Nitrate dosing

b4tn

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I am very hesitant to dose for several reasons.

1. its yet another daily task
2. I am probably going to have to buy more equipment (doser) so its not another task to forget
3. I have dosed nitrate before and browned and killed several acros (to be fair I was using stump remover)
4. I am afraid its going to fuel nuisance algae

So the reef in question is a 10 month old bare bottom SPS dominant 75 gallon. It has lots of rock combined with my 40 gallon sump I estimate water volume to be 65 gallons. I have been seeing a lot lately regarding the use of dry rock and I am starting to agree that dry rock may not be what its cracked up to be, but I did start this one with dry rock that I cooked, cleaned, and cured myself. I took it from my previous 5 year old reef wanting to start over in a new house.

About 3 or 4 months ago I took out my filter sock to get nutrients up which resulted in a a mess of detritus in the sump and I think the cause for a nitrate/phosphate spike. P was at .4 and N was at 30 I was not paying attention and lost a couple corals and several others have just recently recovered. I have a turbo aquatics algae scrubber and was running it to get things stabilized. It did the job lowering nitrates but it did not lower phosphate as efficiently. I was stuck at .15 phosphate and 1 ppm nitrate and every week I was reducing the scrubber time. I added GFO and phosphate is now around .05 but Nitrate is getting back down to black hole status at .5 ppm and falling a little every day. I have reduced the scrubber to not even running anymore lol. I always read to feed and feed some more but I am at the point where if I feed more I am throwing it away. My fish are already fat and lazy at cleaning rock. I feed

1/2 tsp of newlife spectrum pellets daily spread through the day
Daily 1/4 sheet of nori
Benereef 3 times a week
Cube of frozen once a week.

I am getting nervous because I rarely have to clean the glass anymore, Corals I feel like could have better color, I have a clam, and I have fought cyano and dinos before and do not want to go down that road again. So my question is once you start daily dosing nitrate does it eventually stabilize as the tank matures? Like eventually get to the point where its not needed? I have food grade Sodium Nitrate on hand how slow should I go? I was thinking to raise Nitrate 1 ppm a week till I reach around 5 and try and hold it there. How consistent is it once you find the maintenance dose? Does it fluctuate at all?
 

Miller535

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Nitrates as long as they are in the 5-10 ppm range are NOT going to cause any kind of a spike in nuisance algae in a mature system. I consistently run mine between 4-8 ppm.

I personally think dumping a bunch of food in, that is loaded with amino acids and tons of other things is more likely to cause algae to grow then just dosing nitrates. Your nitrates going up will actually bring your phosphates down some too. And at .5 ppm you are really playing with fire because anything below that and that's where people start getting dino. I dose Neonitro
 

Joedubyk

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I keep nitrates at 15-25 for SPS becasue of better color. I do not have nuisance algae . I do have chaeto, and I think that does a good job of out competing it..
 

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1/4 tsp of sodium nitrate mixed in to a couple ounces of DI water should bring your ppm up by 3 or so.

I just started dosing sodium nitrate a few days ago, my tank is ~40 gal, so I dosed 1/8, measured, then dosed another 1/8 tsp.

corals looked better within a day. My nitrates had been below 1 ppm for some time.
 

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1/4 tsp of sodium nitrate mixed in to a couple ounces of DI water should bring your ppm up by 3 or so.

I just started dosing sodium nitrate a few days ago, my tank is ~40 gal, so I dosed 1/8, measured, then dosed another 1/8 tsp.

corals looked better within a day. My nitrates had been below 1 ppm for some time.
+1 for sodium nitrate... i dose about 42ML per day to get consistent reading of 3ppm. This is mixing a 50gram pack in 1 liter of RODI water.
 
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b4tn

b4tn

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I just mixed 84 grams of sodium nitrate into 500 ml of RO. If my calculations are correct every 1 ml solution will raise nitrate by .5ppm for 65 gallons of volume.

I used this calculator for potassium nitrate using 100 grams


-16% per Randy’s suggestion if using sodium nitrate.
 

Timfish

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Just FWI but adding nitrates can have a negative effect on corals. This paper Context Dependant Effects of Nutrient Loading on the Coral-Algae Mutialism shows dosing nitrates can have a negative effect on calcification. Here's Fig 3 from the paper:
Context‐dependent effects of nutrient loading on the coral–algal mutualism(1).png
 

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Just FWI but adding nitrates can have a negative effect on corals. This paper Context Dependant Effects of Nutrient Loading on the Coral-Algae Mutialism shows dosing nitrates can have a negative effect on calcification. Here's Fig 3 from the paper:
Context‐dependent effects of nutrient loading on the coral–algal mutualism(1).png

I am not sure how this is relevant to the OP's situation. As it never states amounts, what ppm was before, how much was added. It's just a sweeping article that says it can be bad, but gives literally no context. And the op has NO3 that is pretty much bottomed out, and NO3 is a required nutrient. If the OP already had say 5 ppm Nitrates than yeah, dosing may be a bad idea but that's not the case.
 

