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Unread 10/17/2018, 12:42 PM   #1
CTaylor
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super low nitrate

with ATI testing: My nitrate is 0.01 mg/L !!!. UGH. Ideal is 2.00 according to them.
My Phosphorous is 2.08 ug/L , should be 8.01. Phosphate is 0.01, should be 0.02 mg/L .
The nitrate is what has me most alarmed. This is b/c all my acros have died. They look good for 10 days, then they all incrementally developed STN, and/or bleached and died. I have low iodine at 14 ug/L , reference at 65, but I think the alarm is the nitrate (?).
My tank is a year old. I do have chaeto, but my NO3 has been super low even way before I had chaeto. I feed heavily due to haveing a blue throat trigger, my tank is 108 gallons.
Alk is 7.2, it woudl be higher, but my nutirients are too low. Acros are getting 200 - 250 par. Would put them higher if they lived! Kessil lighting if it matters.
**What should I do. Should I add nitrate? How? (assuming this is my issue).

TY!


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Unread 10/17/2018, 01:38 PM   #2
sfdan
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First I'd fix the iodine levels. It can't hurt and can only help. I use Kent Marine Super Iodide, though there are a variety of products you can use. In my personal experience I believe having low iodine levels negatively impacted my SPS corals.

Second, you have a variety of options to increase nitrate (and phosphate) levels.

1. Take your chaeto off the system, or reduce the # of hours of light it is getting
2. Turn off your skimmer (if you have one)
3. Add more fish
4. Feed more
5. Dose nitrates directly (Sodium Nitrate for example)
6. You can also dose phosphates directly (Seachem Flourish or high grade Trisodium Phosphate if you want to DIY)

I personally dose Sodium Nitrate (which I get here) to try to maintain levels around 5 ppm. I'm still stocking up my fish levels though so I anticipate at some point I'll be able to stop dosing and maintain the levels naturally. I also dose phosphate occasionally but not as often, those levels seem to maintain themselves naturally for me.

But in general if you want to target a specific nitrate or phosphate, it isn't hard at all. Both of them can be easily and accurately tested, and each of them can be easily and accurately (and inexpensively) dosed. So it is just a matter of how much time and effort do you want to put in getting the levels to where you want them.

I also wouldn't be surprised if there were other issues at play. I've had acros survive some extremely bad conditions before, including prolonged periods of 0 nitrate/0 phosphate due to a massive dino infestation, so if *all* of your acros are consistently dying it could be another problem.


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Unread 10/17/2018, 02:51 PM   #3
CTaylor
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Thanks
I dont wnt to turn off the skimmer, i'm sure it is taking out garbage besides nitrate and phosph. I already feed quite a bit, and food i'm sure again adds more pollutants than just phosph and nitrate. But I feed a godo amount now esp with the trigger. I can stand to add maybe 4-5 more 3-4" fish max, after that the fish popluation will not be comfortable, actualy that is pushing it passed that point possibly. My levels were the same before I added the chaeto. I do not know where the nitrate is going unless my live rock has a really great denitrifying population,which it could, I have a few very heavy blocky type rocks.

So I'll try to add the nitrate. Though a fish guru of mine said lack of n03 will not cause the acros to die, it will cause them to lose color, but not STN, etc. They will not look good, but shouldnt die.

Can having '0' manganese cause sps death? I have 0.
And I will add the Iodine, but I have a feeling that is not it.
And will add the NO3. Maybe the three together are the cause, ugh.
TY again!


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Unread 10/17/2018, 04:14 PM   #4
sfdan
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You can always just do a bunch of water changes if you are worried about getting all the other trace elements back into order.

Every tank is different and I don't think there is any one set of advice that works for everybody. You should just try different things and see how your tank reacts. I don't think there is any potential downside to water changes, properly dosing iodine or properly dosing Nitrate so you should probably start there.


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Unread 10/17/2018, 04:38 PM   #5
CTaylor
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I jsut changed 90% lol. I had nothing to lose since all the acros already wiped out. I did a 30% water change prior to that (about a month), and acros still were dying, so 30% less of whatever 'toxin' it was is still 70% left. My one remaining little bit of acro is alive so I might have removed enough or replenished enough.
What I have is low I, high AL, zero MN, near zero nitrate, low phosphate. temps were 80-81 (maybe too high for those acros). Perhaps one of those things or two is not enbough to kill corals, but the combo maybe. I cna fix the nitrate as you said, i can add I, AL I think is from salt spray onto my refug light which looks aluminum, MN I think I can dose. Phosph will have to stay there. Temp I got down to 77 with a fan.


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Unread 10/17/2018, 06:47 PM   #6
bertoni
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I don't know of any reason to think that 2 ppm of nitrate is ideal, but given the animal losses, dosing a bit of sodium nitrate might be useful. I might dose 0.5 ppm for the first dose, and see how the animals react. How much water is in the tank? Something like 1 tsp of dry sodium nitrate per 1000g is likely to be close enough.

There's food-grade sodium triphosphate available various places, if you want to dry dosing that. I'd probably just add a bit more fish food first, though.


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Unread 10/17/2018, 09:57 PM   #7
CTaylor
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I was advised to try just to start adding phytoplankton as it's high in nitrates
My Iron is also very high compare to normal. 39.27 µg/l vs 0.5 'normal'. This is largely b/c I was using a seachem iron test kit that measured my iron level as under 0.1. So dosed it quite a bit often, and it never read more than 0.1. I assumed the chaeto was absorbing it. No. The test kit was bogus. Can iron be a culprit? I"ll put that in a new thread..


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Unread 10/18/2018, 09:03 PM   #8
bertoni
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Phytoplankton should be fine to add.


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Unread 10/19/2018, 01:01 PM   #9
sfdan
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I'd assume the main downside of having high iron levels is excess algae growth. I don't think your levels are high enough they would negatively impact SPS. Just based on searching around I found threads of people dosing iron to much higher levels to see how it impacted their SPS coloration.


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