Nitrate at 0, is this bad?

serbusfish

serbusfish

New member
I tested my nitrate and it came up at 0. My LFS also tested it, once he saw it was 0 he used a high range test kit and that came up 0 too. He told me I need to get some nitrates in there or my corals will die. He said I need to increase my feeding until I get nitrates then return to normal.

Is this correct? I thought we strove for as close to 0 nitrates as possible?
 
BigCountry74 said:
Need more details. What's in your tank atm, stock wise? How are you filtering it?
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2x Clowns, 1x Firefish, 1x Royal Gramma. 4 red legged hermits, 6 Trochus Snails, and 3 Nassarius Snails. Coral wise I have a Toadstool, Clove colony, Plate, Mushroom, Torch, and Elegance. The tank is 75 gallon, I have 73lbs of live rock and 60lbs of Caribsea fiji pink live sand.

I have a Deltec MCE600 hang on protein skimmer, and im running phosphate remover and Juwel carbon pad. I dont have a sump or refugium.
 
I don't think they will die or anyhting at what you'd read as 0 Nitrates. hobbiest kits don't read super accurate in the very low range IMO, but I havn't heard of anyone noticing a differance between 1 ppm and 2ppm or something, so they are accurate enough. Softies are often refernced as doing better in the 5ppm range, so if that's what you have you may want to increase feeding a bit. don't over do it though. all changes should be slow. It could take some time to notice a differance. I wouldn't stress though.
 
FYI, i have a mixed tank with softies and SPS, and keep my nitrates at undetectable and the softies are fine. has been that way for almost a year, since I got into coral.
 
You are probably fine. The reading of zero on a high range test does not really mean zero, it is just not detectable. My tank runs fine and my nitrate is below 0.2 ppm and has been running this way since May 2014. As long as your critters are happy, feeding and growing don't worry about it. It may be that your live rock is efficiently processing the nitrates back to nitrogen. You only need to worry when things are not growing and happy.
 
Natural seawater at the reef surface is around 0.2ppm NO3.Nitrogen defficiencies are possible but very rare in reef tanks with fish and normal feeding. Corals do need some organics/food to supplement what they get from photosynthesis. FWIW, I run mine at <1ppm nitrate.
 
I also heard that softies and LPS needs a little of those dirty nutrients from the water column to thrive better and SPS needs very clean water. Don't know how true that is??
 
tmz said:
Natural seawater at the reef surface is around 0.2ppm NO3.Nitrogen defficiencies are possible but very rare in reef tanks with fish and normal feeding. Corals do need some organics/food to supplement what they get from photosynthesis. FWIW, I run mine at <1ppm nitrate.
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Exactly.
 
Here's what you should do, in my opinion. Rather than basing your decisions off of your measurements, base it on what you can see. Is your live stock starving? If so, feed them. Are they doing great with your current regime? If yes, you don't have to change anything.
 
0 Nitrate could be perfectly fine or could be no good at all. It depends. The key is how your tank is doing with this reading? If you feed your tank (fish|corals) plenty of food, vitamins, aminos etc. and your Nitrate is close to 0 - you should be fine. If chasing numbers you try to reduce Nitrate to 0 by limiting all food sources, doing massive WC etc - you could be in trouble. Stripping water out of nutrients isn't good and corals will react by fading-brownish colors, stunt growth, poor or no PE, high sensitivity to light (bleaching etc).
 
Don't increase feedings to get your nitrate higher. I also have low nitrates, and I have my protein skimmer on a timer- and it is off 4 hours a day to allow my macro algae to have some nutrients to stay green and healthy.
 
All my corals are very healthy looking, polyps extended, and if I squirt food into my elegance he always closes up around it and eats. The only problem I have is diatoms and hair algae on sand and rocks, but I am assuming this is because my tank is fairly new, although I am not sure what is feeding it if my nitrate and phosphates are at 0?
 
serbusfish said:
All my corals are very healthy looking, polyps extended, and if I squirt food into my elegance he always closes up around it and eats. The only problem I have is diatoms and hair algae on sand and rocks, but I am assuming this is because my tank is fairly new, although I am not sure what is feeding it if my nitrate and phosphates are at 0?
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Common misconception. When you are measuring nitrates and phosphates, you are just measuring the amount there is in the water, at that particular time point. When you feed your aquarium, there would be a lot of nutrient being released, but a lot of it would be taken up within a short duration. Which is why when you do test for nitrate and phosphate, it could show up as being zero (or more exactly, 'undetectable').

That's why a reef can be compared to a forest, actually. Initially when people dug into the soil of forests, they find that it is actually quite nutrient-poor. But the forest above is growing crazily... that's because the forest is so crazy, that it takes up all the nutrients. XD

Same with a reef. The algae is uptaking nutrients before you can measure it.
 
Azedenkae said:
Common misconception. When you are measuring nitrates and phosphates, you are just measuring the amount there is in the water, at that particular time point. When you feed your aquarium, there would be a lot of nutrient being released, but a lot of it would be taken up within a short duration. Which is why when you do test for nitrate and phosphate, it could show up as being zero (or more exactly, 'undetectable').

That's why a reef can be compared to a forest, actually. Initially when people dug into the soil of forests, they find that it is actually quite nutrient-poor. But the forest above is growing crazily... that's because the forest is so crazy, that it takes up all the nutrients. XD

Same with a reef. The algae is uptaking nutrients before you can measure it.
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So true, when we learned about this in APES class I was baffled at first, but it does make sense.
 
also if you have hair algae and you test for phosphates you are kinda getting a false reading because the hair algae is consuming the phosphates. You might can try a GFO reactor and see how that works for you.
 
scooter31707 said:
I also heard that softies and LPS needs a little of those dirty nutrients from the water column to thrive better and SPS needs very clean water. Don't know how true that is??
Click to expand...

"Dirty water" could mean a lot of differnt things. Generally, it's a bad thing.

Corals vary in terms of their need for organic carbon from the water or food vs what they get from photosynthesis.Sps are generally less reliant on sources for organic carbon beyond photosynthesis but even they need some,probably around 5% of the overall need ;while some other corals like capnella, xenia might need as much as 20% with non photosynthtic corals needing 100%.

None benefit from excess nitrate or phosphate.
 
Just curious, are you using an API nitrate test kit? If so, when they say to shake the bottle for 1 minute, they mean it. There is a chemical in there that need to be put back into suspension and if its not, it will always give a false 0.
 
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