Has anyone ever had their SPS die due to Dosing Spectracide for Nitrates?

[mcarroll]

10 days ago when I started dozing I was a 0 nitrate (Red Sea pro). After two days of dozing 1ppm a day I was up to some where between 0 and 0.25 ppm and 0.018 Po4.

Dosing nitrates with virtually no phosphates in the water can be problematic...and all your phosphate measurements were effectively zero.

Your corals may have also been on the edge from other potential stresses like bright light or carbon dosing.

I have been monitoring PO4 consistently while i have been undertaking this process and did not observed level dropping to zero. They were always at or near the desired range of approximately 0.02 ppm.

Corals need >0.03 more or less, as a minimum.

Plus what's the +/- accuracy of your kit? It's possible that testing 0.02 might really indicate zero. Those numbers were all too close to zero for comfort.

 

[JMetaxas]

FWIW, after dosing Potassium Nitrate in my tank, for around 10 days, at a rate of ~1ppm/day, I measured my Potassium with a Salifert kit.

I measured right at NSW, ~400ppm.

If I continue to dose KNO3, I'll make the testing of Potassium a regular part of my husbandry.

 

[Ryanbrs]

Hey @Ryanbrs, with the increasing number for folks who are dosing Nitrate (in some form) into there systems, has BRS looked into possibly offering pharmaceutical grade KNO3 or NaKO3? While food grade chemicals have advantages over a herbicide, a pharmaceutical grade chemical would be held to an even higher standard. Since it is sometimes difficult for individuals to purchase pharmaceutical grade chemicals from chemical companies, like Fisher Scientific, maybe there is a market for this.

I was just speaking with the team about this the other day. I think there is a lot of value in having a source that you know is ultra low contaminants. It's not that the industrial grade chemicals won't work but depending on how much you have invested in your tank it can be pretty unnerving to use something like that. Particularly from the perspective of whatever is in them can build up over time. It may not be toxic levels day one but after months or years of dosing. In this case, considering how little is used I bet a single bulk container would last a lifetime and cost just isn't a real issue for many.

Often to make that kind of thing affordable we would need to be buying tens of thousands of pounds to get the price of USP down to something reasonable but I will see.

 

[TripleDogDareYah]

I had the same problem with spectracide. Within days of starting to dose with it I noticed sps were starting to have issues. I moved them all to my frag tank and did some very hefty water changes and now eveyrthing is fine.

 

[mcarroll]

It would be cool if anyone else noting an issue with dosing nitrates wold also note what their phosphate levels were at the time of the issue!

(Noting any other significant stresses happening to the tank at the time would also be helpful since they all add up.)

 

[markalot]

I use calcium nitrate because I can easily test both.

I'm not so sure you all are on the right track with the potassium thing, I think what acros don't like is change. I buy dropper bottles off of amazon and always start my changes extremely slowly, like one drop a week. If you have low PO4 and NO3 and you dose nitrate PO4 will drop closer and closer to 0. There is no magic potion, it depends on the background noise of the tank and how it reacts to nitrate dosing.

Personally I would never automate nitrate dosing. Dropper bottles!

 

[aarbutina]

I was just speaking with the team about this the other day. I think there is a lot of value in having a source that you know is ultra low contaminants. It's not that the industrial grade chemicals won't work but depending on how much you have invested in your tank it can be pretty unnerving to use something like that. Particularly from the perspective of whatever is in them can build up over time. It may not be toxic levels day one but after months or years of dosing. In this case, considering how little is used I bet a single bulk container would last a lifetime and cost just isn't a real issue for many.

Often to make that kind of thing affordable we would need to be buying tens of thousands of pounds to get the price of USP down to something reasonable but I will see.

Thanks for chiming in Ryan. It cool to hear the the BRS crew is having the same discussions internally that the rest of us are having. It would be great if this would be something that you could start offering, but I totally understand the cost benefit analysis that has to be done.

 

[ikolbaba06]

If I remember right I never got to 0 phosphates during my dosing of spectracide. I would dose about 2 ppm a day so I’m assuming I did drop phosphate but my memory may be faulty. Also, after seeing issues I stopped spectracide dosing and tried it again days to weeks later to see if it was something besides spectracide and I had the same results.
As others have stated, it may be from changes made too fast but we may never know. All I know is that since ive stopped dosing carbon and worrying about nutrients my acros have started to thrive. I lost a lot of money in corals because of this new trend to keep nutrients at 0. I will never use carbon dosing as a method for reducing nutrients again.

 

[Ryanbrs]

Thanks for chiming in Ryan. It cool to hear the the BRS crew is having the same discussions internally that the rest of us are having. It would be great if this would be something that you could start offering, but I totally understand the cost benefit analysis that has to be done.

Started the hunt today : )

 

[BigJohnny]

Started the hunt today : )

You could also/or carry ME coral nitrate in the meantime. Ready to use liquid product, apparently a reputable company, although I have no idea. It's apparently a blend of potassium nitrate, sodium nitrate, and calcium nitrate, presumably to minimize accumulation of any of the 3.

Just a thought, randomly saw it on premium aquatics the other day.

 

[BoomCorals]

I know a hand full of people personally that have lost there tank to this , the problem Is that the potassium (K) spikes and shocks everything, so as of now it’s going to be recovery mode, sorry that’s just what has been presented to me.

