Help with low nutrients in SPS frag tank

[lee_d_m]

Hi

Ive been running an SPS frag tank for 3 months which I setup to house my displays SPS as some had AEFW.

over xmas I bought some new SPS and placed them in the tank and they've been doing well.

As they we're ok, I've slowly been moving the acros from my display across.

In the last few weeks,I guess as the tank has matured, the no3 has reduced to near zero and po4 is reading 0.02.
This has coincided with the corals starting to get pale and a couple of them showing a little STN.

I've been changing out 20% of water per week from my display (which has no3 of 10 and po4 of .09) to the frag tank in an effort to increase nutrients and I've been adding some Zeo products such as pohls extra and coral vitaliser as
my main display runs full Zeovit.

So far, the corals still look pale, so I'm looking for some advice on what I can try to get the corals back to healthier colours. The tank has one six line wrasse fed once per day and the tank volume is 150 litres.

Using live rock and a skimmer for filtration, lighting is via ATI T5 which is the same as my display.

I'm thinking maybe reefroids might be worth a shot but looking for other suggestions.

Thanks

 

[codydemmel4]

Pretty sure mostly everyone is just going to suggest adding more fish and feeding them more. That's what I suggest at least!

 

[Mr.Fishtank]

+1 Do you have any fish in the frag tank

 

[Mr.Fishtank]

Sorry missed that six line in your post. That fish is not going to produce enough poo to help. I would get a few more small fish to help. Keep them small tho.

 

[organism]

Adding potassium nitrate will help with the nitrates, but you may want some more fish to feed more since you need some phosphates as well.

 

[zsuman101]

zeobac and zeostart 3 and kz zeolites per their instructions will keep your p04 low, if it was my reef i would check potassium level first and would also use some reef roids and add some fish. good luck .... zsu

 

[2dawghouse]

Is it a frag tank or quarantine tank? If it's a frag tank can you tie it into your main display? If not or a quarantine tank then I suggest either potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate...

Or you could do more fish.

 

[lee_d_m]

Thanks for all the helpful advice. I'm not totally averse to adding more fish but I wanted to keep this mainly as a SPS quarantine/frag tank and didn't want the additional stress of keeping more fish. Having said that, if I was to add more, what do you recommend, I guess something like chromis or maybe a couple of bangaii ?

Unfortunately it's not possible to plumb the tank into my display.

As for potassium nitrate, is there a dosing guide somewhere that I could refer to ?

 

[jda]

Turn the skimmer off. Get some a few shrimp and feed them with some flake food. If you don't export, you won't need to feed much. I love to keep some peppermints in my frag tank to get to any aiptasia if any sneak in.

 

[abhishek@1985]

You can try potassium nitrate or even better sodium nitrate as it won't add to potassium content. I have started dosing it after getting some advice from Randy and others and it looks better now.

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[lee_d_m]

Can anyone advise on how I can calculate dosage amounts of sodium nitrate ?

 

[cpllongjk]

Can anyone advise on how I can calculate dosage amounts of sodium nitrate ?

Lee,

I don't use sodium nitrate, I use potassium Nitrate found in Spectracide's Stump Remover. Here is a dosing calculator I found online.

http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/calculator.htm