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It's important to have the food/nutrients flowing through the system.......... the end test read out has little value than to make sure I'm inside a range. The best example I can give is that if two 100g tanks read .03 the tank with 8 fish to feed will have better colors than the same .03 tank with 2 fish.
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Very accurate. And I think "nutrient throughput" or "nutrient flux" is what you are trying to describe. Natural reefs have the highest flux, with massive input coming from phyto -> microbes -> zooplankton, and massive export from a combination of phyto and macro growth. The export is so large that the "standing stock" or ambient values of N and P are very low. But if N and P were visible and you could see their "flux", it would look like a hurricane.
The percentage of macro consumption of nutrients on reefs is about 50/50 at 5 meters, I believe. Shallower, and macro consumes more; deeper, and phyto consumes more.