Best and cheapest nitrate supplement?

[Ocean’s Piece]

Heard many things and I don’t know where to start. Heard a lot of people saying potassium nitrate, some saying neonitro, and some other hobbyist made nitrate dosing products like FishofHex. What product is the easiest to dose, most accurate, and most affordable?

 

[glb]

I like Neonitro. I haven’t used the others so I don’t have a point of reference with price or performance, but this one works for me.

 

[Ocean’s Piece]

I like Neonitro. I haven’t used the others so I don’t have a point of reference with price or performance, but this one works for me.

I have heard a lot of that too, and the price differences between each types of nitrate supplements aren’t that different. Only thing I have heard about neonitro is dosing accuracy, but then again, since when does extreme accuracy matter in regards to nitrate. Plus, this stuff is pretty widely available, so this is probably what I’ll be getting. But if anyone has any other thoughts, I’d love to hear.

 

[homer1475]

Ive used stump remover, DIY potassium nitrate(Both DIY solutions) bought from loudwolf, Sodium nitrate, and neonitro. I would say for price, DIY nitrate solutions are by far cheaper and the most accurate, but you have to be accurate in making your solution.

Not that neonitro is a bad product, but I know Randy doesn't like it because of the unknown in the bottle, as opposed to a pure product like a DIY solution(you know its only potasium nitrate and RO/DI).

For my time and money, noenitro is what I use. Just easy to open the bottle and pour a desired amount in the tank, and get a within a reasonable range of a number I expect to see. I don't have to take the time to weigh out the product, mix in RO/DI, then figure out how much to dose(DIY). I also have never seen any negative effect from the "unknown" in the bottle. I can also buy it from my LFS rather then order it off the net, and wait to have it delivered. Just in case I need some in an emergency.

They all work, and IMO none is better then the other. It comes down to how much time, Vs. money you want to invest.

Neonitro is a little bit more expensive, but it's easier to use IMO.

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

Randy has said many times to stick with sodium nitrate over potassium nitrate unless you are testing for potassium.

Sodium Nitrate, Reagent Grade (chemically Pure) – 5 ...

 

[jda]

Fish food... more of it.

Why do you want to raise your nitrate? If it is for your corals, you are not likely going to end up doing what you think that you are doing. If you want to poison dinos or cyano or something, then that is different.

 

[Ocean’s Piece]

Fish food... more of it.

Why do you want to raise your nitrate? If it is for your corals, you are not likely going to end up doing what you think that you are doing. If you want to poison dinos or cyano or something, then that is different.

The one and only master of chaos spurs me to buy nitrate.

plus on my tank, I’m unsure why, but my nitrates are most always at 0. Never had problems. Then I unplugged my protein skimmer and nitrates began to rise. Decided to put it on a timer but it skimmed too much on that time. Now we’re back at 0 but with problems for the first time. I see myself needing to dose nitrate to keep my levels in check. Only thing I can think it would be would be my chemi pure blue, but im unsure.

 

[jda]

Ok. I will leave you alone. I have probably posed enough on what you need to learn and do (not specifically to you, but to many others) to have good success if you find this road ultimately unsuccessful. Good luck with it. My apologies for posting.

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

The one and only master of chaos spurs me to buy nitrate.

plus on my tank, I’m unsure why, but my nitrates are most always at 0. Never had problems. Then I unplugged my protein skimmer and nitrates began to rise. Decided to put it on a timer but it skimmed too much on that time. Now we’re back at 0 but with problems for the first time. I see myself needing to dose nitrate to keep my levels in check. Only thing I can think it would be would be my chemi pure blue, but im unsure.

I have the same problem. Regardless of how much I feed, unless I dose..my nutrients bottom out and bring on the dinos. Luckily, when I dose my special solution, I keep JUST enough of both nitrate and phosphate in the tank to keep everything happy. I actually have my nitrate and phosphate pegged better than my Ca and Alk.

 

[Reefahholic]

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

Loudwolf is kinda expensive on the sodium nitrate. The reagent grade link from Amazon earlier you get 5x as much. Given you are going to burn through NaNo3 faster than the Na3PO4, I would be getting the NaNo3 from amazon.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Food grade sodium nitrate is cheapest and nearly best.
Food or pharma grade calcium nitrate is a little better as it adds balanced calcium and alk, but is hard to find.

Potassium nitrate is a poor choice, IMO, even if food grade or other high grade, unless you monitor or know you need potassium. Home depot grades are not worth the risk regardless.

 

[Ocean’s Piece]

Ok. I will leave you alone. I have probably posed enough on what you need to learn and do (not specifically to you, but to many others) to have good success if you find this road ultimately unsuccessful. Good luck with it. My apologies for posting.

Sorry if I came off as I don’t want you to post. I want to learn something new. I don’t think the way I do Reefing is perfect at all. That’s why I’m on this forum anyways. So I’m open to criticisms and questioning like that water change thread. God that thing was controversial. But I did learn some stuff from it and I will most likely give the occasional water change a shot after hearing what everyone had to say. So pester me, I probably need it lol.

 

[jda]

Study up on your corals getting nitrogen from ammonia and ammonium as not only the preferred method for some, but the only way for others. Some hosts can convert nitrate for the zoox, which are dinos, in the corals to use, but it comes at a high cost at like 30-60% more energy needed. There are not a lot of great numbers in wholesale on this other than ammonia and ammonium is way more efficient - you can find one or two on a specific clade, protein or coral, but they all caution not to use the transitive property on their results.

...so higher residual numbers for your coral are not necessary. Mine stay at .1, similar to the ocean, where you need an IC test to detect them, but I also feed a ton so my fish keep ammonia/ammonium in steady supply.

