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

[Gribbliest]

FWIW, I dosed with KNO3 (from spectracide), but at a rate to increase by 0.1ppm per day. I used 4g of spectracide in 1l of RO and dosed every hour.

I saw increase in polyp extension and also my chaeto started to grow like crazy, with my hair algae wiping inside of a week (YAY!). Also now only have to clean my glass once every 3-4 days rather than daily.

I got,to around 4ppm and stopped dosing. Everything is doing well, I may need to top it up again soon though!

 

[Vaughn17]

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.

...because of this new trend to keep nutrients at 0.

LOL! Not a new trend, just an old dumb one.

 

[Toosalty]

My tank is recovering from dosing spectricide. I had 0 ppm of nitrates before dosing and started slow. Over 2 weeks I increased my dose until I got to 5ppm. That's when i almost lost everything. My candy cane melted first followed by my sps turning white in random areas on them. My montis also turned a grey color. As of today, its been 10 days with everything recovering, but all of my sps barely have any polyp extension. I ordered KNO3 from GLA hoping it's pure.

 

[jduong916]

yes I have. Started dosing the stump remover then the sps would get a whole bunch of messentral filaments. Two frags RTN'd and two are recovering. I switched to sodium nitrate and havent had a problem since. Maybe potassium was elevated in my tank, but I'd still never use it again.

 

[aarbutina]

Did you test phosphate during all of this?

Yes Sir. I even included those numbers in the text of the OP.

 

[aarbutina]

yes I have. Started dosing the stump remover then the sps would get a whole bunch of messentral filaments. Two frags RTN'd and two are recovering. I switched to sodium nitrate and havent had a problem since. Maybe potassium was elevated in my tank, but I'd still never use it again.

You would have to add a lot of Spectracide to significantly raise your K level or dose KNO4 over a longer period of time. I think I ran though the math some where in the thread at some point.

 

[BigJohnny]

Yes Sir. I even included those numbers in the text of the OP.

I wasn't asking you.....lol look again. I quoted jrodinnola

 

[aarbutina]

I wasn't asking you.....lol look again.

Ahhh excellent point. It is early and I just saw my name highlighted in blue in the reply text.

 

[BradB]

2 years ago, I had high nutrients so I started Carbon dosing. This brought NO3 to 0 but left phosphates high and gave me cyanobacteria. So I started dosing stump remover instead, and was really happy at first as NO3 went up as expected then both NO3 and phosphate went down. Every day, my water parameters got better but the tank still looked worse and worse.

I stopped and decided it was a mistake. I am running GFO for phosphates now and trying to feed my fish more, although NO3 still tests 0ppm. I might play with amino acids for corals in the future, I have tried, but have been so conservative I don't think they did anything. But I don't think I will ever put stump remover in my tank again.

 

[BradB]

I know Sanjay Joshi runs beautiful SPS with high Nitrate. I wish I knew what he added.

 

[Scott's reef]

I dose the stump remover for nitrates and also dose phosphate from brightwell aquatic with great color and pollop extension. I also keep my alk at 9.0-9.5 with the theory if I'm raising N04 & P03 I need to raise alk too. I starting dosing these directly into my tank because I had a severe outbreak of algae, it was taking over my entire tank and nothing I used to treat it worked. I was under the assumption forever that you need to keep tank at 0 N03 & P04. That was a big mistake. As for biolets I've never used them do to some videos on youtube. I run my tank at cal @ 450, P04 @ .025 , N04 @ 5 and magnesium at 1450- 1500. Also my tank volume is 100 gallons w/custom sump. I have 30 lbs of miracle mud and large chaeto section and run my skimmer 6 hrs after midnight to combat ph swings.

 

[BigJohnny]

I know Sanjay Joshi runs beautiful SPS with high Nitrate. I wish I knew what he added.

It's naturally high

 

[Charterreefer]

Order from green leave aquariums. All their chemicals are made for aquarium use...and very reasonably priced. I use calcium nitrate.

