Nitrates and corals

[Keith A]

I did a water test today and noticed a slight increase in my nitrate level. It went from 0 to 5 ppm in about a month. I just wanted to verify if this is a level I should be concerned about with my corals.

My P04 is 0, my skimmer has been working fine and I do a 20% water change every week to 10 days or so.

[ReefEnabler]

5ppm probably won't harm any corals. tridacnids and some other inverts can actually benefit slightly from low nitrate levels like that.

It's more important to continue to keep an eye on it, if you notice a steady upward trend then your tank has an imblance of nutrient import and export. in a balanced tank the nutrient export should be able to keep up with the food you add, weather its removal of detritus through cleaning manually, or excellent skimming and waterflow, refugium with macro algae etc.


sounds like your waterchange schedule is very good, that should definitetly help it from climbing too quickly.


good that PO4 is 0, but its not always a good test, a better test can be: do you have any algae issues to speak of? algae will take the PO4 right out of the water column making it impossible to test for.

[Keith A]

Reefenabler.
I do have some GHA on the rocks & glass but I don't think it's enough to really be a problem. I also use a phoaban reactor with phosguard in it. I'm also planning on getting a reef test kit tomorrow since my test kits are getting old. I think a Nitrate test is part of the package. Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep an eye on it.

[ReefEnabler]

cool.... how olds the tank btw????


good luck :)

[Keith A]

About 6 years or so...

[ReefEnabler]

wow I hope it takes my tank that long to hit 5ppm nitrates :)

im only about 5 months in still with 0 luckily.

of course with a setup running stable for so long without nitrates you have to wonder what changed.