Carbon dosing for 1 1/2 weeks, no sign of nitrate reduction (skimming wet).

[stephj03]

And when I say you hit paydirt, I mean you are getting reliable, manageable production from your scrubber. Assuming it is appropriately sized and you keep providing P04 via food/additives it will lower nitrate over time.

Unless you have a massive unknown import of N03 going on. Hence my question about source water (N03/Chloramine in tap/mixed saltwater.

An indirect way to approach it would be to skip a water change or two and see if the numbers stabilize at all or go down.

The only caution about the whole thing is that your tank seems to be telling you it wants more nutrients not less, while your scrubber seems to say the opposite.....

 

[Graffiti Spot]

I guess that amount of vinegar in two weeks on a 300 is not too bad. The mazzei injectors are great but on the lifereef skimmer has that neck where the waterline is near the neck that reduces very quick and when it was near the flange it would sometimes act up on me. That’s why I moved to using other skimmers with the mazzei injectors. My skimming has been rock solid since doing that. My skimmer lid also was getting blown off at one point though and that was very annoying. The mazzei injectors make some serious skim.
I wouldn’t stop trying the carbon source if your seeing nothing bad. Sometimes it just takes time for it to start working well. I just checked and my nutrients are finally falling after adding fish about two months ago. It’s not hard to run an algae reactor and use a carbon source at the same time if your careful. I think the companies just want to make sure they are covered from people saying that a certain product crashed their tank.
Got any pics of the tank and how things look?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

If someone was going to dose vitamin B12, what would you recommend? I found 50g of pure methylcobalamin powder for $674.96. I bet they are stingy with the amount of vitamin B12 in anything that is sold for aquarium use has(except fish food).

I think one would need a pure form as opposed to the diluted powders designed to prevent human overdose since the other ingredients (such as dextrose) would have their own effects.

 

[Fishingandreefing]

Took me around 3 months, patience

 

[Jon_W79]

I think one would need a pure form as opposed to the diluted powders designed to prevent human overdose since the other ingredients (such as dextrose) would have their own effects.

If I was going to experiment with vitamin B12 again, I think I would use some vitamin B12 drops that has 5000 mcg per serving and it has 60 servings. I think it would be ok as long as it isn't too sweet. I am totally dismissing the experiment I did, because I was only dosing (per directions) .7 mcg of vitamin B12 a week in 60 gallons of water. I think it may have been way too little (at least to start with) for what I was trying to do.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

I believe this is hurting the process, as I have ramped up the dosing the foam isn’t going down into the cup and blowing the lid off. I tried clamping it down and it caused air the spray out off the small hole in the lid and still wouldn’t break down and fill the cup. Not sure how to fix this!

Sorry for the photo, when I upload from my phone it rotates. I’ll fix when I get home on pc but you get the idea.

 

[Jon_W79]

I believe this is hurting the process, as I have ramped up the dosing the foam isn’t going down into the cup and blowing the lid off. I tried clamping it down and it caused air the spray out off the small hole in the lid and still wouldn’t break down and fill the cup. Not sure how to fix this!

Sorry for the photo, when I upload from my phone it rotates. I’ll fix when I get home on pc but you get the idea.

I don't know how to fix it. But I don't think the increased foam guarantees that the denitrifying bacteria are growing more. I think the increased foam could possibly be the result of some things dying. I wonder if it is possible that you could have a lot of vinegar in the water(if the denitrifying bacteria can't use all the vinegar that you are adding)that is killing some organisms?

 

[2Wheelsonly]

I don't know how to fix it. But I don't think the increased foam guarantees that the denitrifying bacteria are growing more. I think the increased foam could possibly be the result of some things dying. I wonder if it is possible that you could have a lot of vinegar in the water(if the denitrifying bacteria can't use all the vinegar that you are adding)that is killing some organisms?

I may try switching to a conservative dose of vodka and see if there is any effect.

 

[Jon_W79]

I may try switching to a conservative dose of vodka and see if there is any effect.

Vodka dosing might work if it could grow a different species of bacteria(I kind of doubt it).
If you're going to continue vinegar dosing,(and you're not going to try the idea I had) I think you should slowly reduce the vinegar dosing until nitrates rise a significant amount, then slowly increase dosing until nitrates get back where they were. You have said you have used Nopox before. If you've had limited results with Nopox and it wasn't due to low phosphate, dosing vodka might not be the solution.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I believe this is hurting the process, as I have ramped up the dosing the foam isn’t going down into the cup and blowing the lid off. I tried clamping it down and it caused air the spray out off the small hole in the lid and still wouldn’t break down and fill the cup. Not sure how to fix this!

Sorry for the photo, when I upload from my phone it rotates. I’ll fix when I get home on pc but you get the idea.

I'm confused. What is hurting what process?

Foam formation and/or removal is not necessarily an indication of denitrification or nitrate uptake.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

I would just keep going if the corals are fine. It takes a few months to even see results and your already seeing the foam stiffen up which means it’s working in my book. My foam finally stopped blowing the lid off and nitrates have stopped rising. I have had good luck adding a little vodka In for some of the vinegar in the past. But mostly I think you just need time for the population of bacteria to grow and do it’s job.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

So I noticed my corals getting VERY pale, keeping po4 and 0.03 via dosing and my nitrates are at 25. I decided to stop carbon doing and after 2 days they are already starting to look good again.

