What level of nitrates do you have in your softie tank?

[Radioheadx14]

I have been running a low maintenance soft/LPS coral tank for the past year with what I feel is good results. I have a lot of live rock, use a eheim canister filter with a filter pad and .8 rox carbon from BRS, no sump, no skimmer or anything thing else (besides a heater and powerheads). I used to run an SPS tank with all the bells and whistles but grew tired of the maintenance, so I went with a sumpless tank and threw in some easier softies and lps and let them do their thing. After a year, I decided to test my water since I use tap water. Sold my RO/DI after moving into my current apartment.

My Nitrate is around 25ppm according to a year old sera test. Not too surprised, but think its funny that I have little to no algae, corals are colored up nicely and im getting decent growth.

Curious to see what other soft tank owners nitrate levels are at.

 

[SushiGirl]

Ours is usually between 20 and 40. No algae here either. Tank is a year and 4 months.

Progress Thread

 

[Radioheadx14]

Still can't get the color balance right with my LEDs. As you can see, the rocks are clean, but I didn't do a good job scraping the back wall. I'm thinking of adding a shallow sandbed to mask the BB look.

 

[SushiGirl]

I rarely clean the back wall, can't get to the entire thing because my arms just aren't quite long enough LOL.

I always adjust color balance in the software I use, though the camera's pretty good about it most of the time. We have T5s.

 

[Radioheadx14]

When I had t5s and MHs it was easy to get a good color balance. LEDs are weird.

Anyways, after looking at my scape, I redid the upper rocks, making it a little less symmetrical. Anyways, it seems silly to worry about moderate NO3 with softies

 

[SushiGirl]

We talked to all the local LFSs that had great looking tanks, they all had at least 40 ppm nitrates, so we decided not to sweat it, either.

We have LEDs in the sump & I don't ever have to adjust the balance on those pics, but we don't have any blues in there.

 

[rodster]

Low Nitrate levels

Low Nitrate levels

My Nitrate levels have always measured below .25 mg/L. I'm assuming my large Chaeto ball and Xenia colony suck up most of the Nitrate before it gets a chance to register. More photos and tank info here. http://azarmi.com/reef/profile.html

 

[SushiGirl]

Beautiful! Can't wait to see ours in 2 more years!

 

[APBonds]

Hey Radiohead , how close is your tank to that A/C thermostat on the wall? The heat from the tank might effect the way your unit runs.

 

[Radioheadx14]

Its pretty close. While my condo is quite nice, it is a bit short on space. I'm moving it to another wall soon. I have thought about that a lot, but LEDs and keeping my tank a little on the cool side (77F) I don't think it affects it too much. I'm able to keep my place's temp relatively steady.

 

[symon_say]

Still can't get the color balance right with my LEDs. As you can see, the rocks are clean, but I didn't do a good job scraping the back wall. I'm thinking of adding a shallow sandbed to mask the BB look.

Take pics in RAW format instead of JPEG that will take the blue away.

 

[Radioheadx14]

Is that a camera setting or a computer setting? I'm guessing camera but wouldnt know how to do that on my piint and shoot.

 

[biecacka]

good looking tanks everyone. how many fish do you guys have in your tanks?
corey

 

[SushiGirl]

We have 3 fish in ours. We had 4 but lost one recently.

 

[Radioheadx14]

2 clowns, flame angel, bicolor blenny, mystery wrasse and a yellow tail damsel.

 

[The Big Tuna]

I have several 1000 gallons of softie tanks in my Greenhouse, I don't run skimmers, try to keep heavy fish loads & hope that the sytems hit there target Nitrates levels of 25ppm. This rarely happens bc of the amount of corals in the systems, they just LOVE Nitrates & suck em up like sponges!!! In the sunnier months of the year when the growth is the greatest I sometimes have to dose my systems wt Sodium Nitrate in a supersaturated solution just to get the levels to 20-25ppm!!!! Don't EVER sweat Nitrates in softie tanks unless they get to ridiculous levels of 60+.
JMO
Joshua

 

[gmate]

I have a 55g softie/lps tank that runs 20-40 nitrates on the API test kit. I've been doing water changes to bring it below 20 lately and keep it low. I have Xenia and Chaeto in the system, but I've never had hair algae or any algae outbreaks for that matter. And, to boot, I run a very small CUC for a 55 (maybe a dozen hermits and a dozen snails, tops). I keep PO4 at zero with my RO/DI, but other than that it's been smooth sailing. I barely even get algae on the glass. Maybe once a week I clean it with the scraper and that's it.