Low nutrient sign !

Although a a lighter tan color is a sign. Judging from the colors of the corals in your avatar I would say you are low nutrient.
 
No3 will pretty much be undetectable and so will phosphate on a regular testkit. If you have a colorimeter for phosphate your will get reading from .01-.06. i like to stay at .03. A characteristic of a low nutrient tank would be lighter colored corals (pastel), very little diatom growth on glass, and low algae growth overall. IMO I don't like the look of a starved low nutrient reef where all the corals are very light in color. I like to keep a low nutrient level but feed heavily so my fish stay fat and my coral colors are rich. I do this by skimming heavily, large water change, and GFO. Many guys use Neo zeo methods but I really can't comment on that because I am not a user :)
 
Get the Salifert nitrate kit. It reads to the 1/10th ppm (or so they claim it to).


I find the kit very reliable. A few months ago I tried dosing trace amounts of nitrate to see if SPS/LPS benefited from it (they did... as did hair algae).

I would add just barely enough calcium nitrate to the system to raise it by 0.3ppm, and sure enough, when I'd test with the Salifert, the reading would jump from 0.0ppm (clear) to about 0.2 (faint pink/clear). I'd say that's plenty close enough for what we do.


Phosphate. A different issue altogether :(
 
xxx

xxx

Get the Salifert nitrate kit. It reads to the 1/10th ppm (or so they claim it to).


I find the kit very reliable. A few months ago I tried dosing trace amounts of nitrate to see if SPS/LPS benefited from it (they did... as did hair algae).

I would add just barely enough calcium nitrate to the system to raise it by 0.3ppm, and sure enough, when I'd test with the Salifert, the reading would jump from 0.0ppm (clear) to about 0.2 (faint pink/clear). I'd say that's plenty close enough for what we do.


Phosphate. A different issue altogether :(
 

Similar threads

Back
Top