DIY Ammonia dosing for low nitrate systems

[rishma]

I’ve been letting my nitrate trend down and the cyano has gotten decidedly worse! Pretty interesting.

I will test in the morning but I suspect nitrate is near 1ppm at this point. If things are as I expect, I’ll dose 5 ppm nitrate a maintain it with ammonia to see if that changes anything.

Pretty surprised it’s getting worse with less N additions. If the addition of N nitrate appears to make things better I may have to start arguing in support of ratios

Fun hobby.

Doesn’t really belong in this thread but since I started here, a brief summary and conclusion…

• I mixed urea with my ammonium bicarbonate.
• I let my nitrate drop to below 3ppm (I had done this before without urea)
• After a month I had cyano and it persisted for another month, slowly increasing.
• I stopped ammonia + urea dosing. Nitrate dropped to near zero (I had done this before, too).
• Cyano got worse quickly.
• I spiked nitrate with sodium nitrate and recommenced daily ammonium bicarbonate (no urea)
• I dosed sodium nitrate daily to maintain 6-8ppm.
• After 1 week the cyano started getting patchy and not expanding.
• I siphoned out the remaining cyano.
• After 5 days it has not returned. The tiny patches I did not siphon out seem unchanged. Maybe shrinking, I’m not sure.

The only thing I can conclude is I likely won’t dose urea again and I’ll maintain nitrate above 5 ppm. A small daily dose of nitrate and ammonia is working well for me. I am about to leave for a month, I hope to return to a cyano free tank.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Doesn’t really belong in this thread but since I started here, a brief summary and conclusion…

• I mixed urea with my ammonium bicarbonate.
• I let my nitrate drop to below 3ppm (I had done this before without urea)
• After a month I had cyano and it persisted for another month, slowly increasing.
• I stopped ammonia + urea dosing. Nitrate dropped to near zero (I had done this before, too).
• Cyano got worse quickly.
• I spiked nitrate with sodium nitrate and recommenced daily ammonium bicarbonate (no urea)
• I dosed sodium nitrate daily to maintain 6-8ppm.
• After 1 week the cyano started getting patchy and not expanding.
• I siphoned out the remaining cyano.
• After 5 days it has not returned. The tiny patches I did not siphon out seem unchanged. Maybe shrinking, I’m not sure.

The only thing I can conclude is I likely won’t dose urea again and I’ll maintain nitrate above 5 ppm. A small daily dose of nitrate and ammonia is working well for me. I am about to leave for a month, I hope to return to a cyano free tank.

Very interesting and thanks for the summary!

 

[ramarro]

Hi, i am also facing low N, so got a question for you :)
can i pre-mix NaNO3 and bicarbonate ammonium in the same solution?

at the moment i am dosing a only bicarbonate ammonium, but it seems not strong enough, and i don't want to increase ammonium too much basically because i am a coward :)

unfortunately i have only 1 dosing pump 'free' so i wonder if i can mix them togheter (and what could be a reasonable proportion of the 2 powder)


Another question, it's 'reasonable' to increase BOTH N source and carbon dosing with the hope of consume po4 or that's not gonna happen? at the moment with carbon i am consuming a lot of N but PO4 don't move much. My idea was to slowly increase N (now i am at low range >0 and < 3, difficult to say with my test kit [aquaforest]) and when i reach like 5-10 start increase vinegar a bit, to see if it eat a bit of PO4. Does it make sense?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Hi, i am also facing low N, so got a question for you :)
can i pre-mix NaNO3 and bicarbonate ammonium in the same solution?

at the moment i am dosing a only bicarbonate ammonium, but it seems not strong enough, and i don't want to increase ammonium too much basically because i am a coward :)

unfortunately i have only 1 dosing pump 'free' so i wonder if i can mix them togheter (and what could be a reasonable proportion of the 2 powder)


Another question, it's 'reasonable' to increase BOTH N source and carbon dosing with the hope of consume po4 or that's not gonna happen? at the moment with carbon i am consuming a lot of N but PO4 don't move much. My idea was to slowly increase N (now i am at low range >0 and < 3, difficult to say with my test kit [aquaforest]) and when i reach like 5-10 start increase vinegar a bit, to see if it eat a bit of PO4. Does it make sense?

Yes, one can mix sodium nitrate and ammonium bicarbonate.

Yes, it's fine to dose N and carbon dose, either to reduce phosphate or to drive bacterial growth as a food for filter feeders.

 

[ramarro]

would be extremely beneficial to have a "proportion" of the two if any :) so i don't have to guess, there is a "reasonable" ratio that i should try to get?

for now i am at 20g/l as suggestion of ammonium bicarbonate.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

would be extremely beneficial to have a "proportion" of the two if any :) so i don't have to guess, there is a "reasonable" ratio that i should try to get?

for now i am at 20g/l as suggestion of ammonium bicarbonate.

What I do is dose ammonium bicarbonate to try to maintain nitrate in my target range, and I raise the amount dosed as needed if nitrate drops below 5 ppm.