 

[jduong916]

You would have to add a lot of Spectracide to significantly raise your K level or dose KNO4 over a longer period of time. I think I ran though the math some where in the thread at some point.

It might not have been the K. But dosing straight spectracide didnt work for me. Almost instantly you could tell certain sps didnt like it. I know once i switched to sodium nitrate the problems went away. No more messentrial filaments.

 

[jduong916]

It might not have been the K. But dosing straight spectracide didnt work for me. Almost instantly you could tell certain sps didnt like it. I know once i switched to sodium nitrate the problems went away. No more messentrial filaments.

This coral still going strong, but a few small frags did this to a lesser extent and some didn't make. This would happen after every dose. After a water change the corals would stop doing this, then id dose again and the same thing would happen. When I finally switched to sodium nitrate and ditched the spectracide every thing went back to normal. Just my experience, maybe for others it works fine.

This coral still going strong, but a few small frags did this to a lesser extent and some didn't make. This would happen after every dose. After a water change the corals would stop doing this, then id dose again and the same thing would happen. When I finally switched to sodium nitrate and ditched the spectracide every thing went back to normal. Just my experience, maybe for others it works fine.

 

[PhreeByrd]

Why anybody puts stump remover into their aquarium in the first place is beyond me. Spectracide makes no claims or warranty about purity of the product -- and why should they? Nobody cares if stump remover contains some impurities. And it does undoubtedly contain impurities -- we just have no idea what they are. Those impurities also change frequently depending upon sources of their raw materials and manufacturing processes.

Using CaCl2 ice melting compounds to raise Ca is the same misguided advice. You have no idea what impurities you are putting into your tank, but you can be 100% certain that you are adding some; and the fact that somebody else did it with no adverse effects doesn't mean that you will be as fortunate. Even if you have already done it yourself with no adverse effects doesn't mean that you won't see problems the next time you do it.

If you needed to supplement trace minerals, would you go out into the back yard, dig up a handful of soil and put it into your tank?

Leave the stump remover on the shelf until you need it for removing stumps.

 

[Jrodinnola]

Did you test phosphate during all of this?

Yeah, 10ppb via Hanna ulr.

 

[mcarroll]

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.

Dosing nitrates just because can definitely cause problems – "fixing what isn't broke", as it were.

Without a reason to add them (and some additional considerations for the tank), I would abstain if I were you and keep doing what's worked for you.

 

[BigJohnny]

Dosing nitrates just because can definitely cause problems – "fixing what isn't broke", as it were.

Without a reason to add them (and some additional considerations for the tank), I would abstain if I were you and keep doing what's worked for you.

Yeah and what erked me the most was Ryan said "the tank never looks better" in that video. Then why on earth are you changing anything?! If I asked him I'm sure he'd say it's because it's the brs160 and they are just testing things and trying to help people learn though. I get it. People shouldn't use it as a model for that reason though. They also switched from full zeo to triton in like a day which is obviously not advisable.....

 

[Randyp79]

Why anybody puts stump remover into their aquarium in the first place is beyond me. Spectracide makes no claims or warranty about purity of the product -- and why should they? Nobody cares if stump remover contains some impurities. And it does undoubtedly contain impurities -- we just have no idea what they are. Those impurities also change frequently depending upon sources of their raw materials and manufacturing processes.

Using CaCl2 ice melting compounds to raise Ca is the same misguided advice. You have no idea what impurities you are putting into your tank, but you can be 100% certain that you are adding some; and the fact that somebody else did it with no adverse effects doesn't mean that you will be as fortunate. Even if you have already done it yourself with no adverse effects doesn't mean that you won't see problems the next time you do it.

If you needed to supplement trace minerals, would you go out into the back yard, dig up a handful of soil and put it into your tank?

Leave the stump remover on the shelf until you need it for removing stumps.

The same could be said for most everything we put in our tanks. How do you know anything you put in your tank is as pure as the manufacturer suggests.