How To Manage Nutrient In Your Reef Tank?
- May 23, 2021
- Anshika Mishra
- 2095 0 0
A reef tank has vastly different needs than efficiently with a live-rock tank, one of the biggest differences is in the areas of nutrients. Sea fishes don't usually care what the nutrient levels are in the tank. Your Nitrates level could be 50ppm, your phosphates could be 2.0ppm and your fish would care less.
But your corals do care about these figures, and nuisance algae don't want you to care about the nutrient levels in the tank. The first step in managing your nutrient levels is to realize that you have a nutrient level issue.
For reef tanks when nitrates get above 7ppm and phosphate gets above 0.1ppm you should go on alert. In a live rock tank, nutrient thresholds are a bit higher; Nitrates above 20ppm and phosphates about 0.25 ppm. Once you know you have a problem, what do you do about it?
Water Change
The most immediate way to affect nutrient levels in your tank is to do a water change. The catch is that you need to do a large water change, to really make a dent in your nutrient levels. For big changes, you want to do at least a 50% water change.
This big water change is easy in small tanks, but you will need a large amount of saltwater in hand in a larger tank. This can only be obtained in a large holding container or a lot of 5-gallon buckets.
Do know that water changes only have a temporary effect on your nutrients. If you still have a source of high nutrients in your tank, then the nutrient level will rise again quickly. Doing large water changes frequently isn's feasible due to the time involved and the cost of salt.
Invest In Your Tank
For a longer-lasting effect to lower nutrients, you need to change your habits around the tank and potentially invest. These are the following things that would need change:
Feed Better Food
Feed better food, if your fishes aren't eating all or a major quantity of food you are feeding, then switch foods. Some foods have a lot of junk in them like ground-up shrimp exoskeleton. What your fish don't eat ends up decaying your tank and spiking the nutrients.
Your fish have certain food they like and it's your job to observe them and make sure to feed them what they want.
Feed Less Food
Overfeeding is a great way of driving up your nutrient levels. Only feed food that your fish can finish up in2-3 bites of feeding. If you think they need more food, then you can feed them again but wait several hours. Even if you do feed again 2-3 bites of feeding is enough.
Don't Feed Corals
You should not be feeding your corals, they are photosynthetic, so they get what they want from the lights in your tank. They do get some nutrients from eating out a water column of whatever fish food or waste they catch. They don't need more calories, and nuisance algae will happily gobble up all that coral food flowing in your tank.
Over Population
Fish produces waste so the more fish you have, the more waste will be produced. Some fish are bigger waste producers than others. Even if some of your cleaner crew will east the waste, there will still be enough amount of food piling up in your tank.
Reducing the number of fish in the tank will directly affect the nutrient level, especially when removing the fishes producing more waste.
Better Gear
Better gear can impact nutrient levels. Skimmer shave skim consistently and media reactors with media that has swapped out regularly all impact nutrient levels. Cheap gears that break softer aren't going to control the nutrition level in your tank.
Carbon Dosing
One of the highly effective ways of managing waste in your tank is to carbon dose your tank. Carbon dosing in your tank is different than adding activated carbon to your tank. When you are carbon dosing your tank, you are introducing a carbon source to the tank and that carbon source makes the bacteria grow.
When the bacteria grows, it munches up the nutrient, and then your export that bacteria through protein skimming or water changes. Protein skimming is much more effective for exporting that bacteria, so if you want to go through the carbon dose route, make sure you have a skimmer or your tank and make sure it is working well.
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