Quote:
Originally Posted by adam84
Any updates on the progress, I am thinking about trying this out since I can't seem to get any sort of detectable nitrate in my tank.
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Sorry for the delay, I wanted to answer this properly.
I would say not only has this been successful, but a major paradigm shift for me. I've been so focused on using carbon to reduce nitrate and GFO with reduced feedings to control phosphate, and trying to keep both at undetectable levels.
Now my GFO is offline and my nutrients are detectable but low. Anytime my phosphate starts to creep up my nitrate is usually too low. If I keep my nitrate between 1-2ppm, then phosphate stays around .01 to .04 max. If my nitrate goes below 1 ppm, it's almost a guarantee phosphate quickly rises to as high as .07 ppm.
As far as understand, it's a balance between phosphate, nitrate, and organic carbon (not activated carbon as previously confused). (Carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen). Everything in our tank requires all three of these to survive/thrive. The ratios are different depending on the organism in question. The point is that phosphates are abundant in my tank, I occasionally have to dose nitrates to maintain 1-2ppm, and I regularly dose organic carbon (prodibio).
I also regularly do the following:
-Bi-weekly water changes (10-15%)
-Blow off rocks with MJ1200 and hose before every water change.
-I use 2x filter socks and change them out twice/week.
-Use Apex auto-feeder to feed small amount of pellets twice/day. Food is usually gone in 30 seconds flat.
-We manually feed a mash of human grade seafood at least once, usually twice a day. It's alot spread out over 5 minutes. It all gets eaten, none makes it to the sandbed.
-I feed the corals 3x/week. It's a mix of phyto/zoo/reef roids/oysterfeast/cyclopeze.
-Upgraded my skimmer (Curve 9)
-Added Marinepure large block.
Some might wonder why increase the size of skimmer and add a Marinepure block if I'm struggling to get nitrates up. My intention is to aggressively add nutrients and aggressively remove them. I'll be switching to aquaforest soon so I'll be able to control the rate of nitrate removal by adjusting how much I dose of the bacteria and the carbon.