Dosing nitrate

Aznxgqboyx · May 13, 2016

Also, you could be low on some other element that you didnt check for.

Acroporaaddict · May 13, 2016

Aznxgqboyx said:
Also, you could be low on some other element that you didnt check for. How often you do water change,

Weekly 10g waterchange using NSW from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. I have to add 2 part in order to get the alk and ca to match my tank. When I do my water change I turn the return pump off and syphon all the detritus that has accumulated in the sump.

Triggreef · May 13, 2016

Wow I would highly suggest changing your percentages. Uv is very harsh. For a while on my frag tank I played with higher uv and it caused very stressed and dead corals. Color came right back after I lowered the uv.

Bring uv to 35, blue to 100, and white to 65 and you'll immediately have colored up coral. And the colors will intensify from there.

Triggreef · May 13, 2016

Also the light I was referring to on my frag tank was not reef breeders it was orphek Atlantic. Uv is strong!

Acroporaaddict · May 13, 2016

Triggreef said:
Wow I would highly suggest changing your percentages. Uv is very harsh. For a while on my frag tank I played with higher uv and it caused very stressed and dead corals. Color came right back after I lowered the uv.

Bring uv to 35, blue to 100, and white to 65 and you'll immediately have colored up coral. And the colors will intensify from there.

Thanks, I'll adjust settings tonight and see how it goes

DLuce510 · May 13, 2016

Just read through most of the post so I'm sure I will piggy back on some one. If this is what you want I would stop dosing the vinegar and see where it lands. I was dosing NoPoX at the start of my system and once the n03 went down it never came back which led to slow uncolored growth and head aches.
Hands down dosing nitrogen flourish was the best thing I ever did for my system. I keep n03 around 2-4 ppm on a full sps system and haven't had all the problems most of us have been told we would have with nitrates. I'll let the pictures talk.

This was January of this year and it had been like that for 3 months, very little had changed.
And today. I can see growth almost every day.

View attachment 228.jpg

Acroporaaddict · May 13, 2016

DLuce510 said:
Just read through most of the post so I'm sure I will piggy back on some one. If this is what you want I would stop dosing the vinegar and see where it lands. I was dosing NoPoX at the start of my system and once the n03 went down it never came back which led to slow uncolored growth and head aches.
Hands down dosing nitrogen flourish was the best thing I ever did for my system. I keep n03 around 2-4 ppm on a full sps system and haven't had all the problems most of us have been told we would have with nitrates. I'll let the pictures talk.

This was January of this year and it had been like that for 3 months, very little had changed.
And today. I can see growth almost every day.

View attachment 228.jpg

Impressive, thanks for the advise. Only change you made was stopping the carbon doisng and started dosing flourish? How's your p04? Running GFO?

DLuce510 · May 13, 2016

Acroporaaddict said:
Impressive, thanks for the advise. Only change you made was stopping the carbon doisng and started dosing flourish? How's your p04? Running GFO?

I had tried adding t5's but without nutrients it was of no use until the corals had some fuel to burn. I have 2 refugiums so p04 hasn't really been a issue, up then down. I tried dosing phosphorus flourish but feeding the corals adds enough on its own, I took the GFO out and it handles itself.

Triggreef · May 13, 2016

Agreed higher nutrients give good color. This op had nutrients present though po4 is very low.

Running uv that high will be too much even for a high nutrient tank, like mine.

Acroporaaddict · May 13, 2016

Triggreef said:
Agreed higher nutrients give good color. This op had nutrients present though po4 is very low.

Running uv that high will be too much even for a high nutrient tank, like mine.

Should I drop the uv intensity all at once or slowly do it?

Triggreef · May 13, 2016

Acroporaaddict said:
Should I drop the uv intensity all at once or slowly do it?

I usually suggest slow changes with LEDs but in this case, your putting out a fire more or less. I'd go ahead and make that entire change right away.

Upping blues are easy on the coral. Upping the whites will make up for the drop in UV. So with any luck par will be close to the same. Just a better spectrum.

Tautog · May 14, 2016

Acroporaaddict said:
Weekly 10g waterchange using NSW from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. I have to add 2 part in order to get the alk and ca to match my tank. When I do my water change I turn the return pump off and syphon all the detritus that has accumulated in the sump.

I've been told over and over not to clean the sump, what gives, to clean or not. I was always told that stuff was beneficial, it never made sense to me. Seems its toxic for corals.

jvb89 · May 14, 2016

DLuce510 said:
Just read through most of the post so I'm sure I will piggy back on some one. If this is what you want I would stop dosing the vinegar and see where it lands. I was dosing NoPoX at the start of my system and once the n03 went down it never came back which led to slow uncolored growth and head aches.
Hands down dosing nitrogen flourish was the best thing I ever did for my system. I keep n03 around 2-4 ppm on a full sps system and haven't had all the problems most of us have been told we would have with nitrates. I'll let the pictures talk.

This was January of this year and it had been like that for 3 months, very little had changed.
And today. I can see growth almost every day.

View attachment 228.jpg

What type of acro is up front? I have the same piece.

DLuce510 · May 14, 2016

jvb89 said:
What type of acro is up front? I have the same piece.

Reef raft Aussie Gold. One of my favorites. I believe there's one very similar called mother of pearl I think.

DLuce510 · May 14, 2016

Tautog said:
I've been told over and over not to clean the sump, what gives, to clean or not. I was always told that stuff was beneficial, it never made sense to me. Seems its toxic for corals.

Typically I clean my sump and blow off my rock, I don't know why but overall vibrance just seems lower when I let it go. Dosing n03 is great because I can keep a very clean system, feed moderately, and control exactly where I want my nutrients to be.
I will say when I first heard of this I got a little to excited and went over board, keep your system clean and try just cutting back on the carbon dosing and see what happens.

Acroporaaddict · May 15, 2016

So I changed my lighting intensity to a max of 50% white, 90% blue and 30% uv. I also cut my vinegar dosing in half. Yesterday's testing put nitrates at 0 using my Red Sea Pro test kit. I retested with Salifert and also got 0. Today I started dosing nitate. I chose Brightwells because it is sodium nitrate. Brought my NO3 up to 2ppm. I will test and dose daily. Thread will be updated in a week or so. Maybe sooner if I notice faster changes.

Acroporaaddict · May 15, 2016

Also got this guy today. Daylight picture since nobody likes to post them... slightly overrated IMO
Walt Disney Tenuis

Acroporaaddict · May 15, 2016

And here is the 100% saturation picture vendors like to post ;):rolleyes:

Acroporaaddict · May 15, 2016

Double post

DLuce510 · May 16, 2016

One little tip I'll add based on my mistakes. When I started dosing trying to find how much n03 my system was consuming I kept dosing that amount. My system ended up reaching a saturation point and n03 got too high. For my 120g that's fully stocked I only need to dose 3-8 ml daily to keep it around 4ppm.
I guess the lesson I learned is it took about 20ml to get it to 3ppm but a fraction of that to keep it there. ;)