It without a doubt drops phosphate! The only thing I can wrap my head around is the accelerated coral growth is consuming both the phosphate and nitrates at a faster rate as they grow. Obviously no scientifical data to back this just observation and experience but I talked to a couple of the big dogs in the sps farming business and this has been their experience also with phosphates.
Could be???? Idk haha! All I know is ammonia makes the tank phosphate limited.. kinda crazy..
It would be good if others share their observations on this. If consistently observed, it could be pretty useful. It’s certainly something people should watch out for. Unknowingly driving phosphate to zero is bad news. Given we are on page 53 and think we are the first ones to notice makes me wonder how common it is.
After 2 weeks.
My alk dropped 1dkh over the 2 weeks then I had a kalk over dose that precipitated it and it dropped to 4.8 I’ve gotten it back up to 9 currently so I can’t help much there.. I will see what happens over the next 2 weeks and go from there
From my experience thus far and talking to a couple people who have been using ammonia for awhile now it’s almost a 1:1 ratio with dosing phosphate and ammonia or really close to that. I’m about half now and still have p04 on the low end of .02.. once I get more phosphate in the mail” I ordered some food grade off of one of Randy’s recipes” I will up my dose to 1:1 and see where my phosphates end up.Just for fun…
Here is my phosphate data since starting daily ammonium bicarbonate dosing. All the peaks are in the morning, all the troughs are in the evening. I did not always measure 2x per day. Ammonia dosing happens after the morning test.
There could be numerous explanations for the pattern but what is interesting about this pattern is it’s exactly opposite what it was before dosing ammonia. In the past, the morning reading was the trough and the evening reading was the peak. The only change is addition of a small amount of daily ammonia plus heavier feeding due to a new fish addition.
Any one or all of these readings have potential error but the pattern is pretty interesting. I think an explanation could be the ammonia addition results in consumption of phosphate, but it’s a small dose so not having a huge impact.
Nitrate has been 5-10 ppm during this period.
I see, just did some research on Google, ammonium bicarbonate has higher ph (7-8.5) than Ammonium Chloride (4.5-6) so it is not enough to raise ph. But ammonium bicarbonate realease co2, which can reduce ph level. I struggle to keep ph from 8-8.3, but seem that recipe 2 also not reduce ph?
I’ll let @Randy Holmes-Farley comment, but my doses of ammonium bicarbonate have not registered any change on my pH probe and it doesn’t impact alkalinity. I suspect at the CO2 is insignificant at the levels we are adding to the tank.
