I have been tending to reef tanks for many, many years and in my view reef keeping has become harder. How is this possible? Whether you agree or disagree, just hear me out….

Rationale for Why the Hobby is Tougher

More Efficient Equipment
Information Overload
Mis-Information

More Efficient Equipment

One reason is due to better equipment. Yes, that seems counter intuitive but today skimmers and other filtration devices like roller mats are much more efficient versus prior generations of equipment. You can easily zero out nitrates and phosphates.

Having zero nutrients is not a good thing since it can starve corals. It has also been reported that bottoming out nitrates and phosphates can lead to dinoflagellates. I never had dinoflagellates or “dinos” during the early part of my reef keeping career. But over the last few years I had to deal with them a couple of times. Not an easy task to say the least.

To elevate nutrients you can feed your fish more, dose nitrates and phosphates or feed the corals with something like amino acids. But how often do you end up with problematic algae when you increase nutrients? Years ago I never had issues with cyano but these days it has shown itself every now and then in one of my displays.

It can be a complicated dance. You have cyano but your test kits are showing zero nitrates and phosphates. Do you increase nutrients to help solve the problem? The cyano could be absorbing all of the nitrates and phosphates so increasing these elements could make it worse…

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