Too Low in Nutrients?

[PaulPaul01]

Will running an algae scrubber and chaeto deplete the nutrients in the tank? As I'm mainly interested in soft corals for their lower lighting and maintenance, will there be any effects on the corals in using either of these (scrubber or chaeto) as an attempt to keep algae away? This is as I have read read alot of statements that soft corals such as Pulsing Xenia cannot survive in low nutrient tanks. Thank you:)

[JMW]

Yes such algae setups will deplete available nutrients to a varying degree. For soft corals, such as Xenia, it helps that there are some nutrients available for them as another form of nourishment. Most times such LPS tanks have some nitrates & phosphates.

actually running either one, either chaeto or ATS would be sufficient assuming ur bioload is low,  with good husbandry such as wc, etc

[polar]

Technically, all living organisms require a level of nitrates and phosphates as they’re biological building
blocks of their cellular structures. To be specific, they require the element phosphorus and nitrogen.

Whenever I read comments that say try to aim for 0ppm of nitrates, that’s totally false. First, there is no way, it’s impossible to hit 0 ppm. There are always traces of nitrates, completely 0 is impossible. Hitting 0 nitrates and/or phosphates can slow down growth rate of all organisms in tank. What you would want to do is to keep a range of nitrates and phosphates at a healthy level, levels that are not too high to cause too many problems nor too low that organisms are starved of it. By “many problems”, I mean problems like these:

1) Ammonia released from decomposition of organic matter is poison to the living organisms
2) Nitrite formed from oxidation of ammonia by anaerobic bacteria is acidic in nature and will further decrease pH
3) Nitrates formed from
further oxidation of nitrites will also promote acidity and pH decreases.

But to counter high nitrates, Ensure you have low oxygenated area in tank to further process nitrates to nitrogen gas and oxygen gas. If not enough, you can try nutrient export by using chaeto or biopellet reactor, though I personally prefer chaeto. Biopellet has a few problems that are really problematic.


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