Timfish

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I am not sure how this is relevant to the OP's situation. . . .

Shantz and Burkpile reviewed the data from around 4 dozen research papers. As is shown in Fig. 3, in all cases where nitrate alone was dosed it had a negative effect on calcification. Ammonia/ammonium from fish always had a beneficial effect on calcification. It seems to me increasing the aamonia/ammonium level by increasing the number of fish or feeding fish more would be a better choice than dosing nitrates.
 

Miller535

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Shantz and Burkpile reviewed the data from around 4 dozen research papers. As is shown in Fig. 3, in all cases where nitrate alone was dosed it had a negative effect on calcification. Ammonia/ammonium from fish always had a beneficial effect on calcification. It seems to me increasing the aamonia/ammonium level by increasing the number of fish or feeding fish more would be a better choice than dosing nitrates.

I think that could be true if too much was dosed, or dosed too quickly. I am just not buying this. That it MAY have a bad effect, if what? It WILL have a bad effect if NO3 bottoms out. Sure you could add more fish and feed more, but you do not have to. I have seen many on here like @Randy Holmes-Farley who dosed nitrates to no ill effect. Fish of hex even had a video about how all of his SPS in his 500+gallon system where having the same issues as the OP until he started dosing both NO3 and PO4. While sure this is all andictoal, it sure is a lot of people doing it to no ill effect. Most reporting good results.
 
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b4tn

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well I am going slow. I did a before and after measurement and measured .5 before. Dosed 4 ml of my solution and re tested an hour later and got very close to 2 ppm. I will test again tonight and tomorrow morning to see where I stand and adjust dosing if required from there.
 

Miller535

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well I am going slow. I did a before and after measurement and measured .5 before. Dosed 4 ml of my solution and re tested an hour later and got very close to 2 ppm. I will test again tonight and tomorrow morning to see where I stand and adjust dosing if required from there.

I have never used what you are using, but dose Neonitro. But on the neonitro bottle is says to measure NO3 24 hours later, and also PO4. As the NO3 should pull the PO4 down some.
 
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I have never used what you are using, but dose Neonitro. But on the neonitro bottle is says to measure NO3 24 hours later, and also PO4. As the NO3 should pull the PO4 down some.

That makes sense. probably to give the tank time to process whatever you are feeding that day as well so as not to skew the results.
 
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So I dosed 2 ppm yesterday morning and this morning, 24 hours later, I tested somewhere between 1-2 ppm. I dosed another 2ppm this morning and just out of curiosity did a test tonight. I am sitting at exactly 4ppm now and phosphate did drop from .08 to .02-.05 (GFO is still in the reactor). I will test again in the AM which will be another 24 hours. I’m hoping it’s not going to be a pain to figure out my maintenance dose.
 

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I think that could be true if too much was dosed, or dosed too quickly. I am just not buying this. That it MAY have a bad effect, if what? It WILL have a bad effect if NO3 bottoms out. Sure you could add more fish and feed more, but you do not have to. I have seen many on here like @Randy Holmes-Farley who dosed nitrates to no ill effect. Fish of hex even had a video about how all of his SPS in his 500+gallon system where having the same issues as the OP until he started dosing both NO3 and PO4. While sure this is all andictoal, it sure is a lot of people doing it to no ill effect. Most reporting good results.

I know a local vendor who gets sick acro growth and the best colors on tenuis that I have ever seen and he doses nitrates daily so they maintwin 25 ppm. Sometimes science can confuse the hobbyist. Remember whent he science suggested we should look for undetectable levels? how many of our tanks crashed because of that.?
 

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I am very hesitant to dose for several reasons.

1. its yet another daily task
2. I am probably going to have to buy more equipment (doser) so its not another task to forget
3. I have dosed nitrate before and browned and killed several acros (to be fair I was using stump remover)
4. I am afraid its going to fuel nuisance algae

So the reef in question is a 10 month old bare bottom SPS dominant 75 gallon. It has lots of rock combined with my 40 gallon sump I estimate water volume to be 65 gallons. I have been seeing a lot lately regarding the use of dry rock and I am starting to agree that dry rock may not be what its cracked up to be, but I did start this one with dry rock that I cooked, cleaned, and cured myself. I took it from my previous 5 year old reef wanting to start over in a new house.