My big issue with people dosing nitrate to get nitrogen to their corals is that they usually have corals that are not thriving - hence the thought, concern and posts. Do non thriving corals need to waste energy converting backend nitrate to nitrogen instead of just using ammonia/ammonium directly. Most would be better off dosing ammonium, but they are scared of it for some reason but will put stump remover and all other kinds of unknowns into their tanks.

If you want to growth limit and/or kill/poison dinos or cyano, then higher nitrates can do this. Big thread and message board posts say that this nitrate is to allow stuff to grow to outcompete the dinos, but that is not what happens. The fauna that they talk about mostly needs to get nitrogen from food and also the dinos and cyano cannot tolerate too high of nitrate (it is deadly to all living things at some level... and different for everything).

 

[Reefahholic]

Food grade sodium nitrate is cheapest and nearly best.
Food or pharma grade calcium nitrate is a little better as it adds balanced calcium and alk, but is hard to find.

Potassium nitrate is a poor choice, IMO, even if food grade or other high grade, unless you monitor or know you need potassium. Home depot grades are not worth the risk regardless.

I agree. Stump remover is a product of the past.

These days I’m looking for purity at an affordable cost.

 

[Sean Clark]

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Study up on your corals getting nitrogen from ammonia and ammonium as not only the preferred method for some, but the only way for others. Some hosts can convert nitrate for the zoox, which are dinos, in the corals to use, but it comes at a high cost at like 30-60% more energy needed. There are not a lot of great numbers in wholesale on this other than ammonia and ammonium is way more efficient - you can find one or two on a specific clade, protein or coral, but they all caution not to use the transitive property on their results.

...so higher residual numbers for your coral are not necessary. Mine stay at .1, similar to the ocean, where you need an IC test to detect them, but I also feed a ton so my fish keep ammonia/ammonium in steady supply.

My big issue with people dosing nitrate to get nitrogen to their corals is that they usually have corals that are not thriving - hence the thought, concern and posts. Do non thriving corals need to waste energy converting backend nitrate to nitrogen instead of just using ammonia/ammonium directly. Most would be better off dosing ammonium, but they are scared of it for some reason but will put stump remover and all other kinds of unknowns into their tanks.

If you want to growth limit and/or kill/poison dinos or cyano, then higher nitrates can do this. Big thread and message board posts say that this nitrate is to allow stuff to grow to outcompete the dinos, but that is not what happens. The fauna that they talk about mostly needs to get nitrogen from food and also the dinos and cyano cannot tolerate too high of nitrate (it is deadly to all living things at some level... and different for everything).

I do not disagree that ammonia dosing has benefits that may make it a better choice than nitrate dosing.

The drawback is it must be done more carefully (an overdose obviously has more severe issues) and manual once or twice a day dosing is not a good plan, so a reliable pump system is needed.

FWIW, I don't agree that dosing nitrate causes a toxic level of nitrate for dinos, and that is now it helps with dinos. Do you have evidence of this?

Some great tanks have 100 ppm of nitrate. Great thriving SPS corals, etc. I do not think it is as problematic as you suggest when folks dose a few ppm a day.

 

[Ocean’s Piece]

Food grade sodium nitrate is cheapest and nearly best.
Food or pharma grade calcium nitrate is a little better as it adds balanced calcium and alk, but is hard to find.

Potassium nitrate is a poor choice, IMO, even if food grade or other high grade, unless you monitor or know you need potassium. Home depot grades are not worth the risk regardless.

are there any specific sodium nitrate that you recommend or calculators? I have found this website for calculators but it doesn't include sodium nitrate

James' Planted Tank - Dosing Calculator

 

[jda]

Those tanks have a subset of SPS and the owners have watched many other types pull back and die. Ross talks about this a lot, but few listen. He cannot keep what he once did. I seriously doubt that when most people are asking about these things, they have given into the the subset approach. Most who post about this are watching their fancy new, trendy corals not thrive and nearly none of these are in the subset.

You know that I am not an article linker type of guy. I read, learn and assimilate and sometimes put into action. One was a talk at the St. Louis zoo a long time ago by a marine bacteriologist that mostly was speaking about dinos in hosts, but also free... along with some articles here and there over the years (most study adaptability in low nitrogen environments, but you can find a few that touch on high). Dinos that use transporters specifically designed for depleted environments and will suffer beyond repletion into excess. Cyano and other matting bacteria is well studied to die at fairly low (for us) residual nitrate levels. If you are still skeptical, head over to the dino thread and watch them melt away and disappear when people raise their residual nitrate levels - there is a small factor here where the transporters also have adapted to use no2 and that might play a role with backend dosing only, but this is something that I have not read or heard enough about to speak with most people about... but this requires cutting back on feeding to keep no2 tank levels down which also limits ammonia/ammonium from the corals.

You don't see any benefit of educating people letting people know what is happening? I never said that it was problematic at these levels, just that it might not be doing what the mobs on message boards think that it is - they think that it is food and that adding more will get more to the corals to use like feeding fish more... only that the people asking seldom have healthy enough corals to convert it and that feeding the fish more or dosing ammonium is probably a better way. Hard to argue that feeding more is harmful or difficult even if ammonium dosing is not feasible for some.

Besides, most of them think that it is magic that the no3 disappears in a day or two and don't even know that the anoxic bacteria has taken care of it. ...so maybe I am wasting my time, if that was somewhat your point.

FWIW - I have a friend who drip ammonium from a bag somehow. I don't need it, so I never paid attention to the particulars.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

are there any specific sodium nitrate that you recommend or calculators? I have found this website for calculators but it doesn't include sodium nitrate

James' Planted Tank - Dosing Calculator

Use the entry for "nitrate from potassium nitrate". The sodium nitrate is 15% more potent, so dose a little less than calculated (though it really doesn't matter to be that accurate for nitrate dosing).