aspartic acid and glutumic acid as a carbon source

[ineption]

I love doing experiments so I thought I will purchase aminos as per ME suggestions :
This are the following aminos I purchased
L Aspertic Acid
Glutamic Acid
Glycine
This 3 are the most consumed my corals according to my research. Source https://reefs.com/magazine/aquarium...on/#:~:text=However, analysis of all the,2011).

So further research points to 2 factors in dissolving this aminos
And I am really over my head here , but I will pretend that I know what I am talking about
4M Hydrochloric acid or sodium Hydroxide via dripping method . Me suggested use of sodium carbonate. My question is which method is better and reef safe. Also how can we preserve best the mentioned solution. As vinegar will drop the pH of solution will that have any bad effects on the menioned aminos, is there other ways to preserve them?

 

[ineption]

@Randy Holmes-Farley

Hey Randy i have been doing further reading and found one other method that i really think could work to dissiolve this aminos and thats mixing them with Liquid ammonia.
How will addition of Lquid ammonia affect the reef thank together with following 3 amino acids NH3@30% + C4H7NO4 + C5H9NO4 + C₂H₅NO₂ .
I mean fish poo is ammonia so technically as long as biological filter is good it shouldn't be a problem .?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

@Randy Holmes-Farley

Hey Randy i have been doing further reading and found one other method that i really think could work to dissiolve this aminos and thats mixing them with Liquid ammonia.
How will addition of Lquid ammonia affect the reef thank together with following 3 amino acids NH3@30% + C4H7NO4 + C5H9NO4 + C₂H₅NO₂ .
I mean fish poo is ammonia so technically as long as biological filter is good it shouldn't be a problem .?

I'll assume this is not a joke. I'll also assume you mean an ammonia solution, not literally liquid ammonia? You're likely to poison your family using liquid ammonia at home.

IMO, there's no reason to use ammonia in this situation. Simple bases used as alkalinity supplements (e.g., sodium carbonate or hydroxide) will be fine.

 

[ineption]

I'll assume this is not a joke. I'll also assume you mean an ammonia solution, not literally liquid ammonia? You're likely to poison your family using liquid ammonia at home.

IMO, there's no reason to use ammonia in this situation. Simple bases used as alkalinity supplements (e.g., sodium carbonate or hydroxide) will be fine.

Lol didn't I say I will pretend I know what I am talking about.
It says 30% ammonia liquid. But after your advice Sodium Hydroxide looks more appealing to me
Thanks for reply Randy

 

[Reefology1]

I see no reason to think the aspartate and glutamate won't drive bacterial growth very well. It does provide nitrogen, however, so won't have quite as large of a nitrate reducing effect. It is possible it won't have any.

@Randy Holmes-Farley so if I dissolve 20g of l-aspartic and 18g of l-glutamic in a base solution contain 500ml ro/di and 30g sodium carbonate, then add this solution to a gallon of vinegar as @marke did, it will (in theory) reduce phosphates while maintaining nitrates?

If this is correct, then this would be a great solution for an aquarist who may be forced to reduce or stop carbon dosing vinegar (in spite of all the other benefits) when his nitrate test started reading near zero.

And if this same aquarist was to manipulate the amount of these (or perhaps any) amino acids in this mixture until his phosphates came down to a balanced level with nitrates. How would you advise this aquarist to proceed?

With:
- a specific supplement dosed to maintain phosphate?
- remove the aminos from the carbon dosing mixture and go back to only vinegar?
- ?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

@Randy Holmes-Farley so if I dissolve 20g of l-aspartic and 18g of l-glutamic in a base solution contain 500ml ro/di and 30g sodium carbonate, then add this solution to a gallon of vinegar as @marke did, it will (in theory) reduce phosphates while maintaining nitrates?

If this is correct, then this would be a great solution for an aquarist who may be forced to reduce or stop carbon dosing vinegar (in spite of all the other benefits) when his nitrate test started reading near zero.

And if this same aquarist was to manipulate the amount of these (or perhaps any) amino acids in this mixture until his phosphates came down to a balanced level with nitrates. How would you advise this aquarist to proceed?

