Nitrate And Phosphate Instability Problem

[Duncan Tse]

Here's a little background of my tank



37 gallon mixed reef

Feeding half cube frozen , 1/8 tsp pellets , 1/8 tsp reef roids daily

Reactor with 1 tbsp GFO

PO4 : 0.02

Nitrates : 25



Would you say my nitrates are too high or are they at an acceptable levels?



The problem is that I think my high nitrates are due to feeding reef roids daily but if I don't feed it , my phosphates would drop down to 0 the next day. I already turned down my reactor and am using a very small amount of GFO.



Should I remove GFO and stop feeding reef roids to bring down nitrates and increase phosphates?



Or carbon dose something like nopox to decrease nitrates?



If you were in my situation, what would you do? Any feedback is appreciated.



Here's a recent fts for reference

 

[Josh]

in my experience nitrates are ALOT easier to deal with than phosphates. That being said your parameters are fine, dont change a thing! If you are deadset on it i would lean towards some type of denitrate material like biopellets or your super porous synthetic rocks like marinepure and seachem matrix.

If it makes you feel better some of the largest aquaculture facilities run almost those exact parameters, I think wwc runs 20 nitrate 0.02 po4.

 

[Duncan Tse]

in my experience nitrates are ALOT easier to deal with than phosphates. That being said your parameters are fine, dont change a thing! If you are deadset on it i would lean towards some type of denitrate material like biopellets or your super porous synthetic rocks like marinepure and seachem matrix.

If it makes you feel better some of the largest aquaculture facilities run almost those exact parameters, I think wwc runs 20 nitrate 0.02 po4.

Yea maybe I was overthinking this cause all the corals seem to be doing fine with just a few patches of brown algae on the sandbed. It's just that I've been reading a lot on nitrates in a reef tank and everyone says that 1-10ppm is good where if they go 20+ then thats a big no.

 

[Josh]

Yup, corals above all else love stability. If you can provide them that your actual #'s dont matter so much. People overtesting and "reacting" is just as bad as the lazy no water change reefer. Tank is looking good, keep up the good work!

 

[Matt1997]

Tank and coral look healthy. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Keep at it.

 

[Poseidon]

Definitely second the- if aint broke dont fix it.
Tank looks great, don't change a thing

Dialing back feedings might helps a bit, i feed 5 fish in a 75g only a pinch of pellets a day, and half a cube of frozen once a week instead of the pellets.