IF I find the nitrate is suddenly too low (say, for example, the ammonia reservoir ran out), then I would dose 5-10 ppm nitrate at once.

Otherwise, I want to just dose more ammonia. There is no magic ratio that seems appropriate, except, IMO, 0 nitrate unless needed rapidly.

But certainly adding equal amounts of ammonia and nitrate (based on N content) is a fine thing to do.

 

[ramarro]

thankyou for your input! i will let you know the progress even if it's gonna take a while to see anything i guess

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Sounds good.

Happy Reefing!

 

[KrisReef]

I'm getting old and lazy, and foggy on chemistry lately. I have 140 gallon system that I would like to add Ammonium bicarbonate to raise ammonia to 0.2ppm (if I read the original reciepe correctly.

Here's my preliminary cheat
AI Overview
To make 0.2 ppm of ammonium bicarbonate in 140 gallons of water, you should add approximately0.106 grams of ammonium bicarbonate.
(there math:)

Step 1: Convert the volume from gallons to liters
The volume of water needs to be converted from US gallons to liters.

V=140 gallons×3.78541Lgallon≈530.0 Lcap V equals 140 gallons cross 3.78541 the fraction with numerator L and denominator gallon end-fraction is approximately equal to 530.0 L

---

Step 2: Calculate the required mass in milligrams
For dilute aqueous solutions, the concentration in parts per million (ppm) is approximately equal to the concentration in milligrams per liter (g/Lmg/L).

C=0.2 ppm=0.2mgLcap C equals 0.2 ppm equals 0.2 the fraction with numerator mg and denominator L end-fraction
The required mass is calculated using the formula:

m=C×Vm equals cap C cross cap V

m=0.2mgL×530.0 L≈106.0 mgm equals 0.2 the fraction with numerator mg and denominator L end-fraction cross 530.0 L is approximately equal to 106.0 mg

---

Step 3: Convert the mass from milligrams to grams
Convert the calculated mass from milligrams (mg) to grams (g).

mgrams=106.0 mg1000 mg/g≈0.106 gm sub grams end-sub equals the fraction with numerator 106.0 mg and denominator 1000 mg/g end-fraction is approximately equal to 0.106 g

---

Answer:
You should add approximately 0.106 grams of ammonium bicarbonate to 140 gallons of water to achieve a concentration of 0.2 ppm.

Does this look correct?

If yes, how often should I dump 0.1 grams of Ammonium bicarbonate into my sump? One x/day? The dosing of ammonia frequency isn't clear, and how to accomplish it (using powder or the liquid in the reciepe) isn't clear to my dissolving neural net!

Thanks

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Is there a reason to not follow my recipe in post 1 of this thread?

If the goal Is to add 0.2 ppm, I’d add 0.1 ppm twice, spread out on one day or consecutive days.

 

[KrisReef]

Is there a reason to not follow my recipe in post 1 of this thread?

If the goal Is to add 0.2 ppm, I’d add 0.1 ppm twice, spread out on one day or consecutive days.

Thank you for the reply
Your methods in post 1 describes how to make a dosing solution, (20g/liter if I recall correctly?) What I don't see, (or probably can't figure out) is how to set up a dosing pump to automate this addition of ammonia
And that from a container that needs to be tightly sealed to avoid evaporation and the potential stench of ammonia (which I personnally cannot endure.)

I have on occassion dosed powdered ammonium nitrate (from a long ago chemical stash in my garage) and am trying to figure out if I can just add a pinch (or tiny spoonful) each day or so of Ammonium Bicarb., or if it would be better to try and acquire a drip bag from the medical profession hooked up to a dosing pump, or a gravity fed dropper if I can find one that works to flow at the correct speed?

My tank currently eats nitrates faster than I can feed the fish. Corals are not happy, they are hungry.

I just want to figure out how to control the food input to keep the nitrates from being (near) absent and improve coral health. Thanks again.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Thank you for the reply
Your methods in post 1 describes how to make a dosing solution, (20g/liter if I recall correctly?) What I don't see, (or probably can't figure out) is how to set up a dosing pump to automate this addition of ammonia
And that from a container that needs to be tightly sealed to avoid evaporation and the potential stench of ammonia (which I personnally cannot endure.)

I have on occassion dosed powdered ammonium nitrate (from a long ago chemical stash in my garage) and am trying to figure out if I can just add a pinch (or tiny spoonful) each day or so of Ammonium Bicarb., or if it would be better to try and acquire a drip bag from the medical profession hooked up to a dosing pump, or a gravity fed dropper if I can find one that works to flow at the correct speed?

My tank currently eats nitrates faster than I can feed the fish. Corals are not happy, they are hungry.

I just want to figure out how to control the food input to keep the nitrates from being (near) absent and improve coral health. Thanks again.

From page 1:

To add 0.1 mg/L ammonia to an aquarium, you would need to add 2.3 mL of either stock solution to a 100 L (26 gallon) aquarium. You may need to add this amount multiply times per day to dose enough.

To add 0.2 mg/L, you should add twice as much.

