And here I thought I had 0 nitrates

Sor Ty, misread that. Anyways, not really suprised tests are thatnfar off. nitrate test issues have been a common theme on many of the forumns. although i'm suprised the salient is the screwy one. Maybe was sitting around too long or something. Or maybe it is 80ppm, but seems doubtful, most likely your tank would look like a jungle.

 

Yea that's whats so vexing. There's absolutely no algae on my rock or substrate. Just a bit of hair algae on the back glass which is acceptable considering I don't have a CUC

 

i have enjoyed this thread, my moto is, if there is nothing wrong don't fix it

 

I know that in my tank, if my corals and especially my anemones start looking a little shriveled, 9 times out of 10, my testing will show that my nitrates are on the rise. Yes, I can't say that it is the nitrates doing the damage but I do believe the nitrates are a warning that something is wrong (in this case, it could just be the test itself that is wrong). If everything looks normal in his tank, that could mean that either the sailfert test is wrong or it is always at 80 and his inhabitants have just adapted. I would be more concerned with adding new animals in this scenario if he is truely at 80 which I doubt. I would put money on the sailfert test being off.

 

I would suggest taking care of the hair algae on the glass before it finds the rock. I felt the same as you and never bothered the algae growing on my overflow box. I actually liked it because i thought it helped to hide the thing. i let this go for two years before it started growing on the rocks and now i can't get rid of it.

 

.....and if something is wrong, fix it.

 

What the heck have I been so concerned about for 6 months??? I am totally confused by these comments....

 

I don't know, I've said several times N is not really toxic, but you wanted to get it to 0

Just kidding mostly (although I did mention N isn't particularly toxic). In your tank, you moved from a FOWLR to a reef and there seemed to be an organic sink constantly releasing N into the water, as confirmed by multiple tests. In this case, I would agree it is better to get it managed before really adding a lot of livestock, but not because of the N, because of the organics the N suggests are the.

There has in the past been some speculation that N is an issue because there was a belief that algae was harmless, but no one was ever able to actually produce evidence of this.. And as it's turning out, it's not the N, but the algae that goes along with it. Just not directly. Organics in large quantities are harmful. A lot of recent evidence shows much of the issues hobbyists have thought to result from N, because "algae couldn't be harmful" actually is due to the algae, just via less direct mechanisms. But organics even without algae may be bad, so, in an old tank that is being transferred from a FOWLR to a reef, it makes sense to do some preventative maintenance (but it isn't the N specifically that's the issue, that just goes along with the other stuff).

For example:

Barott et al. 2011 Microbial to reef scale interactions between the reef-building coral Montastraea annularis and benthic algae

Abstract
Declines in coral cover are generally associated with increases in the abundance of fleshy algae. In many cases, it remains unclear whether algae are responsible, directly or indirectly, for coral death or whether they simply settle on dead coral surfaces. Here, we show that algae can indirectly cause coral mortality by enhancing microbial activity via the release of dissolved compounds. When coral and algae were placed in chambers together but separated by a 0.02**μm filter, corals suffered 100% mortality. With the addition of the broad-spectrum antibiotic ampicillin, mortality was completely prevented. Physiological measurements showed complementary patterns of increasing coral stress with proximity to algae. Our results suggest that as human impacts increase and algae become more abundant on reefs a positive feedback loop may be created whereby compounds released by algae enhance microbial activity on live coral surfaces causing mortality of corals and further algal growth.



Or

Shaw et al. 2006 Indirect effects of algae on coral: algae-mediated, microbe-induced coral mortality.

Abstract
Coral reefs are suffering a long-term global decline, yet the causes remain contentious. The role of poor water quality in this decline is particularly unclear, with most previous studies providing only weak correlations between elevated nutrient levels and coral mortality. Here we experimentally show that routinely measured components of water quality (nitrate, phosphate, ammonia) do not cause substantial coral mortality. In contrast, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), which is rarely measured on reefs, does. Elevated DOC levels also accelerate the growth rate of microbes living in the corals’ surface mucopolysaccharide layer by an order of magnitude, suggesting that mortality occurs due to a disruption of the balance between the coral and its associated microbiota. We propose a model by which elevated DOC levels cause Caribbean reefs to shift further from coral to macroalgal dominance. Increasing DOC levels on coral reefs should be recognized as a threat and routinely monitored.

 

oh, I wasn't on a quest for 0 - albeit that would be the ideal....I just wanted to get it lower....I'm glad to hear that I should have been doing all that I was doing.

 

i'm glad we have people like m24 that know the lingo, all i know is in my reef keeping is i've never worried about n or checked it with a test kit. i have had some deaths of coral in the last 20 years and i don't think it was nitrates, i have had a nice run in reef keeping and believe we go over board in some things. i really enjoy the reading of this forum, it dosen't hurt to hear everyones ideas. it makes us better reefers.