Nitrate confessional

[jorjef]

I know accepted line of thinking is you need to have low nitrate to have a successful reef tank. I'm starting to wonder for LPS and softies how true this is. My tank has been running for just over a year and for most of that year my nitrates have been off the charts (60-80 probably closer to 80) and still have had pretty good success with corals.

I presently have 30-35 corals in my tank, some doing great, some just happy to exist without much growth. I have tried to remedy the nitrate problem with various medias but nothing seems to be the wonder cure.

Anyone else had enough of fighting the "nitrate" war.

[Delphinus]

It's not as true for softies and maybe a little truer for LPS not as true for SPS.

Sometimes it's not too bad to have some kind of residual nitrate value.

That said though I still prefer low to zero readings because a reading is really more of a balance point. A nonzero value tends to mean something is produced faster than it is consumed (or exported) which means there could be a trend in the number so it still bears making some effort to keep it manageable.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by jorjef

I know accepted line of thinking is you need to have low nitrate to have a successful reef tank. I'm starting to wonder for LPS and softies how true this is. My tank has been running for just over a year and for most of that year my nitrates have been off the charts (60-80 probably closer to 80) and still have had pretty good success with corals.

I presently have 30-35 corals in my tank, some doing great, some just happy to exist without much growth. I have tried to remedy the nitrate problem with various medias but nothing seems to be the wonder cure.

Anyone else had enough of fighting the "nitrate" war.

You know , my zoa tank sits at around 5-10ppm for nitrates at one time is was at zero , I find I get great growth and it's rare something goes out of whack for me I find it very stable . I'm not concerned at all if it was a sps rank I'd be a bit more on it. I find also that lps thrieve in my tank my last brain outgrew it's area in no time and branching hammers I had in my reef didn't do well once put into the zoa tank they actually grew and became quite nice in color.

I'll tell you though I bought a 180g fir cheap was completely covered in long hair algae . Nitrates were literally off the chart. No sump.only fish that made it was a clown and he didn't look good, only coral that made it was green button polyps that I still have some of to this day. I say made it because it use to be large sytem that crashed then got neglected for years. I got it down to readable readings nut could never get the low. Things in that tank were over 10yrs old lol

[Milad]

well my nitrates were 20-30+
everyone said i had to many fish and I went too fast.

I took some advice from others and cut my feeding in half and got bio pellets

a few weeks later my nitrates are 0

only problems im fighting are cayno bacteria. never really seen anything else, no bubble, HA etc.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Milad

well my nitrates were 20-30+
everyone said i had to many fish and I went too fast.

I took some advice from others and cut my feeding in half and got bio pellets

a few weeks later my nitrates are 0

only problems im fighting are cayno bacteria. never really seen anything else, no bubble, HA etc.

suck it out as much as you can and where ever you find it settles create a bit of flow it eventually will dissappear only to return again someday lol.its nice to have a nano powerhead kicking around you can move around here and there without disturbing anything but the cyano