ecobak or chemipure + GFO?

Also my phosphates have never registered over 0.5 and do fluctuate down often but my nitrates are consistently around 40ppm.

 

you guys should take a close look at aquaripure, there have been multiple great feedbacks on this addtion to your reef...
95-98% of people who have used this product hit zero nitrates in there system...
or even came really close to that mark...
do a search on it and email the seller/owner and he'll gladly respond and help you out with any question you have about there product...

I'm seriously thinking of scrapping my boipellets in the next replacment phase...
I'm going to go with aquaripure for controlling my nitrates
and I'll be swapping out my pellets for GFO,this will mantain my phospate levels...
with those 2 together and maybe throw in another reactor with carbon,my reef should be preforming where I'd want it to be...

 

Then there are other imbalances that are not being addressed. There are any number of approaches that can lower nitrates. With a properly run system it should not be a problem.

I have not heard of people dosing a nitrogen source to let biopellets reduce PO4. I mean at that point you can just feed more. What I have seen is people continuing to run GFO to mop up the rest of their P.

Yes the bacteria can be P limited or N limited for that matter, but that is not the main problem. If N or P is limited that it is also limited for algae growth which is the main reason for aggressively limiting N and P.

N is not bad on it's own... it's the algae it drives that's bad. P is bad for SPS growth on it's own, so if anything is going to be limited P is a good one.

 

Interesting you say that. I'd be interested in your results.

Haven't had much problem with either in amounts that couldn't be controlled. I was gonna be adding another reactor for carbon anyway. Won't give up on the pellets yet it's only been two weeks, but my tanks needs may be different from others.

 

You have plenty of rock and it sounds like other things too. While I can only guess what your problems are, I can guarantee you crushed coral is not helping. It is a known problem and your are not going to go away until it does. Putting band aids on it does not fix the problem.

Plenty of people feed their Anthias once a day with the rest of their fish. I fed my fish twice a day. Feeding twice a day is not a problem and other folks with more time on their hands feed more than that. With a properly running system you can feed tons.

I realize we learn as we go and once things are running they can be a pain to change. Howerver, the basis of a sound reef system is a lot of live rock and sand beds. Let Mother Nature maintain your system. The more demanding coral needs better water. So we go for ultra low nutrient systems with biopllets, GFO, zeovit, carbon dosing, denitrators, algae turf scrubbers, macro algae....

Yet all of those things should be employed to mop up the rest or drive things to zero, not as your main source of nutrient reduction.

 

I think adding a macroalgae will do wonders for reducing nitrates. I added chaeto and 2 red mangroves in a fuge, and went from .2 phosphates and ~20 nitrates to 0 nitrates 0 phosphates within about a month. I already had GFO on the system before I started the fuge up.

 

In a SPS tank, PO4 needs to be less than .02. Algae can still grow with less that .01. While your .5 isn't setting any records, it is still very high. Most hobby PO4 kits are pretty useless in telling anything other than grossly high amounts of PO4. The best kits go to .01 and are expensive. Most don't even both and can tell just be algae growth.

 

A reef should control itself. I had zero nitrates, and low phosphates before I added a fuge. I had plenty of live rock, a good skimmer, and no mechanical filters.

Zero nitrates is a meaningless number. You will have zero nitrates with a tank full of algae. No algae in your tank means zero nitrates and I had no algae.

I added a fuge and my cheato barely grew. I added GFO and my PO4 dropped from .2 to .01. I scrapped the GFO and ran pellets and expected my cheato to shrivel up and die, but then I took my tank down. I fed 3 cubes a day with nori and rotties and oyster eggs at night. I had plenty of growth and my fish were fat and happy.

Nitrates are easy to control and if they are elevated then there is something wrong. Most people underestimate the value of good flow through their reef (not across it) and that is where a lot of problems lie. All I'm trying to say is that the main problems need to be adressed first and a healthy reef established. Then we can fix minor specific problems with other tactics. Above all though, nature should do the majority of the work. Plus it is free.

 

I disagree high nitrates stunt growth of fish and decrease coral growth by increasing zooxanthellae in the coral.

It's true some corals tolerate nitrates better then others but most studies on hard corals show noticeable detriment to corals at high nitrates levels.

and by higher nitrate levels I mean lower then in most reef tanks around 1ppm.

 

link to a study
www.springerlink.com/index/r11243517w788537.pdf

also the study mentions poor flow worsens the problem of higher nitrates.


edit: fixed link