Yeah, it may take some time to get those numbers up. In my case I had to dose NO3 (which was zero) a bit just for a couple of days, then suddenly NO3 went sky high to >25 ppm and stayed there. With phosphates though, I had zero, and after more than 2 weeks of dosing, I still can't get readings. I get a random read of 0.02/0.03 once every few days but then it goes back to zero right away (in a matter of hours!). Go figure. Maybe I'll have to finally throw a hot dog or a big mac in my tank and see how it likes it! Maybe I'll get some readings that way - LOLYesterday I received in the mail my Nitrate pro test kit and my Seed Ranch order of KN03. I took a baseline reading for Nitrates and as suspected was at 0. I mixed a solution of KN03 of 12.34 grams of KN03 and filled the container to 500 ml with RODI water. This will give my tank of 160 gal 0.25 ppm of Nitrate with a dose of 10 ml. I'm no scientist so I got this calculation from https://rotalabutterfly.com/nutrient-calculator.php If you think this is off please let me know. I opted to stick to the ppm that the test kit tests at (not that this makes much of a difference but .25 is a good number to go with). My dosing is again in the refugium after flow turned off and water level stable.
For the curious, here are the compound breakdowns from the calculations:
Mix 12.34 grams of KNO3 to 500mL RODI. Adding 10mL of this mix to 160 gal aquarium to yield:
Element ppm/degree
NO3 0.25
N 0.06
K 0.16
Dose 40 ml of Flourish Phosphorus to 160 gal aquarium adds:
Element ppm/degree
K2O 0.13
K 0.11
P2O5 0.2
P 0.09
PO4 0.26
So considering that my initial dose was only 30 ml, that would have raised my PO4 to 0.2. Something is consuming it!
Side note: I decided for the sake of research I will not manually clean, scrub or blow off the Dinos from the rocks. This way I can easily observe rise or decline of visible dinos. Since my tank is so new and so clean the dinos are not brown but more translucent brown/yellow snot like. I have little to no dinos on the sand or in shaded areas of the tank. I have not observed as much dion growth in my refugium it seems to be most prevalent in my display tank. Also I'm not running my skimmer or GFO and Carbon. Nor am I cleaning my glass. I only have my bio-reactor running keeping my nutrients too low to measure.
Day 1 - continued
N03 measured at 0
Mixed 500 ml solution of KN03 to 10 ml = 0.25 ppm of N03 per 160 gal
Dosed 10 ml of KN03
Dosed 40 ml of P2O5
I observed some pods moving around in the algae were I couldn't find them before.
Day 2
N03 measured at 0
P04 measured at 0
Observations:
Dinos don't seem to be affected by the spike of Nitrates overnight (I'll take some pictures so I can compare better)
My corals looked a bit upset by the swing
My fish seem unaffected
The algae looks about the same (hard to tell if its greening up) I'll take some pictures so I can compare better
After my initial results it seems I need to test to see how fast the uptake is. Depending on that result I may have to dose more often throughout the day.