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Help me figure out my nutrients


tidepooldreamer

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tidepooldreamer

I've struggled with low nutrients in this tank as long as it's been running - which is understandable, since my stocking is very very low (working on that one, bit by bit!). To be fair, short of minimal growth, I've not actually had any problems per se: apart from one frag I lost very early on which I think was unrelated, none of my corals have died, and I've not had any dinos.

 

In addition to adding more livestock + trying to feed a bit heavier (worried about too much food causing ammonia issues, though), I picked up some NeoNitro and NeoPhos to dose. The NeoNitro seems to be going okay - I dosed ~3.4ml into 1.5 gallons of water change water, which worked out to 20ppm nitrates as expected and should give me about 3-4ppm diluted out in my whole tank if I did the math correctly (it's about 9 gallons, I believe).

 

The NeoPhos on the other hand I'm having a hard time with. I'm not sure at this point if I've just calculated the dose entirely wrong, or if I got a dud bottle. I dosed 0.6ml of it into the same 1.5 gallons, which I expected to give me 0.10ppm in that volume, to dilute out into 0.02ppm in my whole tank. I tested with the salifert kit and got undetectable phosphates; took a sample to my not-so-local LFS who use Hanna checkers and also got 0ppm.

The back of the bottle for NeoPhos says the dose is gallons x ppm increase desired x 3.785 - so 9 * 0.02 * 3.785 should be 0.68ml.

I also tried making a really strong mix just to check it, 1.2ml of NeoPhos dosed into 1 cup of saltwater - I think that should have given me 5ppm. According to my Salifert kit, it was actually 0.25ppm (but hooray! finally a non-zero reading!)

 

Apologies for the wall of text but - is my dose math just way off here? Does it sound like I got a bad bottle? Is there another supplement you'd recommend?

 

On a more general note, what's a good starter level of phosphate to aim for? I know it needs to be detectable but I also don't want to shock the system with a sudden increase (although I think from what I've read on here, maybe that's not really a concern?)

 

Thanks for any help!

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When I was using the NeoPhos I was doing about 20 ml straight into my 16 gal.  It took about 3 days for it to maintain a reading.  I think one day I dosed 20 ml twice.  After I started getting a reading (using the Hannah phos checker) I was able to lower the dose over a week.  I kept testing daily and I needed to add less and less.  Then it stayed up all by itself.  My tank seems happiest when my phos is around 10-20.  I think every tank is different.  As you raise your levels, your coral will look better.  I don't have very many coral, but I had RFA which really opened up and became bright with the higher phos level.

 

Hope that helps a bit.

 

 

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