About 3 or 4 months ago I took out my filter sock to get nutrients up which resulted in a a mess of detritus in the sump and I think the cause for a nitrate/phosphate spike. P was at .4 and N was at 30 I was not paying attention and lost a couple corals and several others have just recently recovered. I have a turbo aquatics algae scrubber and was running it to get things stabilized. It did the job lowering nitrates but it did not lower phosphate as efficiently. I was stuck at .15 phosphate and 1 ppm nitrate and every week I was reducing the scrubber time. I added GFO and phosphate is now around .05 but Nitrate is getting back down to black hole status at .5 ppm and falling a little every day. I have reduced the scrubber to not even running anymore lol. I always read to feed and feed some more but I am at the point where if I feed more I am throwing it away. My fish are already fat and lazy at cleaning rock. I feed

1/2 tsp of newlife spectrum pellets daily spread through the day
Daily 1/4 sheet of nori
Benereef 3 times a week
Cube of frozen once a week.

I am getting nervous because I rarely have to clean the glass anymore, Corals I feel like could have better color, I have a clam, and I have fought cyano and dinos before and do not want to go down that road again. So my question is once you start daily dosing nitrate does it eventually stabilize as the tank matures? Like eventually get to the point where its not needed? I have food grade Sodium Nitrate on hand how slow should I go? I was thinking to raise Nitrate 1 ppm a week till I reach around 5 and try and hold it there. How consistent is it once you find the maintenance dose? Does it fluctuate at all?


I see you are feeding benereef which contains hetrotrophic bacterial strains which will reduce N/P as well cornstarch which can act as a form of carbon dosing. If you are feeding this 3x a week to your tank, this could explain your troubles maintaining nitrate in your target range.

Id slowly back off the frequency you are feeding benereef and monitor impact of nitrate levels, benereef is a great coral food dont get me wrong! but if your having trouble keeping nitrates elevated to your target, maybe try rotating using it with a different coral food.

Just a thought
 
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I see you are feeding benereef which contains hetrotrophic bacterial strains which will reduce N/P as well cornstarch which can act as a form of carbon dosing. If you are feeding this 3x a week to your tank, this could explain your troubles maintaining nitrate in your target range.

Id slowly back off the frequency you are feeding benereef and monitor impact of nitrate levels, benereef is a great coral food dont get me wrong! but if your having trouble keeping nitrates elevated to your target, maybe try rotating using it with a different coral food.

Just a thought

I did think about that. I honestly just started Benereef about a week and a half ago. I’m dosing 1/2 the recommended dose for the recommended 3 times a week for 2 weeks then going to once a week starting tomorrow. Over the course of 2 weeks I did see a very slight drop in nitrates like from .75 down to .5 but seemed to be dropping at the same slow rate as before. I will definitely keep that in mind though. So far 2 ml of solution or 1 ppm of nitrate daily is keeping me just over 4ppm on the test kit. My pink fuzzy leather has went bananas with PE and same with my frog skin pictured. Other corals also have slightly more PE these two just had the most drastic improvement in just 3 days of dosing.

1D086068-BCB2-43FE-A4C7-AA84E1FF560A.jpeg
 
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b4tn

b4tn

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I have been consistently right around 4 ppm of free nitrate and .05 ppm free phosphate each morning now. After Dosing .5 ppm of nitrate (1ml of solution) I wait and hour and re test and get somewhere between 8 and 12 ppm after 1 hour. The numbers don’t really match up but it’s not reading excessively high. The Red Sea pro nitrate test kit is not very granular but seems consistent.
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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Just FWI but adding nitrates can have a negative effect on corals. This paper Context Dependant Effects of Nutrient Loading on the Coral-Algae Mutialism shows dosing nitrates can have a negative effect on calcification. Here's Fig 3 from the paper:
Context‐dependent effects of nutrient loading on the coral–algal mutualism(1).png

I think this is a really poor analysis (that is, unconvincing to me of anything) since it isn't an experiment, but rather compares data collected by many other researchers under many different conditions with different corals.

But, looking closely at that graph, there is no evidence of any decrease in calcification for boosted N + P ( relative to no dosing at all (anthropogenic). Thus no evidence that our recommended nitrate and phosphate levels are good, bad or otherwise relative to lower levels.

Let's look at what they mean by enriched.

"N and P enrichment ranged from 0.5–26 umol/L and 0.11–26 umol/L, respectively (Appendix A), which equated to levels that were 0.15–25.5 umol/L higher than controls for N and 0.05–25.5 umol/ L higher for P. "


So nitrate enrichment would be 0.5-26 umol/L (0.03 to 1.5 ppm.)
Phosphate enrichment was 0.11–26 umol/L (0.01 to 2.5 ppm)

That is an incredible range for phosphate, and very low rend of the range for nitrate, relative to what we are dosing.

But as long as you maintain both N and P it seems to be no concern relative to not dosing to these corals.
 

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