Dosing Sodium Nitrate (question for the pros)

[mimi117]

Like the title says, I have been at 0 nitrates for a few weeks, corals are fine, tank is good, I have this film green algae growing on the rocks, and every 1-2 days I get small patches of red/pink cyno growing on the sand/rocks that I have to upturn, or blow off because it's an eyesore.

I know the general rule is to not have nitrates at 0, and you also don't want phosphates at 0, both are registering 0 so I want to elevate those slowly and see how the corals enjoy, if things start to get out of control, I'll back off the dose, and do some water changes.

I want to dose 2ML per hour = 48ML per day of food grade sodium nitrate, which based on the calculator will give me a 1.55ppm per day increase, should I start at a lower dose, or just jump in with this dose? Also, do I mix it with fresh ro/di or salt water? Reason is, I am dosing kalk right now with fresh water, and my salinity is slowly dropping. I don't want it to continue to drop and want to keep it stable, before I added my kalk doser pump, my salinity was a constant 1.024-1.025, I checked it today it was 1.021-1.022

Thoughts?

 

[Miami Reef]

You can mix sodium nitrate with almost anything, including kalkwasser.

 

[mimi117]

Yes but my kalkwasser goes in at 10ML per hour, I would have to dilute the amount so I could dose it with the 10ML, I guess I could do that!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Yes, dilution into kalk is fine, or straight dosing.

Going at 1.5 ppm per day for a few days then retesting seems a fine plan to me.