Dosing nitrates...need some guidance.

[Andreww]

Hey guys, my nitrates are always 0. ELOS test

Some of my SPS are a bit faded. I feed the fish once a day, various blends of mysis, scallop, callanus etc that I mixed together; I dose phytoplankton and aminos about 3 times a week.

Chaeto has grown tremendously in the last month but ever since harvesting it stopped growing. Possibly lack of nutrient.

 

I was wondering, maybe time to dose some nitrates?

I was gonna buy seachem flourish nitrogen and dose until I start to see the levels rise to 5ppm and keep it there with a daily dose.

 

Ive also read nitrate will be consumed at different rates throughout the week which makes it even more complicated and an extra chore with testing frequently if that’s the case. 

 

What’s your guys opinion ?

 

Phosphates are 0 as well on ELOS( regular not the pro kit)maybe unreliable kit.

I’m not getting a green or brown algae on the glass at all, I can go for 4-5 days and just get a slight white haze but nothing more.

 

I was even contemplating taking the chaeto out.

I have a skimmer and use a filter sock, replaced every 3-4 days. 

Used to run GAC in reactor but took that offline.

Any help on this matter would be appreciated.

Ive never had to dose nitrates and I wanna get it right the first time.

 

Edit: tank is 17 gallons, 20 gallon sump.

2 clowns and a lyretail Anthias.

Minimal clean up crew. 5 snails or so.

Dont know if I can add more fish to up the nitrates that way . They’d have to be pretty big to put a dent in the 0 nitrates right?

Maybe a tuxedo urchin? I’ve had one and used to poop a lot lol

[seabass]

Flourish is not simply nitrate (there are other ingredients included).  While it is used by some, I believe it has been primarily formulated for freshwater planted tanks.

 

I purchased calcium nitrate from AquariumFertilizer.com.  They also sell the more common potassium nitrate.  It comes in dry form which you dissolve in water to make your own liquid nitrate supplement.  It's cheaper and you aren't adding a bunch of other ingredients.

[Andreww]

18 minutes ago, seabass said:

Flourish is not simply nitrate (there are other ingredients included).  While it is used by some, I believe it has been primarily formulated for freshwater planted tanks.

 

I purchased calcium nitrate from AquariumFertilizer.com.  They also sell the more common potassium nitrate.  It comes in dry form which you dissolve in water to make your own liquid nitrate supplement.  It's cheaper and you aren't adding a bunch of other ingredients.

Makes sense thank you. I also found this , which is pretty cheap. 

http://greenleafaquariums.com/aquarium-fertilizers-supplements/potassium-nitrate.html

 

Just dissolve in RO and dump it in?

 

[Andreww]

Just realized shipping cost is 4 times the price of the item. Bah....

I checked out your link. Is calcium nitrate a better alternative? In that I’m not adding unnecessary potassium to the water?

Let me know!

Thanks!

[Andreww]

Went with sodium nitrate per Randy HF recommendation over other nitrates.

Hopefully I’ll get it til Saturday. 

 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/222600000/sodium-nitrate-8-ounces-fine-powder-996

[seabass]

You will be adding some potassium to your system,  I doubt that it will be that much.  Water changes should help prevent it from building up too much.

 

Let us know how your system responds.

[Andreww]

23 minutes ago, seabass said:

You will be adding some potassium to your system,  I doubt that it will be that much.  Water changes should help prevent it from building up too much.

 

Let us know how your system responds.

Will do.

I understand there is a concern with Phosphate plummeting while dosing Nitrate, in turn getting SPS to RTN. 

 

Is that a valid concern that should require also dosing Phosphates or is PO4 from fish food enough to keep the level detectable?

 

[seabass]

Keep an eye on it.  If nitrate has been a limiting factor, then consumption of phosphate can increase along with growth (of algae and/or coral).

 

Increased feeding can sometimes provide enough additional phosphate.  You could also try dosing phytoplankton (which usually contains some phosphate).  If still needed, you might decide to supplement phosphate as well (but hold off unless absolutely necessary).

[mcarroll]

On 12/13/2018 at 4:04 AM, seabass said:

Flourish

Flourish Nitrogen™ -- potassium nitrate

Flourish Phosphorus™ -- potassium phosphate

 

On 12/13/2018 at 5:23 AM, Andreww said:

I understand there is a concern with Phosphate plummeting while dosing Nitrate, in turn getting SPS to RTN. 

First, use what your local stores carry if they have an option...it's not worth paying extra for something to get shipped if you can help it.

 

Second, dose up your phosphates first!   Corals and their symbiotes require this for protection from the side effects of photosynthesis.  If there's zero now, there's zero protection.

 

Third, dosing up your nitrates will cause the symbiote density to increase in your corals, increasing photosynthesis along with the density.

