Zeovit System to low on nutrients?

[Bri49er80]

Hello,

I am new to the forum here and looking for advice/suggestions on what may be going on with my tank. I have a 200 gallon Elos tank with SPS/LPS mix and no softies. I am running a Zeovit system with activated carbon. I dose zeostart daily, zeobak and zeofood twice a week. I run calcium and alkalinity on my apex DOS. For stock, I have 3 small clown fish, coral beauty and purple dotty back. I had a larger Naso Tang that recently passed. I do 15% water changes every 2 weeks. I always aimed for a low nutrient system and by my parameters you can see below I believe I achieved that but perhaps I have gone to far. This week, I began to see receeding tissue on 2 chalices, 2 blasts, an Acan and a favia. Acro and birds nest seem fine. This has made me think I have gone to far on the low nutrients. I am thinking I might need to increase the bio load of fish and feeding but truly am not sure and certainly want the balance of healthy LPS and SPS. Thank you all in advance for your help.

Brian

Water Parameters
Salinity - 1.025
Nitrate - 0
Nitrite - 0
Ammonia - 0
Phosphate - 0
Alkalinity/DKH - 8.8
Calcium - 441
Magnesium - 1400
Potassium - 420
PH 8.2

[Tripod1404]

What is the low accuracy of your test kits. Are they really zero or just below detection sensitivity. If they are truly zero, it is too low. Also your alkalinity might be too high for low nutrition tank. I generally keep mine around 7.5dKH and I have 1 ppm nitrate and 0.0005 ppm phosphate. Even then if I go above ~8.5dKH, my sps gets tip burns and lps corals don’t puff.


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[Scrubber_steve]

try dosing aminos.

[Bri49er80]

Thanks for replies. For test kits, I have used Nyos and Salifert for Nitrate and both show zero. For Alkalinity, Hanna meter shows 8.8, Red Sea shows 9 and API shows 8. Not sure if anyone suggests other tests?

For Aminos, I have been dosing Acropower 1-2 times a week. Perhaps dose that more often?

[Bri49er80]

Salifert and Nyos both used for phosphate as well and both show zero also.

[Hentz]

You should definitely increase the bioload. I kept 6 fish in my 56 Gallon ZEOvit SPS tank and still had nutrient issues. My Acropora paled out too much as my nutrients were getting reduced too much, very common in a ULNS. So I started dosing ME Amino Acids to help my Acropora, skeptical of the product but friends had great results. Within a week, my Acropora were much healthier looking.

In my last ZEOvit tank before I upgraded, I fed incredibly heavy and say daily growth and great color in my corals. Though the second I got lazy with my weekly water changes, my tank went on a very quick decline with algae.

You need to find the fine balance or nutrient import/export, feed your corals something besides the ZEOfood (which ZEOvit has changed their method slightly by replacing Sponge Power with ZEOfood in their main 4, and only using ZEOfood when your corals look very pale). Amino Acids work great, especially from ME as I had mentioned above. Though fish poop is best so I'd likely recommend adding more fish slowly and slowly reducing the amount of ZEOstart.

How much are you dosing of the ZEO products currently?

[kuzko]

+1 for bigger bioload. Nitrates should be 2-5 ppm for those sps.

[Bri49er80]

Thanks. I am dosing 2ML of Zeostart daily, 8 drops of coral vitalizer daily, 4ML of coral boost daily, 8 drops each of zeobak and zeofood 2 times a week, 30 ML of Acro Power 1-2 times a week. Any suggested changes to that regimen? I added 2 good size fish today and will add a couple more slowly. I certainly want to feed the corals and have them progress but don't want algae issues as that was my intent with Zeovit. Thanks again for feedback and look forward to any other suggestions.

[slay]

I'm also for bigger bioload. You've got about enough fish life for a low nutrient tank 1/3 your size.

That said, some people like the sparse look - dosing nitrates and phosphates isn't really uncommon in ULNS like yours. So, nutrient dosing is one option.

Personally I like fish, so I'd choose a couple display specimen sized medium (I know you bought fish, but I'm not sure what "good size" means, I'm talking more 4-6" at purchase sized specimens that grow up to 10" or so max size... probably not another Naso, they get much larger) and I'd get them in QT. I'm not sure why you lost the Naso in the first place tho, they are pretty tough fish once established in captivity IME, so that kinda worries me. In the mean time, I'd intentionally overfeed. That would be the simplest stopgap solution.