Reef nutrition

Nitrates bottomed out..and massive cyano issue

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L/B Block

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After a couple days of my zoas and a few other corals not looking so happy -retested nitrates and phosphates.
Phosphates at 0.4 -not bad -nitrates -uh -0.3 -this was a few days after testing around ~3.

At the same time I see a cyano bloom-where it was centralized on the sand -it has now
Appeared on rocks, rear wall, and the sand. I assuming the cyano has made good use of the nitrates and is feeding the cyano.

My thinking on this -is black out the aquarium for 3 days and massive water change (10 to 15 gallon a day) ? Let the experts weigh in if there is a better solution? Should I be dosing nitrates back in during those three days?

Bah.
 
I tried dosing nitrate but it’s very hard to tune unlike the usual 2 parts. I’m running ultra low nitrate , and everything is thriving. I stop stressing about nitrate (and phosphate) . Corals seems to thrive as long as parameters are stable.

Blackout works well for my for cyano.
 
newfly said:
I tried dosing nitrate but it’s very hard to tune unlike the usual 2 parts. I’m running ultra low nitrate , and everything is thriving. I stop stressing about nitrate (and phosphate) . Corals seems to thrive as long as parameters are stable.

Blackout works well for my for cyano.
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Good to know about blackout. The corals are not happy at the ultra low nitrate - 3 was ok. .3 -not no.

I assume it’s a pain to dose nitrate
 
L/B Block said:
Good to know about blackout. The corals are not happy at the ultra low nitrate - 3 was ok. .3 -not no.

I assume it’s a pain to dose nitrate
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I find that dosing sodium nitrate is pretty easy. I just buy reagent grade sodium nitrate and mix 25 grams per liter of RO/DI water. Every 1ml of that mixture will put in 0.8ppm nitrates for every 5 gallons of water. I don’t go overboard, just enough to make sure I’m registering at least 2ppm nitrate. I usually have to increase dosage on the dosing pump every month or so.
 
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L/B Block said:
Thanks @RandyC. So with a 65 gallon tank -
So if my math is correct it would be 39 ml to get to approx 2.4 ppm nitrate with the formula above. Is that a daily dose?
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I don’t dose that much. I’m around 10 ml for my IM75. You also have to factor in the food you’re putting in. You just want to make sure you’re close to adding in the amount of nitrate that the food isn’t so that nitrates stay above whatever minimum level you want for your tank.
 
RandyC said:
I find that dosing sodium nitrate is pretty easy. I just buy reagent grade sodium nitrate and mix 25 grams per liter of RO/DI water. Every 1ml of that mixture will put in 0.8ppm nitrates for every 5 gallons of water. I don’t go overboard, just enough to make sure I’m registering at least 2ppm nitrate. I usually have to increase dosage on the dosing pump every month or so.
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RandyC said:
I don’t dose that much. I’m around 10 ml for my IM75. You also have to factor in the food you’re putting in. You just want to make sure you’re close to adding in the amount of nitrate that the food isn’t so that nitrates stay above whatever minimum level you want for your tank.
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Ok -duly noted. Thanks.
 
Are you sure the cyano didn't cause the bottoming out of nutrients versus was caused by? Your statement that it quickly bottomed out sounds like what one would expect when something (cyano) was growing fast.
 
Not sure if doing water changes is goi by to help if you have no nitrates? I would only change water if you are siphoning out the cyano, otherwise just do blackout and see what happens after and go from there
 
richiev said:
Are you sure the cyano didn't cause the bottoming out of nutrients versus was caused by? Your statement that it quickly bottomed out sounds like what one would expect when something (cyano) was growing fast.
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That is what I am saying -that I think the cyano did cause the nitrates to bottom out.
 
I do the same as Randy. I've always had low nitrates and experienced catastrophic bottoming out, so I dose 2ppm worth of potassium nitrate daily just to keep it registered. When I test sometimes I get 2ppm, sometimes I get 8ppm, depends on what else is going on but I don't chase the number and just dose the same amount to keep it from going to zero.

I mix my own potassium nitrate: https://greenleafaquariums.com/products/potassium-nitrate-kno3-1lb-bag.html
Dosing calculator: http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/calculator.htm
 
Coral reefer said:
Not sure if doing water changes is goi by to help if you have no nitrates? I would only change water if you are siphoning out the cyano, otherwise just do blackout and see what happens after and go from there
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Need to do water changes anyway. But also I still have something in the water column that is causing my protein skimmer to continually overflow so might as well change it out.
 
Cyano in particular does great with zero nitrate since it is one of the few things in our tanks that can fix nitrogen from air (make it’s own nitrate internally). So it can outcompete healthy microbes when nitrate is zero.

When my nitrate is getting low I squirt in some NeoNitro without measuring. At first I did the math to raise by 2 ppm or so at a time, but after getting a feel for it, just squirting it in all at once is easier. I don’t dose it with a pump because it doesn’t need to be an exact stable amount unlike the other things we dose.
 
JVU said:
Cyano in particular does great with zero nitrate since it is one of the few things in our tanks that can fix nitrogen from air (make it’s own nitrate internally). So it can outcompete healthy microbes when nitrate is zero.

When my nitrate is getting low I squirt in some NeoNitro without measuring. At first I did the math to raise by 2 ppm or so at a time, but after getting a feel for it, just squirting it in all at once is easier. I don’t dose it with a pump because it doesn’t need to be an exact stable amount unlike the other things we dose.
Click to expand...
 
JVU said:
Cyano in particular does great with zero nitrate since it is one of the few things in our tanks that can fix nitrogen from air (make it’s own nitrate internally). So it can outcompete healthy microbes when nitrate is zero.

When my nitrate is getting low I squirt in some NeoNitro without measuring. At first I did the math to raise by 2 ppm or so at a time, but after getting a feel for it, just squirting it in all at once is easier. I don’t dose it with a pump because it doesn’t need to be an exact stable amount unlike the other things we dose.
Click to expand...

Having it on a dosing pump also helps with vacations as well. I’ve bottomed while out of town a few years back and it wrecked havoc on the tank and it took months to correct.
 
valid point. Zero nitrates has not been my problem. This is a first -as well as this specific outbreak. It’s going to take a bit to get tank back in shape. Amazing it takes sometimes so long to get it in fantastic shape and all but a couple days to pretty much FUBAR it.
 
Not sure if anyone can tell what is going on with these pics…
 

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Looks like alota bubble and other algaes. Not seeing much redish cyano snot? Maybe all the algae is dying off causing issues? I’d try and suck it all out in steps but not all at once since the tank will get super cloudy. Use a scraper attached to syphon on the glass helps or several wipes with folded strong paper towels or cloth starting low then up outa the tank then out! Use a new towel on every up stroke to catch most of the algae.
Beef up on Cucs plus an extra HOB filter temporarily really helps get all the gunk out.
Best of luck
 
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