As someone who did stump remover dosing this is completely untrue. I had ATI water tests done and the amount of potassium in the small amount of stump remover we are dosing is so tiny, it didn't even move the meter on my ATI tests. That said, my acros did not respond well to spectracide stump remover dosing so I stopped doing it.

 

[BoomCorals]

I had a very similar experience with the spectracide stump remover. My tank has undetectable nitrate and phosphate. I started dosing 1ppm KNO3 per day to raise nitrates. After about 5 days I was registering 1-2ppm NO3 on Red Sea test and stuff was looking great. A few days later I noticed that many of my acros had grey tips and many started to lose tissue on the tips and around the base. Similar to you, I had some montis and some acros turn a dark grey color. I stopped dosing and now things have started to recover. Some of my acros have lost color and turned to recovery green color. To be honest, I am glad I read your post because it makes me realize I'm not the only one that's had this problem.

This was my experience exactly as well. Since I stopped dosing it, everything has returned to normal.

It would be cool if anyone else noting an issue with dosing nitrates wold also note what their phosphate levels were at the time of the issue!

(Noting any other significant stresses happening to the tank at the time would also be helpful since they all add up.)

.03-.05 throughout for mine

 

[mcarroll]

Ok...this brings up another facet:
Why were nitrates being dosed in the first place?

It sounds like some folks may have been trying to "fix what ain't broke" vs having some confirmed issue with nitrates to target.

Fixing what ain't broke explains any and all bad side-effects to me...at least in the cases where it applies.

If that doesn't describe your case, then the reason you were dosing nitrates will still be very relevant.

 

[thejuice24]

Ryan I smell another Brs investigates series!!!!

 

[aarbutina]

Ryan I smell another Brs investigates series!!!!

I’d be happy to donate the bottle of Spectracide I have on the shelf.

 

[Ryanbrs]

Ryan I smell another Brs investigates series!!!!

We just started dosing brightwell's neonitro to the 160 today . The 160 is a fairly well-documented tank that has always had undetectable nitrates. It will certainly be interesting to see the results.

Outside of that our supply chain does offer ACS /USP grade nitrate products. As part of our decision to offer it, we would perform ICP-MS testing from a laboratory and get a certificate of analysis. In this case I think the community would like to know the difference so we would also send in a sample of something like the spectracide. I am willing to wager once you know what it is in it most people would rather spend a few bucks to get a material which is designed for ultra-pure applications. Probably still going to only cost a buck or two a month.

 

[aarbutina]

We just started dosing brightwell's neonitro to the 160 today . The 160 is a fairly well-documented tank that has always had undetectable nitrates. It will certainly be interesting to see the results.

Outside of that our supply chain does offer ACS /USP grade nitrate products. As part of our decision to offer it, we would perform ICP-MS testing from a laboratory and get a certificate of analysis. In this case I think the community would like to know the difference so we would also send in a sample of something like the spectracide. I am willing to wager once you know what it is in it most people would rather spend a few bucks to get a material which is designed for ultra-pure applications. Probably still going to only cost a buck or two a month.

Very cool Ryan. Excited to see what happens in the 160. But even more excited to see what the mass spec testing has to say. That being said my offer was serious, if you want me to send over a sample of the spectracide I have i would be more than will to do that. Might be good if you were considering looking at lot to lot variation is the raw chemicals.

 

[thejuice24]

This is awesome Ryan, you guys never fail to deliver! Thank you and Team over at BRS for all the awesome work you guys do and (fact based) knowledge you supply the hobby with.

 

[Jrodinnola]

@aarbutina, I’m glad I stumbled across this thread as I think I have the same thing going on. All my parameters were in line on my sps dominant cube, except for chronically low nitrates (always reading zero via salifert). I had sps that were a little pale, but growing. Despite dramatically increasing feeding the fish, my nitrates stayed at zero, so I started dosing the stump remover to raise them. I got my nitrates up to about 3ppm, but I would have to dose daily to keep them from falling. The colors on my sps were really starting to look great and polyps were fully extended, but then I started getting dying tips and some stn around a few bases. I stopped nitrate dosing but it was too late and lost a bunch of pieces. Alk remained about 7.5 throughout the ordeal, and I’ve always kept it at 7-7.5 since my nutrients were low. I’ve gone through everything that could have contributed, but there is nothing in my dosing or system that was out of sync. It had to be a purity issue. Guess I’ll just have to use food grade from now on.

 

[BigJohnny]

@aarbutina, I’m glad I stumbled across this thread as I think I have the same thing going on. All my parameters were in line on my sps dominant cube, except for chronically low nitrates (always reading zero via salifert). I had sps that were a little pale, but growing. Despite dramatically increasing feeding the fish, my nitrates stayed at zero, so I started dosing the stump remover to raise them. I got my nitrates up to about 3ppm, but I would have to dose daily to keep them from falling. The colors on my sps were really starting to look great and polyps were fully extended, but then I started getting dying tips and some stn around a few bases. I stopped nitrate dosing but it was too late and lost a bunch of pieces. Alk remained about 7.5 throughout the ordeal, and I’ve always kept it at 7-7.5 since my nutrients were low. I’ve gone through everything that could have contributed, but there is nothing in my dosing or system that was out of sync. It had to be a purity issue. Guess I’ll just have to use food grade from now on.

Did you test phosphate during all of this?