Increasing No3 Question

[ThatPhillyReefer]

Hey All, so my 180g tank has been up since May. I ran it completely empty (no livestock) until August. Before filling the tank, all the rocks that were used were live rock which I had in a trash can with a couple power heads for 4 months.

I added my 7 year old Yellow Tang and an adult Convict tang. All levels were stable until 2 weeks ago. I tested and my Po4 was 0.34 and No3 was 0.0. Im assuming its because I only had 2 fish. So recently added a small Clown Tang and an adult Hippo Tang.

I have been adding Nitrate from Brightwell every other day. Im still seeing no increase im No3. I haven’t changed anything since setting up the tank, I even took off the skimmer cup and just let it over flow.

Any suggestions?

 

[KStatefan]

Hey All, so my 180g tank has been up since May. I ran it completely empty (no livestock) until August. Before filling the tank, all the rocks that were used were live rock which I had in a trash can with a couple power heads for 4 months.

I added my 7 year old Yellow Tang and an adult Convict tang. All levels were stable until 2 weeks ago. I tested and my Po4 was 0.34 and No3 was 0.0. Im assuming its because I only had 2 fish. So recently added a small Clown Tang and an adult Hippo Tang.

I have been adding Nitrate from Brightwell every other day. Im still seeing no increase im No3. I haven’t changed anything since setting up the tank, I even took off the skimmer cup and just let it over flow.

Any suggestions?

Keep dosing or switch to a diy nitrate solution.

Look at the ammonia or the ammonia/urea dosing thread.

 

[Kingsley_Reef]

Hmm…. What are you testing with

If you do decide to ammonia dose go slow with it

 

[ThatPhillyReefer]

Hmm…. What are you testing with

If you do decide to ammonia dose go slow with it

hanna hr

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

The Brightwell solution is fairly weak, expensive, and lacks a purity guarantee. That said, if you want to use it, just dose more.

Other choices are food grades of ammonium bicarbonate (I dose this for low nitrate), sodium nitrate, and calcium nitrate. :)

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

If you are using something like NeoNitro, slowly bump it up 5-10mg every time you aren't registering any nitrates. You are probably consuming them faster than you are inputting them. Once you reach equilibrium in the tank, you should start seeing a gradual increase. When you start to add corals, you might get another bottoming out and will have to do that all over again. That's also not a ton of fish for 180g and by themselves may not be producing enough waste to convert it to nitrates.

I use the ammonia/urea mixture from Miami and it's been difficult to dial in because it has a weak correlation with PO4 consumption as well, but the acros seem to love it. Without any corals, I wouldn't use that and just get yourself stable with something like NeoNitro.

EDIT - Or just use the solutions Randy posted above. They seem to work well, but take a bit of DIY/dialing in to get the amounts correct.

 

[CHSUB]

Not sure why you need no3 to register on Hanna HR?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Not sure why you need no3 to register on Hanna HR?

My reason is to ensure adequate availability of N for organisms such as corals and macroalgae.

 

[CHSUB]

My reason is to ensure adequate availability of N for organisms such as corals and macroalgae.

Imo, a better way to ensure adequate availability of N is the health of corals and the growth of algae. Not a reading on a low resolution hobby test kit. Especially since most ignore all the possible sources of N.

 

[exnisstech]

 

[Kingsley_Reef]

i use Hanna ULR

are you really in Philadelphia? Ide be happy to run a sample through mine for you to be sure I also have unopened bag I no longer need of ammonium bicarb when I ran into a similar situation this past July 10$

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Imo, a better way to ensure adequate availability of N is the health of corals and the growth of algae. Not a reading on a low resolution hobby test kit. Especially since most ignore all the possible sources of N.

If corals or algae are not growing at the expected rate, one cannot know why. There are loads of possible reasons.

If a CUC is eating the algae as fast as it grows, is it growing fast or slow?

If one does not have a baseline of growth of corals that might take weeks or months to generate, nitrate is a far easier approach.

 

[ThatPhillyReefer]

The Brightwell solution is fairly weak, expensive, and lacks a purity guarantee. That said, if you want to use it, just dose more.

Other choices are food grades of ammonium bicarbonate (I dose this for low nitrate), sodium nitrate, and calcium nitrate. :)

i would love more info about the ammonium bicarbonate and how to dose it!

 

[exnisstech]

i would love more info about the ammonium bicarbonate and how to dose it!

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/diy-ammonia-dosing-for-low-nitrate-systems.987087/

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/diy-ammonia-dosing-chart.1123913/

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

There is also a DIY urea + ammonium combo. I would try out the ammonium by itself and see how that goes before also adding urea as it would be pretty easy to overdo it in a new system.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/diy-urea-ammonia-mix-dosing-chart.1127120/

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I'm not convinced the urea is a good plan. It may be fine, or may be even better, but from folks results I'm not convinced that it is as available to corals as ammonium. The fact that folks see nitrate rise significantly from urea dosing compared to ammonia dosing suggests to me that bacteria are converting it to nitrate and then organisms as a whole are not using it as readily as the ammonia.

 

[CHSUB]

If corals or algae are not growing at the expected rate, one cannot know why. There are loads of possible reasons.

If a CUC is eating the algae as fast as it grows, is it growing fast or slow?

If one does not have a baseline of growth of corals that might take weeks or months to generate, nitrate is a far easier approach.

Found this picture of my nitrate level from ~2013, imo, this is an adequate level of insurance. So I won’t disagree, only with the level requirements of insurance.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Seems reasonable.

My insurance level is the bottom of my recommended range, which is 5 ppm. That also incorporates test variability insurance. Real levels of 2 ppm may be perfectly fine.