Ideas on getting nitrates up

[geforce]

Originally Posted by warriorcookie

Just about crashed my tank a few weeks ago. Right as someone warned me about my nutrients being too low I had a massive RTN event. Bleached LPS too. More to it than that, I had just changed back to Halides, my Alk channel pooped out a couple weeks prior. The usual one thing after another. Oh ya, skimmer died the week after.

So, things are on the mend now and I'm trying to get my Nitrates and Phosphates back up. They have been undetectable for the last year or so, and things have been slow growing and not great colors.
-I've been feeding small amounts several times a day (Was feeding roughly half cube/day. Now I'm putting in 2-3/day.)
-Pulled my filter socks.
-Stopped using Prodibio (I've since started the BioDigest again but am still holding off on Bioptim)

Problem is my nitrates are slowly rising, but phosphates rise very quickly. I have to run gfo with very low flow to keep on top of it.

Is this a bacteria imbalance that will eventually find equilibrium?

My routine is 15% water changes every 2 weeks. Vacum the sand and blow off the rocks with a MJ everytime. Using H20cean salt. About to switch to Aqua forest.

This also encouraged me to find a better way of tracking my parameters than a pencil and paper:




As you can see, I'm having a difficult time balancing the flow through my gfo to stay on top of the phosphates. Also, after the RTN I should have shut off the doser so ALK/CA got a little out of control.

Totally Off topic but couldnt help myself what are you using to track/log your tests? Asking because I totally like the look of it and want to do the exact same thing!

[Belgian Anthias]

Originally Posted by
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 aqua forest soon so [B

I'll be able to control the rate of nitrate removal by adjusting how much I dose of the bacteria and the carbon[/b]

How one will be able to control the rate of nitrate removal by adding carbohydrates ? Dosing carbon does not remove nitrate from the system, It activates assimilation of nitrogen into growing biomass producing protein. No need for adding bacteria there are enough bacteria available in any aquarium. One can estimate the amount of protein produced by the amount of carbohydrate added but not the removal rate. The removal is done by a third party, a skimmer. It is known that a skimmer only removes +- max 35% of TOC out of the water column and is very selective in removing live bacteria. http://www.baharini.eu/baharini/doku...iwitafschuimer A lot of the produced proteine is attached, may be part of a growing biofilm. What is not skimmed must be consumed and becomes part of the bio-load and of the normal food cycle. My opinion it is not possible to control the nitrate removal by any method of carbon dosing with the objective of nitrogen assimilation.