Nitrate confessional

[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