Nitrae/Phosphate Ratio - Super high Phosphate, and bottoming out Nitrate.

[littlefishy]

FW = lights:ferts:CO2. I never could keep the 3 balanced for more than 5-6 mo as plant mass and consumption is so dynamic
I personally find simple reefs so much easier than any planted tank!

 

[littlefishy]

And your reef looks great

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Neonitro is Purified water, proprietary nitrogen salts. If you'd like a read on nitrogen salts https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/organic-nitrogen-compounds-v-amine-salts.
I've used similiar products in closed looped hydroponic systems for years. In laments its non organic nitrogen in a bottle

It’s probably just a tricky way of saying nitrate. Nitrogen salts could be lots of things, good, bad and ugly, but they likely didn’t want to say that since one can purchase better purity grade sodium nitrate for far less.

 

[SauceyReef]

FW = lights:ferts:CO2. I never could keep the 3 balanced for more than 5-6 mo as plant mass and consumption is so dynamic
I personally find simple reefs so much easier than any planted tank!

Thank you! I dont use Co2 and find FW tanks very easy. When you add CO2 you probably have to start getting the Fert ratios right. I personally dont even fertilize. Just with feeding and lack of any filtration, the plants consume any available nutrients. They start thinning / discoloring with lack of nutrients and sometimes excess. You probably know all of this! Most of my tanks are mimicking walstads though. For my EVO, no filtration at all. For my 4 gallon planted, just heater and flow. For my other 2 nano FW, entirely Walstad (no filter, flow, heater) - just stagnant water.

 

[SauceyReef]

Aaron Younger who I speak to about my tank problems and has a wonder Fluval Evo uses Fish of Hex Nitrate which is Potassium Nitrate instead of Calcium Nitrate.

Either can be used as a nitrate supplement? Is there really any difference?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Aaron Younger who I speak to about my tank problems and has a wonder Fluval Evo uses Fish of Hex Nitrate which is Potassium Nitrate instead of Calcium Nitrate.

Either can be used as a nitrate supplement? Is there really any difference?

I strongly advise against potassium nitrate unless you closely monitor potassium. Dosing 2 ppm nitrate per day boosts potassium by 39 ppm per month. In many tanks it is not depleted so will accumulate.

 

[SauceyReef]

I strongly advise against potassium nitrate unless you closely monitor potassium. Dosing 2 ppm nitrate per day boosts potassium by 39 ppm per month. In many tanks it is not depleted so will accumulate.

Oh my - I may want to warn my friend using the Fish of Hex Nitrate as the active ingredient is Potassium Nitrate.

 

[92Miata]

The thing with ATI is they have thousands of ICP tests to fall back on.

Sure, but ICPs can't test any of the things we're talking about here (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate).

 

[SauceyReef]

Sure, but ICPs can't test any of the things we're talking about here (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate).

ICP's dont test any of those params? I thought they tested for near everything detectable.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Sure, but ICPs can't test any of the things we're talking about here (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate).

They offer N-Doc testing that will test for total nitrogen plus other nutrients

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

ICP's dont test any of those params? I thought they tested for near everything detectable.

Icp detects elements, not specific chemicals. Since air is 78% nitrogen, nitrogen is everywhere and icp cannot distinguish any of the N chemicals.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Oh my - I may want to warn my friend using the Fish of Hex Nitrate as the active ingredient is Potassium Nitrate.

Many macro, micro algaes and plants will use large amounts of potassium. It all depends on what a system needs, calcium nitrate raises calcium and sodium nitrate will raises alkalinity this is the reason many brands offer nitrogen from organic and inorganic compounds (ex. ammonia, urea, amino acids) that don’t raise any of the 3.

 

[Rams]

This is what happens when we put lot of biological filtration(Xport No3 brick,marine pure,matrix,siporax etc) in system as they all consume nitrates which leaves elevated phosphates..Same thing happened to me..after slow adjustments now my No3/Po4 are at redfield ratio.

Here are parameters from my tank if interested--

Before :
Biological media- 2 bags of Siporax,2 bags of matrix,2 marine pure blocks (No3 : 0,PO4 1 ppm)

After :
Biological media - 40% of siporax(removed 60%), 40% matrix(removed 60%),removed marinepure block(100% removal) --No3 : 0.50,PO4 :0.02-0.03

Hope it helps

 

[SauceyReef]

After 48 hours here are my readings:

Phosphate - 9.8ppm
Nitrate - 3.5ppm

Any reason Nitrate is showing up now? Could this be due to a lack of Phosphates, or because I removed a bunch of my chaeto? I am a little worried phosphates are going down to fast, so probably going to remove some of the PHOSGUARD (even though it's less than half the recommended dose).

 

[sixty_reefer]

After 48 hours here are my readings:

Phosphate - 9.8ppm
Nitrate - 3.5ppm

Any reason Nitrate is showing up now? Could this be due to a lack of Phosphates, or because I removed a bunch of my chaeto? I am a little worried phosphates are going down to fast, so probably going to remove some of the PHOSGUARD (even though it's less than half the recommended dose).

How did you test 9.8 ppm phosphates?

 

[TheMetalReefs]

Recently my Nitrates have been going lower and lower, while my Phosphates just increase. I am not really sure what would be causing this. I would love to learn more about how Phosphates and Nitrates are inversely related.

Ive been feeding Rods Food + Mysis daily. I made a few other posts about this, and was recommended it could be the rods food, so now I am just switching mysis. Ive been testing every few days and here's been my results:

1.5 weeks ago - Nitrate .5ppm / Phosphate 1.2ppm

1 week ago - Nitrate . 3ppm / Phosphate 1.3ppm

Yesterday - Nitrate .0ppm / Phosphate 1.35ppm



I do a 50% water change every other week. I run no filtration except a bunch of chaeto in the back running for like 10 hours. I am scared to change the macro setting because if I lower lights, the Nitrate will just go down even more. I currently bought some PHOSGUARD in hopes to slowly lower Phosphates, and stabilizing nitrates.

based on a similar and recent situation of mine. im currently dealing with cyanno and to help dial in into the problem i started testing for no3 amd po4. i had 0 nitrates and .2 something on phos. i started dosing no3 and just did my regular 15-20% weekly waterchange. over the course of a couple of weeks i now have .02 po4 and 9.5 no3. cyanno is still winning but figured it was somewhat similar to the situation. hope this helps or you already got your problem under control.

 

[DanyL]

After 48 hours here are my readings:

Phosphate - 9.8ppm
Nitrate - 3.5ppm

Any reason Nitrate is showing up now? Could this be due to a lack of Phosphates, or because I removed a bunch of my chaeto? I am a little worried phosphates are going down to fast, so probably going to remove some of the PHOSGUARD (even though it's less than half the recommended dose).

Do you mind taking a picture of your Hanna Checkers showing the results?
Do you have any other kit to test nutrients with?

 

[sixty_reefer]

Do you mind taking a picture of your Hanna Checkers showing the results?
Do you have any other kit to test nutrients with?

Agree it sounds like the Hanna could be testing ppb and not ppm, 9.8ppb is a good number to have

 

[SauceyReef]

I am sorry ya'll - I messed up big time, and it doesnt let me edit the numbers above because I took to long.

What I meant to type is :
Phosphate - .98 ppm
Nitrate 3.5ppm

 

[DanyL]

Thats a little more sane

How much was the phosphates 2 days ago, before you started using PhosGurd?
The recommended amount to drop per day is 0.5 ppm max, but I would try to go slower - more towards 0.2-0.3 per day.
You can adjust the rate by increasing/reducing the amount of media accordingly.