If we take the most common reasons for poor nutrient management from a biological stand point we must first make sure that following basic points are scrutinised and if required amendments made.

 

1. Stocking levels - As reef keepers we love fish but we also have to be mindful that heavy stocking will nutrient load a system, by heavy stocking we don’t always refer too ’too many‘ fish but the number of tangs of other messy fish that if well fed will potentially push a reef tank towards high nutrient loads. As a general rule one can usually stock a higher number of small shoaling fish by weight than messy fish and still maintain lower nutrients as large fish tend to require heavier feedings of bulkier nutrient rich foods. So keep stocking in mind.

 

2. Feeding - Little and often can sometimes be the key, feeding heavily with nutrient rich foods once or twice a day can often equate to waste, poor digestion and nutrient issues, little and often will allow all food to be eaten in one sitting and allow the fish to digest the foods completely. This is especially relevant to tangs as they have a relatively small gut designed for constant grazing and will tend to expel heavy feeds without digesting them well.

 

3. Flow and aquascape - Make sure you have adequate flow around the rocks and that the aquascape is open enough to keep detritus flushed.

 

4. Sand beds - One of the fastest ways to increase nutrients within an aquarium could be to install a sand bed that’s either too deep or too course and not maintained, deeper sand beds (sand beds that are not designed to be proper deep sand beds), that are usually deeper than 1” or use very coarse sand ( 3-5mm grains ) can tend to be nutrient sinks over time and could eventually push nutrients up to levels that cannot be naturally controlled by correct stocking,feeding, aquascape design etc etc. In some cases hobbyists have witnessed a huge drop in nutrients by slowly removing sand beds that have been cloged by detritus.

 

So what can be done if all above is in check but one still struggles.

 

1. Double and triple check the test kit results with other known good kits to save you chasing your tail 

 

2. Cheato reactors or chaeto beds. If using Cheato try and get you PO4 down under 0.08 ppm, preferably 0.02-0.04ppm. Cheato generally wont grow well in high PO4, once you get the PO4 down it will start to grow and help keep PO4 from rising again.Equally for Cheato to have a big impact you will need quite a large algae bed, whilst the Cheato reactors are a neat design they probably don’t have the real estate for proper algae based nutrient control on there own but they are better than nothing.

 

3.Bio-pellet systems can be a great way of reducing Nitrate and a little PO4, you will need to keep in mind that the bacteria that will grow on the surface of the pellets that consume the Nitrate will need to be happy and have access to Nitrate and a small amount of PO4 for cell production. If the Nitrate to PO4 balance is off the bacteria may not grow in enough numbers to make a dent.

 

4. Nitrate reactors. These work in a similar way to pellets in that the bacteria are provided with a carbon source, in this case Ethanol or Methanol (Electron Donor), Nitrate (Electron acceptor) and a background level of PO4 (used by the bacteria for respiration and to produce ATP which is a form of biochemical energy). Nitrate reactors have the benefit of being able to be tuned for use, in other words you can increase or decrease the dose of Ethanol to suit requirements and also the amount of effluent the reactor produces a day. Pellet system are pretty much unregulated with regards to fine control but can be far easier to set up. Nitrate reactors have much better control to allow fine tuning of nutrients although one must understand that the level of user input and understanding will also increase to enable you to reap those rewards.

 

5. Regular water changes can help in controlling nutrient values, this should be used as part as the overall control method as waterchanges alone will struggle to compete with nutrient production in a well stocked reef tank. It is worth bearing in mind that constant large water changes could potentially destabilise the tank chemistry and microbiology so the size of the water change should be appropriate for the size of the tank. Products such as Polyplab Genesis can help promote stable biological conditions to help with nutrient controll as part of regular maintenance.

 

6. Protein Skimmers are a must for most modern reef aquariums and a good way of efficiently removing organic matrials from the aquarium before they build up in to a nutrient issue. Always maintain the skimmer and clean the cup, especially the inside of the neck, as regular as possible to maintain optimum efficiency.

 

7. Chemical medias such as ROWAphos or ROWAcarbon are always handy for the controll of phosphate and stray organics.

 

8. Efficient prefilters. Units such as the Clarisea will help to remove detritus and organic material before it has chance to break down in an aquarium and cause issues. Filter socks and filter floss are good for particle removle but unless you change them very regulary the substances they remove will still be in the water.