Nitrates always hitting zero

[oshanickreef]

Hello!

I wanted to see if anyone could help me with my nutrient issue. I test my water often because I notice my nitrates hit zero very quickly. I feed all throughout the day with an auto feeder. Then once a day I feed a quarter sized piece of frozen. I have 23 fish in a 90 gallon. I removed my chaeto after dosing fluconazole to kill bryopsis and even then my nitrates hit zero. I can feed an absurd amount of food and my nitrates will almost always be zero the next day. I now dose a sodium nitrate solution I make up about 5 times a week.
I have turned my skimmer off for a week and no change. So I turned it back on (lowest skim setting) for oxygenation purposes.

I can now tell when they are zero by looking at specific coral. Sps look dull, lps look deflated, mushrooms aren't as big.

But when my nitrates are up around 2ppm (few hours after dosing nitrate) the corals all look amazing. I have thought about setting up a dosing pump but that makes me nervous. Wouldn't want to crash the tank.

Any advise is greatly appreciated.

Alk = 8.7
Cal = 440
Mag = 1360
No3 = zero - 5
Po4 = .02 - .08

Happy reefing!

Nick


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[Timfish]

Well, this probably isn't what you're expecting but start feeding your fish a lot more

The behaviour you're describing for your corals strikes me as rather peculuar. they should be responding to changes in lighting and not to a sudden influx of nitrogen. Add that you've not said anything about getting rid of PO4 and the large number of fish it's my suspicion you have not increased the amount of food as your corals have grown. Again this is my suspicion but if your corals have been impacted by a lack or imbalance of available nitrogen and phosphorus that will allow nuisance algae to take over. I would caution against dosing nitrates, SHantz and Burkpile (2014) reviewed the data from something like 208 expeirements from 56 research papaers and found dosing nitrates has a far worse effect than PO4.