With:
- a specific supplement dosed to maintain phosphate?
- remove the aminos from the carbon dosing mixture and go back to only vinegar?
- ?

The effect of adding amino acids is to supply a useful source of N.

When dosed alone, whether phosphate declines or nitrate just rises may depend on whether the tank was previously N limited.

If it is also being dosed with other sources of organic carbon (here the acetic acid in the vinegar) then it is more likely the nitrate may be stable or decline.

Whether these concentrations "maintain" nitrate can only be answered by experimental results in any given tank since some processes involving acetate use more nitrate (denitrification) than others (simple organism growth).

 

[Reefology1]

Thank you Randy for the info, but more importantly, the confidence to apply this knowledge knowing it comes from a trusted source.

I plan to make the carbon source mixture I noted above to test on my reef and report back here. If @marke objects (for any reason) to me posting it here, I will start a new thread.

 

[Reefology1]

I ordered l-aspartic and l-glutamic today. While I wait, I attempted to dissolve 7g of BCAA (l-leucine, l-Valine, l-isoleucine) 6g sodium Carbonate in 100ml ro/di and could not get them to dissolve fully.

Added 1ml of clear liquid to my 80 gal system and noticed no change in coral polyp extension. Will allow mixture to soak overnight in hopes it will fully dissolve and dose again when lights come on.

 

[ineption]

I ordered l-aspartic and l-glutamic today. While I wait, I attempted to dissolve 7g of BCAA (l-leucine, l-Valine, l-isoleucine) 6g sodium Carbonate in 100ml ro/di and could not get them to dissolve fully.

Added 1ml of clear liquid to my 80 gal system and noticed no change in coral polyp extension. Will allow mixture to soak overnight in hopes it will fully dissolve and dose again when lights come on.

You need to dilute with some kind of ethanol as some of them don't mix with water well.
Poyp extension is a controversial topic, ime any kind of amino dosed to my tank as always ended up bad, so the only thing I do is dose po4 and no3 nothing else. Since keep it stable like that my reef has flourished.
On the long run with aminos I found random stn rtn episodes just my experience. The logic of aminos makes sense on coral biology and its usefulness, however me thinks that probably there are other organsims / bacteria which also very much like aminos and I don't think there numbers increasing fairies well to corals esp sps. Before you jump in and say a lot on nonsense, notice I said only my thinking I.e anecdotal evidence if anything, I could and probably am incorrect or otherwise. More studies need to be conducted, until then it's us hobbiest that can do the observation and conclude our own thoughts on this subject

 

[Reefology1]

You need to dilute with some kind of ethanol as some of them don't mix with water well.
Poyp extension is a controversial topic, ime any kind of amino dosed to my tank as always ended up bad, so the only thing I do is dose po4 and no3 nothing else. Since keep it stable like that my reef has flourished.

Just got this from a google search:

l-Aspartic acid has a slightly acidic taste and is soluble in acid, slightly soluble in water, and difficult to dissolve in ethanol.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/je9007102

 

[Reefology1]

Ok, I'm reporting back as promised. the reason I didn't follow up sooner is because I've been dealing with undetectable N and started dosing ammonium chloride to bring them back up. For the last month or so, they have been measuring (with Hanna Checker) between .5 and 1ppm. for the last couple weeks, I have been manually dosing (2x 1ml daily) the amino formula below, and feel I'm seeing a slight improvement in the corals overall but can't be sure if the aminos are the reason why.

so today, I mixed 20g of l-aspartic and 18g of l-glutamic in a base solution contain 500ml ro/di and 30g sodium carbonate, then added this solution to 300ml of vinegar. This will be auto dosed in place of vinegar as a carbon source starting with 2x 1ml per day. Plan to work my way up from there based on tank parameters.

the goal is utilizing this carbon source, along with the manual ammonia dosing, to maintain my N, in hopes of slowly lowering P over time. I'll run this for a few months and document my findings in a new thread.

Cheers!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks for the update!