Ammonia is Our Friend!

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Anyone else noticing a DKH drop when using Ammonia, I started using it for a bout a week or two and always notice a drop in alkalinity after dosing on my afternoon test. In the morning ill be at 7.5dkh dose around 9 am and at 12pm ill be at 7.2. Either the corals are using more alk because they like the ammonia and are growing or the ammonia drops it or both.

What exactly are you dosing? Ammonium chloride depletes alk, ammonium bicarbonate does not.

 

[DaScubaSteve]

Ammonium Chloride haha, Ill be switching to the bicarbonate

 

[Ziggy17]

So I’ve started dosing the stock ammonia bicarbonate solution in my 75g at 6cc daily, split into three 2cc doses. Two questions.

1) can I dose the ammonia upstream from my skimmer? Will the skimmer pull some of the dose out before it gets to the DT? My sump has 4 chambers. Reef mat. Fuge. Skimmer. Return.

2) should I still be carbon dosing while dosing ammonia, or is that counterintuitive?

Thanks.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Skimmer won’t remove any significant amount.

What is the reason to carbon dose?

 

[Ziggy17]

Skimmer won’t remove any significant amount.

What is the reason to carbon dose?

I’m carbon dosing to help keep my nutrients stable and in check. My tank likes to keep a higher PO4 (.1-.2), even with a fuge. My nitrates stay in the 6-8 range which is fine, but the elevated PO4 invites nuisance algae to the party. With carbon it stays in the .06-.08 range.

If I stop dosing vinegar, PO4 balloons up again.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I’m carbon dosing to help keep my nutrients stable and in check. My tank likes to keep a higher PO4 (.1-.2), even with a fuge. My nitrates stay in the 6-8 range which is fine, but the elevated PO4 invites nuisance algae to the party. With carbon it stays in the .06-.08 range.

If I stop dosing vinegar, PO4 balloons up again.

Ok. In most cases, carbon dosing isn’t that great for phosphate, but if it is working, there’s no reason to stop. Just expect that the organisms using up the acetate from vinegar will be grabbing up some of the ammonia, so dosing might need to be higher than it otherwise would be.

 

[Ziggy17]

Ok. In most cases, carbon dosing isn’t that great for phosphate, but if it is working, there’s no reason to stop. Just expect that the organisms using up the acetate from vinegar will be grabbing up some of the ammonia, so dosing might need to be higher than it otherwise would be.

Thanks for that advice Randy, I wouldn’t have known about that. If currently dosing 30cc of vinegar daily, what do you think I should bump it up to?

 

[Ziggy17]

Ok so since I’ve started dosing the ammonium bicarbonate, my alk has been all over the map. I had it steady at about 8.4 for about 6 months with dosing Sodium Bicarbonate and AFR 4 times a day. About 2 months ago, I started dosing carbon. Most recently this week I started dosing Ammonium Bicarbonate. Now I’m seeing my alk drop off down to 8.1, then 7.9, then 7.6 and then this morning down to 7.1. My hammers are the only corals that seem bothered by it. I’m testing with both my trident and Hannah. Is there any chemical way that the NH4HCO3 is causing alk drops? Or can it be tricking my test kits?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Ok so since I’ve started dosing the ammonium bicarbonate, my alk has been all over the map. I had it steady at about 8.4 for about 6 months with dosing Sodium Bicarbonate and AFR 4 times a day. About 2 months ago, I started dosing carbon. Most recently this week I started dosing Ammonium Bicarbonate. Now I’m seeing my alk drop off down to 8.1, then 7.9, then 7.6 and then this morning down to 7.1. My hammers are the only corals that seem bothered by it. I’m testing with both my trident and Hannah. Is there any chemical way that the NH4HCO3 is causing alk drops? Or can it be tricking my test kits?

I do not think it can have any direct effect. It can certainly be increasing the rate of calcification in the tank if corals grow faster with the added ammonia.

 

[Ziggy17]

I do not think it can have any direct effect. It can certainly be increasing the rate of calcification in the tank if corals grow faster with the added ammonia.

Thanks for the quick reply Sir,
I think I’ll check my alk right before and right after my ammonia dose for a couple days and see what the tests say. Might be messing with the tests. I haven’t noticed a drop in calcium to match the drop in alk, but that could also be because the apex calcium testing is inherently flawed.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks for the quick reply Sir,
I think I’ll check my alk right before and right after my ammonia dose for a couple days and see what the tests say. Might be messing with the tests. I haven’t noticed a drop in calcium to match the drop in alk, but that could also be because the apex calcium testing is inherently flawed.

