Help me understand something about nitrates and phosphates

[reef_ninja]

Good please keep us updated i would like to know the end result

Im going to give this a couple more weeks, Im reaching a frustration point. I went through my old build thread from 2014, and it didnt help my current motivation at all.

Im up to dosing 16 mls of my sodium phosphate solution per night and still no readable PO4. Somethings up, I just cant keep it consistent at all. Corals are still the same: half healthy, half not so much, virtually no growth except for the birdsnest. In a few weeks, Ill run an ICP, and if that looks normal, we'll see. Im thinking of scrapping this whole thing and starting fresh by mimicking my old build.

 

[Hydrored]

Im going to give this a couple more weeks, Im reaching a frustration point. I went through my old build thread from 2014, and it didnt help my current motivation at all.

Im up to dosing 16 mls of my sodium phosphate solution per night and still no readable PO4. Somethings up, I just cant keep it consistent at all. Corals are still the same: half healthy, half not so much, virtually no growth except for the birdsnest. In a few weeks, Ill run an ICP, and if that looks normal, we'll see. Im thinking of scrapping this whole thing and starting fresh by mimicking my old build.

I have never figured out in this hobby why tanks can vary so much. My bare bottom 210 I can't keep nitrates and phosphates are always climbing even with the same food. I started dosing 2 forms of food and my phosphates dropped. so odd

When I had my coral quarantine tank my nitrates were through the roof and no phosphates. My 120 gallon just was always at 5 nitrates and .04 phosphates. Just has to come down to the rock used, sand or no sand, skimmer, etc. I've never been able to replicate results in a new tank from prior.

Good luck and keep us posted.

 

[Gogo007]

I would like to share my try in the same problem i just started new 65galon reef tank 6 month ago and since end if the cycle its always zero nitrate and if i feed much only phosphates go up like crazy ! Then i thought after its maybe leak of nitrate which cause my po4 is always swings thats much .. i live in country that most of the nitrate chemicals is so hard to get for security reasons so i asked one if mg plant aquarium frind if he dose any no3 prodcuts .. he gave me potassium nitrate and also mono potassium phosphate i was so happy to get that and started to make solution of both at concentration of 5ml/100L for 1ppm no3 and 1ml/100 for 0.03 po4 .. first dose of nitrate did nothing to no3 in tank but sudden drop in po4 from 0.12 to 0.07 .. okay good something happened okay now i am dosing 20ml of no3 and 4ml of po4 and i am doing tests every day evening for no3 and po4 and KH as well .. i will show you guys the results for yesterday and i wish and only my concern now is about this levels of potassium i am adding where if i dose 4ppm no3 a day that means also dosing about 2.4ppm potassium every day and in month that means i added 72ppm of potassium to the tank i hope its consumed if any one dose potassium nitrate for long time could share his experience with it it will be so much useful for me to just get my eye on that ... Thank you

 

[ScottB]

I would like to share my try in the same problem i just started new 65galon reef tank 6 month ago and since end if the cycle its always zero nitrate and if i feed much only phosphates go up like crazy ! Then i thought after its maybe leak of nitrate which cause my po4 is always swings thats much .. i live in country that most of the nitrate chemicals is so hard to get for security reasons so i asked one if mg plant aquarium frind if he dose any no3 prodcuts .. he gave me potassium nitrate and also mono potassium phosphate i was so happy to get that and started to make solution of both at concentration of 5ml/100L for 1ppm no3 and 1ml/100 for 0.03 po4 .. first dose of nitrate did nothing to no3 in tank but sudden drop in po4 from 0.12 to 0.07 .. okay good something happened okay now i am dosing 20ml of no3 and 4ml of po4 and i am doing tests every day evening for no3 and po4 and KH as well .. i will show you guys the results for yesterday and i wish and only my concern now is about this levels of potassium i am adding where if i dose 4ppm no3 a day that means also dosing about 2.4ppm potassium every day and in month that means i added 72ppm of potassium to the tank i hope its consumed if any one dose potassium nitrate for long time could share his experience with it it will be so much useful for me to just get my eye on that ... Thank you

I have been told a few times that elevated potassium can be a problem and should not be overdosed. Salifert makes a test kit for it that you may wish to try. I found it to test within 10% of my ICP results.

