I'm Mark Callahan, Mr Saltwater Tank coming to you on behalf of SaltwaterAquarium.com,
rolling out a brand new video series today about nutrients and nutrient control. I'm not
going to be doing this video series alone, I'm going to have help by Dr Tim Hovanec.
Now if you don't know who Dr Tim is he's the man behind Dr Tim's Aquatics and if you ask
anyone who knows their stuff in the industry they're all going to say that Dr Tim is the man.
Dr Tim has a phd in evolution in marine biology from the university of California Santa Barbara
for the past 17 years Dr Tim has run Dr Tim's Aquatics and has countless public aquariums
as clients including the Georgia Aquarium, Sea World, Disney, Monterey Bay Aquarium and sea life.
I like Dr Tim, I've been dealing with him, buying his products, using his products successfully way
back from when I got started with Mr Saltwater Tank and I've always had success with the stuff
he's taught me some stuff along the way that i never really thought of some of which I'll walk
you through in this video series so thanks Dr Tim for being part of this journey and thanks everyone
for watching now when i say nutrients what do i mean well look I'm really talking about nitrates
and phosphates these are the building blocks of life especially phosphates and coral and fish
need them to live and to grow but here's the thing about nutrients the conversation on them
has completely changed and here's how it's changed back 10 15 years ago the consensus on nutrient was
you got to be zero zero across the board zero nitrates and zero phosphates someone would get on
a form including me and i'd say hey things don't look like right on my tank why and they say well
what are your nutrients and you say well I meant two nitrates and .02 phosphates and everyone would
be like ah nope not gonna happen you gotta get to zero to zero now fast forward in these days
hearing you need to raise your nutrients is nothing uncommon when it comes to suggestions
on message board and facebook groups but even back in the day Dr Tim was schooling me saying
this whole low nutrient thing it isn't it so we've come a long way in terms of nutrients
the consensus now is higher nutrients are okay now i say higher nutrients
and low nutrients where do you actually want to be with your nutrients well here's why I'm
aiming to fall out for the baseline for most of my tanks i want to be nitrates somewhere between
three to eight parts per million phosphates anywhere from 0.03 to 0.1 is okay with me
but there's a catch about that which I'll talk to you about right over here in front of my tank
the catch with nutrients is there a guideline you have to learn to listen to your tank and know what
it likes so don't get caught up in the numbers thinking you have to hit them exactly look if your
tank is happy with five nitrates and one day they happen to come up to seven nitrates doesn't mean
everything's gonna fall apart and go to hell in a hand basket heck my tank is happy at 8 nitrates
and .5 phosphates i can hear those reefers now rolling over in their grave like oh 0.5 phosphates
oh everything is going to die your sps's are long since dead they don't stand a chance
yeah not so much so those numbers i give you
they are just a guideline learn to dance with those numbers and learn to find out what your tank
likes don't get caught up in hitting them exactly i just talked about my tanks numbers let's look
at some of my clients numbers to find out where their nutrients run out and how their tanks look
all right so what if your nutrients are really high or really low what do you do about it
there's a couple different ways that you can manipulate your nutrients and we're going to talk
more about that in this video series but first i want to bring in Dr Tim and do a deep dive on
phosphates and nitrates and then later on we're going to talk about why one of the most
popular nutrient export methods really isn't all that cracked up to be as well as a nutrient export
method that's been sitting in the wings overlooked for years and years and years
and it can really supercharge your nutrient export so with that I'm going to go check
in with Dr Tim make sure that he's uh not drinking too many martinis in the hot tub
we'll be back next week with the next video in the nutrient and nutrient export series remember
those tank guidelines i gave you test your tanks find out where you are
write down your results and they're just a guideline don't get caught up in hitting them
don't try to manipulate anything just yet because we're going to tell you what to do based on where
your tank is and where you need to be till next time I'm Mark Callahan, Mr. Saltwater Tank coming
to you on behalf of SaltwaterAquarium.com I'll catch you in the next episode
I think I'll go feed my fish my nutrients look a little low
you