Ok, let us know what you find.

 

[.AcroKiller.]

Has anyone reached a stable dose amount? I would think no one does. I would think it would be just like adding extra fish to the tank at some point the bacteria will stabilize according to the extra load. So in that case would it be better just to add nitrates ?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Has anyone reached a stable dose amount? I would think no one does. I would think it would be just like adding extra fish to the tank at some point the bacteria will stabilize according to the extra load. So in that case would it be better just to add nitrates ?

Not sure what you are asking. There’s a long discussion thread of folks experiences. Some have seen nitrate decline. I recommend dosing ammonia until nitrate stabilizes at a few ppm or there’s some other reason to stop.

I don’t think that just because there are nitrifiers present, that corals having a shot at the dosed ammonia is not helpful.

DIY Ammonia dosing for low nitrate systems

Some reef aquaria have chronic low nitrogen availability. One indicator is very low nitrate. Nitrate dosing is a fine remedy, but it is possible that ammonia dosing may be more beneficial for some organisms since ammonia can be energetically easier to assimilate than is nitrate. For this...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[.AcroKiller.]

The reason I ask this is because I seen a few people experience some death to their chaeto algae while dosing ammonia. And have gone back to dosing nitrates only and their chaeto started growing again. Like I said it’s just me thinking.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The reason I ask this is because I seen a few people experience some death to their chaeto algae while dosing ammonia. And have gone back to dosing nitrates only and their chaeto started growing again. Like I said it’s just me thinking.

I dont think that is likely due to the ammonia. It would be like blaming chaeto deaths on a new fish. Macroalgae deal with ammonia just fine.

I can believe that if N was very low, they were not dosing enough ammonia.

 

[.AcroKiller.]

I dont think that is likely due to the ammonia. It would be like blaming chaeto deaths on a new fish. Macroalgae deal with ammonia just fine.

I can believe that if N was very low, they were not dosing enough ammonia.

Thanks for the knowledge Randy. This is why I ask.

 

[Hans-Werner]

The reason I ask this is because I seen a few people experience some death to their chaeto algae while dosing ammonia. And have gone back to dosing nitrates only and their chaeto started growing again. Like I said it’s just me thinking.

... but maybe it is due to dosing nitrate?

Chaetomorpha is one of these algae which cells are like bubbles with a huge vacuole as the center. I once have measure the vacuole liquid of a grape alga, and it had an extremely high nitrate concentration > 100 ppm while in the water the nitrate concentration was very low. Obviously these kinds of algae use nitrate for osmoregulation of their vacuole.

Green algae are nitrophiles and maybe they prefer nitrate over ammonium. However, this doesn't make ammonium less valuable for corals.

What I don't understand: I thought Chaetomorpha algae are grown to remove nitrate. Then nitrate is dosed to grow Chaetomorpha. Is this correct like I state it?

 

[rishma]

What I don't understand: I thought Chaetomorpha algae are grown to remove nitrate. Then nitrate is dosed to grow Chaetomorpha. Is this correct like I state it?

In the past I grew chaeto to remove phosphate. Obviously it removed nitrate too but I had to add nitrate to keep it from bottoming out so the chaeto would continue to grow and remove phosphate.

 

[Ziggy17]

Has anyone been brave enough to add this to their auto doser or are most just bolus dosing by hand? I want to trust my dosing heads, but it’s a little scary considering how fatal a dosing mishap could be compared to AFR or my Alk solution.

Edit- could the ammonium solution be added to the ATO water or with another supplement? That way if a dosing head went off the rails, it wouldn’t be straight ammonia being dumped, but a diluted version. Not great, but possibly less fatal.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Has anyone been brave enough to add this to their auto doser or are most just bolus dosing by hand? I want to trust my dosing heads, but it’s a little scary considering how fatal a dosing mishap could be compared to AFR or my Alk solution.

Edit- could the ammonium solution be added to the ATO water or with another supplement? That way if a dosing head went off the rails, it wouldn’t be straight ammonia being dumped, but a diluted version. Not great, but possibly less fatal.

I think many people in the diy dosing thread auto dose. ATO is tricky because nitrifiers might grow in the reservoir.