Aquarist007
New member
Nutrient flow. You have low nutrient levels, but high nutrient flow (from the fish pee --> glass)
Ie poor turn over rate in gph?
Nutrient flow. You have low nutrient levels, but high nutrient flow (from the fish pee --> glass)
Great point and practical
One of the best tanks for coral growth that I look after has untraceable readings for nitrates and phosphates . However the glass is covered with brown algae within three days. How would you explain that
considering this, what would you recommend to be enough flow in a nano tank of ten gallons, and how would the flow be sculpted??? I want to improve a nano i have in my room and was thinking adding a hydor for it. but if i wanted to immitate natural ocean currents, what should the GPH be for it. ATM it is about 250-300 gph combined into canister filters and return pumps. what GPH rating do you suggest???Great information! Thank you for doing all the work to collect and post it.
Another variable that I'd like to see thrown into the equation would be flow within the tank. It's my humble belief that most reef tanks, nearly all beginner's tanks, and 99.9% of tanks with algae problems, simply do not have enough circulation. It's so easy to look at big GPH numbers and feel somehow that whichever number you've come up with is "enough". (3,000 GPH sure does sound like a lot!) Current in the ocean, especially on the reef crests, is tremendous. Even on calm days the movement of water is immense. It is difficult to understate.
We know that flow is important for nearly everything a coral does. As they're immobile creatures, they rely on flow to bring them what they need and, even more importantly, to take away what they do not need. Studies have shown that when facing rising temperatures, temperatures that often trigger bleaching events, increased water velocity can help corals cope and survive. IIRC the same goes for light. Too much light can cause over-photosynthesizing and can result in oxygen toxicity to the tissue of the coral. Increased flow can bring that O2 away from the tissue and keep it from getting burned.
Anyway, I don't mean to preach to the choir or sidetrack the thread. It's just something I thought could possibly be integrated into your formula at some point in the future.
Imagine that. A Grand Unified Theory of reefkeeping!
Brief tyrade on accounting and books that applies to test kit numbers.
There is a number of a period of time and a number for an instant. Test kits only measure a specific instance. Like a balance sheet. You could have a million dollars in the bank or be dirt poor and still have no real idea on the company's profitability. Or in this case you may have low nutrients but significant phosphate introduction into your tank. Which is why you need an income statement for businesses. It will tell you how much revenue is coming in and how much is going out giving you total profitability. Unfortunatley there is no test kit to measure this and we can only really tell by changes between testings.
Just because there is no phosphate on the test kit does not mean that significant amounts were released and subsequently absorbed by algae. Then compare that to an ultra low nutrient tank that has no turnover in nutrients. The test kits would appear to be stellar but there would be no coral growth simply due to a lack of protein.
Test kits can tell you when things are going wrong, but they can't tell you that things are right.
In other words the numbers on your test kits are not absolute you will never be able to say this is the correct level because you are looking at a specific point in time. What the coral needs is phosphates over a period of time. Obviously there is a correlation between the two but it is not absolute.
After I cleaned the biopellet reactor(biodigest used monthly;1ml), gac (cleaned not replaced), replaced Poly-Filter, skimmer mechanical filtration sponge I had the tissue necrosis event. PO4 went from .22 to .05 in 24 hours
What this may have been, is a giant reduction in microbe activity. Microbes/periphyton collects on all surfaces from day one, and starts a new few chain. Your polyps grew according to that food. Then the food was gone when you cleaned all those surfaces. Thus the reduction in phosphate may have just been a coincidence.
Remember that microbial food is invisible, and is what causes the huge swarms/schools of fish to stay nears corals/rocks on reefs even when they are being chased by predators.
This thread really hits home. Recently, I visited a friend of mine (TFP) and marveled at how healthy his acros were. His acros were vibrant and looked nothing like mine. While admiring his tank, I noticed how many fish he had and how much poop they were giving off. He had lots of tangs and other fish that were constantly "feeding" the corals. I asked him what his nitrates were and he said around 40. The epiphany did not set in until I got home.
As I started mounting some frags that he gave me, all of them were much more colorful than mine. Compared to his frags, mine were pale and lacking color. I was really blown away at the quality of his frags compared to mine and then it hit me. My nitrates have always been at 0 due to a Cermedia nitrate reducing block. I also only have 5 small fish in my tank and feed a pinch of pellets daily. I had realized that I have been starving my corals! What's real funny is that I have been reefing for over 20 years (on and off) and I used to have real colorful corals with fast growth rates. I never tested for phosphates or mg and rarely tested for nitrates until the past couple years. I suppose ignorance was indeed bliss! I immediately pulled my nitrate reducing block and started feeding the tank ( Acropower and Reef-Roids). I am prepared for an algae outbreak due to the excess feeding. I have already bought a lawnmower blenny (in TT atm) and will add a kole tang soon. I figure the tradeoff with the excess algae will be worth it if my corals deepen in color. I just hope I'm right!
I am prepared for an algae outbreak due to the excess feeding.
You'll have a year or so while the rocks absorb the phosphate.
As for the puffer, it's the large amounts of urea/ammonia/ammonium going to into the water which is probably causing the trouble. The same amount of nutrients, if supplied in coral food instead, would be much more welcomed![]()