immediately for the corals.

 

[Cichlid Dad]

Your supposed to test for nitrates?!???

Just kidding, I really don't worry about it and rarely test for it.

 

[AstroMelly]

Our tank is 200g and stocked with some heavy eaters. We do feed well imo and had steadily rising nitrates about a year ago. When we hit 100 we started weekly 20%+ water changes and got them under 50. Various things did not seem to do much - vodka dosing for a few months but I think I was too slow to ramp it up. Eventually was seeing a lot of white flocculant material in the water column and stopped dosing. Also tried no pox but did not like the slime coat over everything. Started a Refugium about 6 months ago (small but I guess it is helping). I had some success dosing MB7 - at least I think that was bringing Nitrates down.

TL;DR - under 50 is fine for the tank we have imo. Tank looks good right now. Our LFS has a beautiful heavily stocked display that has been running for 10 years+ and the nitrates in that tank are never under 60-70!

Right now our tank is reading 12pm which is the lowest it’s ever been and I have no idea what is causing the drop as I have not been dosing MB7 for 3 weeks while we were away on vacation and the tank was on an auto feeder feeding 2 types of pellets only twice a day! I measure with the HR Nitrate Hanna checker. I have noticed sometimes the reagent looks different on opening the sachet (sometimes it is more clumpy) and I wonder if sometimes the readings are off as a result.

This is from Feb this year to now. Not all the readings are visible but the graph is complete.

 

[Ghostweim]

Mine is 20-25 - tank is happiest with this range too.

 

[Bob Weigant]

I struggle to reach 1. Acro's are in full polyp and growing so Im not trippen to much

 

[Reeferbadness]

I find them when my refugiums (i have 2 x 200g tanks) get full of chaeto, my nitrates bottom out and i have to dose. Solution was to trip chaeto back to softball size or so to avoid dosing nitrates only to grow more chaeto LOL. I already feed pretty heavy in both tanks and don't want Phos to spike. For some reason, chaeto doesn't really effect Phos as much as Nitrates

 

[MrGisonni]

I had trouble with dino. My nitrates were zero - newish tank. Now nitrates are 10-20 ppm and dino problem has gone away.

What's the "official" lower limit at which they'll come back, so I can stay above it (or have I got it all wrong) ?

I have dinos in my classroom reef and the Nitrates are 50ppm FWIW

 

[MrGisonni]

Dinos are more indicative of a phosphate deficiency. I think your experience aligns well with phosphate deficiencies equating dinos.

I wonder if you’ll have less dinos now that your PO4 is a bit higher.

I have dinos at .127 ppm phosphates. ICP test was done last week. Nitrates are above 50 in that tank also FWIW

 

[cnaegler]

Oh no you don't, lol

Let me rephrase that. Now I know what happened back then! Lol. I have a brand new 350 cranking up soon. I hope I don't get to experience it again!

 

[schooncw]

Nitrate in my 120 LPS dominant tank, 40 or so and I’d like to get it down to 25. My PO is a constant 1.0. Overstocked and overfed but my LPS thrives. Lots of rock that is 30 years or so old and I’m sure that has a lot to do with it.