I am wondering if there is something in my tank that's triggering my nitrate test kits to be off and that maybe I have very little nitrate? I just checked nitrite and got a reading of "0", starting to really think testing nitrates is a waste of time. If it gets to 50 then 100 then it does and it really doesn't matter.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

So I noticed my corals getting VERY pale, keeping po4 and 0.03 via dosing and my nitrates are at 25. I decided to stop carbon doing and after 2 days they are already starting to look good again.

I am wondering if there is something in my tank that's triggering my nitrate test kits to be off and that maybe I have very little nitrate? I just checked nitrite and got a reading of "0", starting to really think testing nitrates is a waste of time. If it gets to 50 then 100 then it does and it really doesn't matter.

Nitrite is the only thing that would do that. Might be one of the kits is off, or something else entirely is causing pale corals.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Here goes nothing!

 

[Dan_P]

I have a mature SPS reef (300G) and my nitrates have hit 25ish. Even with very light feeding (LRS reef frozen) once daily I can't seem to get them down.

Before carbon dosing I had to dos po4 as I was showing 0-1ppb (0.003) on my hanna ULR checker. My fish load isn't huge for the size tank I have but they are getting big (3 yellow tang, 1 sailfin, 1 hippo, 1 powder blue and 2 wrasse).

My corals are getting pale which is odd as I have kept my po4 via daily dosing at a consistent (11ppb) 0.03 and my nitrates are stuck at 25. I have used 3 nitrate test kits and also tested my kits against the water from purchased frags. I am using a ton of light so that may be the reason for light colors...

I started out with 35ml of nopox and switched to vinegar after three days. My daily dose of vinegar is 80ml and it has not put a dent on my nitrates. My skimming has become a pain because it's either super dark and thick and overnight goes wet and overflows (preventing export). Recently I have been just checking my skimmer cup every 3 hours and basically taking out 8 cups of light colored skim daily.

At what point should I see nitrate reduction? I just want to get down to 5-10 but it's not budging!

I just completed a study of feeding aquarium water with glutamine. It seems that the organisms, presumably bacteria, consume carbon for energy production and biomass formation. Biomass formation is one way nitrate levels decrease. Using an estimated glutamine consumption rate, I figure that 0.25 mL of vinegar consumes 1 ppm nitrate in one gallon of aquarium water. If this is true, then you won’t see nitrate reduction until the rate of nitrate consumption exceeds nitrate production AND is large enough to be detected by hobby kits. So, like many aquarists, you might be giving up before you added enough organic carbon.

 

[Cory]

I believe this is hurting the process, as I have ramped up the dosing the foam isn’t going down into the cup and blowing the lid off. I tried clamping it down and it caused air the spray out off the small hole in the lid and still wouldn’t break down and fill the cup. Not sure how to fix this!

Sorry for the photo, when I upload from my phone it rotates. I’ll fix when I get home on pc but you get the idea.

If you want you can add a few drops of oil to the cup and it collapses the foam.

 

[weamdog]

Here goes nothing!

Nice. This is gonna take a while. You may want to get some bacter gen MD to speed things up a little. Even so, it may take a week to move more than a drop a sec. I even tried flowing water from one into another and that didn't work very well. Guess some things you just can't rush (oh, that's right, his is saltwater, haha). It's been about 6 weeks for me with nitrates between 50 and 100 to start and I'm now down to 10 and about ready drop down to one denitrator. Corals are doing much better, some are growing that have not done anything for months. At least one with a little bit of algae on the tips is about ready to kick butt. You can see it changing colors and thickening getting ready to choke it out.

You may notice a hit to PH as the calcium doesn't do too good of a job buffering. Mine is dropping down to 7.95 on some nights with a fresh air intake. No biggie just as long as the nitrates disappear!

 

[Graffiti Spot]

So my nutrients are finally coming down. I can’t believe it either because all I did was add some kp live rock and within a day I could see a huge drop in po4. Maybe the rock bound what was in the water? Not sure but I gotta keep an eye on it. I finally cut my dose in half after years of dosing a lot of vinegar and I also added a little vodka back to the mix. I think they key was the new rock and bacteria from it. I ordered 40 pounds and could only put 25 or so in the first day. Then when I tested the next day I saw the nutrients drop and I was scared to add the rest.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Well that didn’t last long. I am not sure what happened but Since I tested yesterday my po4 went right back up to reading 60ppb on the checker, it read 2ppb two days ago. Not sure what caused it to read so low and then just go back to normal. I am kinda scared of necrosis now that it was such a big wierd swing. Of course it wouldn’t stay at nsw levels, that’s just to easy... I am going to tell myself this was all a testing error even though I have never had issues with the Hanna.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Well, I am 1 month in and still high concentration of nitrites coming out of my reactor; it's like it just wont cycle. Effluent is less than 1 drip per second. I HAVE to assume SOMETHING is happening due to nitrites coming out of the reactor. Effluent has high nitrites but the tank is 0 so I have to just assume with a glimmer of faint hope that something is happening and that my tank isn't some enigma that defies every scientific resolution possible.

Carbon dosing wont work, massive water changes don't work...What in the heck is going on with my tank? It's so frustrating that this stuff isn't cut and dry. Nothing seems to work to lower nitrates, they ONLY go up...eventually it's going to crash. I bet I could do 100% water change and still have high nitrates.