 

[Gogo007]

I have been told a few times that elevated potassium can be a problem and should not be overdosed. Salifert makes a test kit for it that you may wish to try. I found it to test within 10% of my ICP results.

Does bacteria consume potassium ?

 

[ScottB]

Does bacteria consume potassium ?

Sorry, but I don't know. Something in my system consumes potassium as my ICP always measures low relative to my salt mix supposed concentration.

 

[Gogo007]

Sorry, but I don't know. Something in my system consumes potassium as my ICP always measures low relative to my salt mix supposed concentration.

So normally you dose k upon your icp test ? Could you please let me know your normal k consumption like how many ppms per month or something maybe its related also to N consumption i guess

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Does bacteria consume potassium ?

A little bit, yes.

Foods also add it.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

So normally you dose k upon your icp test ? Could you please let me know your normal k consumption like how many ppms per month or something maybe its related also to N consumption i guess

I never had to dose any. The foods I fed were apparently enough to offset the tissue incorporation of potassium.

 

[Gogo007]

I never had to dose any. The foods I fed were apparently enough to offset the tissue incorporation of potassium.

Interesting ! So do you feed frozen food or normal pellets .. what is your food type

 

[reef_ninja]

One more update for now. I got pretty frustrated with daily dosing and measuring numbers, with the results and numbers just never making sense. I actually came pretty close to just quitting altogether. So I decided to throw a Hail Mary.

Looking back at all my previous builds, this is the only one that I put a skimmer in. So I took the skimmer out completely and replaced it with Chaeto. Within two weeks, the recession on one acro stopped (though it still looks pretty rough), the bleaching on the Frogskin acro is almost completely recovered and it's bright green and beautiful again, and I have some very tiny PE that I hadn't see before. Zoas and Grandis are more open, and Duncans are wildly happy. And my chalices have some new PE as well. The scoly is probably toast, but it was looking pretty rough, probably worse than the worst Acro. The Poci's recession also recovered completely and there's new encrusting as well.

I can't explain this with numbers, and for whatever reason my PO4 still measures zero, with very little difference in algae growth. The chaeto is quite happy, so far. My nitrates were a little high at 20, but Im waiting to see how that changes as the chaeto grows.

Looking back, I remember barely coming to the conclusion that I would run a skimmer on this build. I think the only reason I chose it is because everyone else usually does, and I had the budget for it. Now I regret it. Maybe Im wrong, its only been a couple weeks, who knows, but Ill see how this does over the next few weeks and we'll see.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Interesting ! So do you feed frozen food or normal pellets .. what is your food type

All sorts of things, from fresh to frozen to dry.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

One more update for now. I got pretty frustrated with daily dosing and measuring numbers, with the results and numbers just never making sense. I actually came pretty close to just quitting altogether. So I decided to throw a Hail Mary.

Looking back at all my previous builds, this is the only one that I put a skimmer in. So I took the skimmer out completely and replaced it with Chaeto. Within two weeks, the recession on one acro stopped (though it still looks pretty rough), the bleaching on the Frogskin acro is almost completely recovered and it's bright green and beautiful again, and I have some very tiny PE that I hadn't see before. Zoas and Grandis are more open, and Duncans are wildly happy. And my chalices have some new PE as well. The scoly is probably toast, but it was looking pretty rough, probably worse than the worst Acro. The Poci's recession also recovered completely and there's new encrusting as well.

I can't explain this with numbers, and for whatever reason my PO4 still measures zero, with very little difference in algae growth. The chaeto is quite happy, so far. My nitrates were a little high at 20, but Im waiting to see how that changes as the chaeto grows.

Looking back, I remember barely coming to the conclusion that I would run a skimmer on this build. I think the only reason I chose it is because everyone else usually does, and I had the budget for it. Now I regret it. Maybe Im wrong, its only been a couple weeks, who knows, but Ill see how this does over the next few weeks and we'll see.

Sounds like you may have been starving the corals.

 

[reef_ninja]

Sounds like you may have been starving the corals.

I think so as well. When I was last reefing before this build, it was a common mindset to buy a bigger skimmer than you need, and I never updated this assumption when I started this build. I think I was over skimming and stripping the water too clean.