 

[drawman]

Doesn’t really belong in this thread but since I started here, a brief summary and conclusion…

• I mixed urea with my ammonium bicarbonate.
• I let my nitrate drop to below 3ppm (I had done this before without urea)
• After a month I had cyano and it persisted for another month, slowly increasing.
• I stopped ammonia + urea dosing. Nitrate dropped to near zero (I had done this before, too).
• Cyano got worse quickly.
• I spiked nitrate with sodium nitrate and recommenced daily ammonium bicarbonate (no urea)
• I dosed sodium nitrate daily to maintain 6-8ppm.
• After 1 week the cyano started getting patchy and not expanding.
• I siphoned out the remaining cyano.
• After 5 days it has not returned. The tiny patches I did not siphon out seem unchanged. Maybe shrinking, I’m not sure.

The only thing I can conclude is I likely won’t dose urea again and I’ll maintain nitrate above 5 ppm. A small daily dose of nitrate and ammonia is working well for me. I am about to leave for a month, I hope to return to a cyano free tank.

Thank you for the report. I've been dealing with a cyano outbreak myself and have been siphoning and storming the tank with good results. My nitrate is at about 1ppm so I may try to get the number up a bit.

 

[ataller]

Randy if I wanted to make a combination mixture of nitrate and ammonia using calcium nitrate and ammonium bicarbonate, I read that I would precipitate calcium carbonate. Is this correct?

Is this detrimental to the tank? Can I filter the precipitate out with a coffee filter, or allow it to settle and decant the liquid, and then dose safely?

I have a couple bags of high purity calcium nitrate and access to sodium nitrate in Canada seems to be very restrictive.

The standard recommendation for a calcium nitrate solution seems to be 190g per L to make a solution that will raise nitrate by 1ppm in 100L of aquarium water.

Since your ammonia solution raises nitrate by 0.36ppm in 100L of water I was thinking of adding 68g of calcium nitrate and 20g of ammonium bicarbonate to 1L of water, so that 1mL will raise the nitrate by 0.72ppm in 100L of water.

Adam

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Randy if I wanted to make a combination mixture of nitrate and ammonia using calcium nitrate and ammonium bicarbonate, I read that I would precipitate calcium carbonate. Is this correct?

Is this detrimental to the tank? Can I filter the precipitate out with a coffee filter, or allow it to settle and decant the liquid, and then dose safely?

I have a couple bags of high purity calcium nitrate and access to sodium nitrate in Canada seems to be very restrictive.

The standard recommendation for a calcium nitrate solution seems to be 190g per L to make a solution that will raise nitrate by 1ppm in 100L of aquarium water.

Since your ammonia solution raises nitrate by 0.36ppm in 100L of water I was thinking of adding 68g of calcium nitrate and 20g of ammonium bicarbonate to 1L of water, so that 1mL will raise the nitrate by 0.72ppm in 100L of water.

Adam

That is correct, calcium carbonate will precipitate. That is not inherently a problem for the tank, but may be messy. Depending how much of the two parts you combine, it will be a mix of calcium, bicarbonate, ammonium, and nitrate, with calcium carbonate particles.

If I were going to do this, I'd mix them and let the solids settle to the bottom of the dosing container and just draw from a bit above the bottom, like folks do for kalk reservoirs.

 

[ataller]

That is correct, calcium carbonate will precipitate. That is not inherently a problem for the tank, but may be messy. Depending how much of the two parts you combine, it will be a mix of calcium, bicarbonate, ammonium, and nitrate, with calcium carbonate particles.

If I were going to do this, I'd mix them and let the solids settle to the bottom of the dosing container and just draw from a bit above the bottom, like folks do for kalk reservoirs.

The precipitation is no joke, there was a significant amount.

There would be no way to reasonably filter it through a filter, decanting is the only way to go.

I don't have much smell of ammonia from the mix. When I mix up ammonium bicarb on its own, I do get the smell of ammonia.

I will give this a shot and if something doesn't seem to be working Ill post here.

Thanks again Randy.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

The precipitation is no joke, there was a significant amount.

There would be no way to reasonably filter it through a filter, decanting is the only way to go.

I don't have much smell of ammonia from the mix. When I mix up ammonium bicarb on its own, I do get the smell of ammonia.

I will give this a shot and if something doesn't seem to be working Ill post here.

Thanks again Randy.

The precipitation of calcium carbonate lowers the pH, which should hold the ammonia in the solution better. :)

Ca++ + HCO3- --> CaCO3 + H+ (lowers pH)

 

[ataller]

The precipitation of calcium carbonate lowers the pH, which should hold the ammonia in the solution better. :)

Ca++ + HCO3- --> CaCO3 + H+ (lowers pH)

The mixture is also quite effervescent, is CO2 also released?

Adam

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

The pH could drop low enough to product CO2 gas
Bubbles, yes.

 

[Trueruby]

I been using it for 3 weeks only. Dosage is 0.1 ppm per day. Nitrate went from 0 ppm to 7 ppm. Phos went 0.08ppm to 0 ppm. Tank is mature 3 years, this definetelly reduces the phos. It should be daily observed until balance is find.