 

Last, if this happens and there're no phosphates available (food does not work...has to be dissolved for this), the coral will be more and more likely to bleach the longer this condition remains...the coral will be at risk of losing control of the symbiosis.  When they do...

 

Raise your phosphates to at least 0.03 ppm if they are currently lower.   Re-test an hour later to see if any is still in the water ...if not, dose again; test again.

 

Once phosphates are showing up in reserve, you can raise nitrates safely....target >= 5 ppm.   Re-test an hour later just like with PO4 and re-dose if necessary.

[mcarroll]

Much like with Calcium, there's no apparent issue with having "too much" Potassium in the system, and many systems that get tested for it turn out to be low in potassium anyway.  K is elementally sorta similar to Ca.  It has similar atomic number and similar concentration in seawater....so that makes some sense. 

 

Not sure there's a problem with "too little" either though...if so, little to nothing has been written about it.

 

As far as I can tell, it is just one of the minor minerals that coincidentally gets bound into the corals skeleton as it forms aragonite...but it doesn't appear to serve another purpose that I've found....and apparently isn't even related to growth rates or anything.

 

 

 

Potassium	K	19	10.2 mM	398 mg/L
Calcium	Ca	20	10.3 mM	412 mg/L

 

 

from "What is seawater?"

[Andreww]

1 hour ago, mcarroll said:

Flourish Nitrogen™ -- potassium nitrate

Flourish Phosphorus™ -- potassium phosphate

 

First, use what your local stores carry if they have an option...it's not worth paying extra for something to get shipped if you can help it.

 

Second, dose up your phosphates first!   Corals and their symbiotes require this for protection from the side effects of photosynthesis.  If there's zero now, there's zero protection.

 

Third, dosing up your nitrates will cause the symbiote density to increase in your corals, increasing photosynthesis along with the density.

 

Last, if this happens and there're no phosphates available (food does not work...has to be dissolved for this), the coral will be more and more likely to bleach the longer this condition remains...the coral will be at risk of losing control of the symbiosis.  When they do...

 

Raise your phosphates to at least 0.03 ppm if they are currently lower.   Re-test an hour later to see if any is still in the water ...if not, dose again; test again.

 

Once phosphates are showing up in reserve, you can raise nitrates safely....target >= 5 ppm.   Re-test an hour later just like with PO4 and re-dose if necessary.

Mcarroll thanks for that. I am using a sodium nitrate solution at the moment.

Phosphates were 0.

Extra feeding weren’t helping so I just dosed 1ml PO4 (Aquavitro activate) in roughly 25-28 gallons of water. Now it’s at 0.03.

I guess I have to test daily until it will level out and I figure out how much of each I need to dose.

 

[mcarroll]

Test and dose to a target.  Please don't "dump and hope". 😉

 

First dose you should target 0.03 ppm...based on your current PO4 test.   Then test an hour later to see how much, if any, is still left in the water.  Sometimes there is an initial burst of consumption that's quite large.   If you test lower than 0.03 ppm an hour later, compute a dose to get you back up to 0.03 ppm and dose again....then test again an hour later.  Repeat with a third dose if needed, but that should be pretty unlikely.

 

Remember you're about to create a spike in growth/demand, so as long as you've proved to yourself that there is residual PO4 in the system for usage during this spike then it's safe to start dosing up NO3 levels to ≥ 5 ppm.

 

And with both NO3 and PO4, you should definitely test and dose daily until you have the consumption rate figured out....usually within 1-3 days.  But all you're trying to do is get a healthy amount of residual N and P in the water.....it's possible you'll be done with the first dose....but you have to test to find out.  🙂

[Thomfire]

Thanks McCarroll. My PO4 is 0,04 and NO3 os 0,6 using the Hannah test for both. My last ICP test a couple of weeks ago shows total phosphorous 0,22 with phosphorous at 0,07.

I want to dose some nitrates and have some Nitrate Plus but there is no guidance in the amount to dose. I want to take it very slowly. I have not had any algae outbreak for 6 months (although regularly have cyano outbreaks) but my corals are looking quite sad even though I dose AB* and Phytoplankton. I know the test for nitrates shows residual nitrates and phosphates so there must be some usage.

 

In you experience (or anyone else's) what would be a good dose to start with these parameters in a 250 litres tank.

 

My KH is 14,3, Cal 575, Mg 1260,, salinity 1,025, and PH is 8. I have an efficient skimmer and run an algae reactor with chaeto although have little growth suggesting low nutrients.

 

Any guidance would be useful thanks

 

Mike

[seabass]

Check out this interesting series of videos from BRS TV: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBaMLrfToJyz1q24UlrFY6o5zppAVrjMV

 

Ryan doesn't state that these ideas are absolute, and I believe that some of what is speculated will eventually be proven to be incomplete, or in some cases, even inaccurate.  Still, it's good to see such a discussion on this subject, and much of what he states is really quite helpful.