NO3 dosing killing my SPS?

[Acroporaguy]

Happened to me as well. As soon as I stopped dosing nutrients the RTN stopped. Never again will I try it.

 

[Wiskey]

Confused on why your running GFO when your having proplems keeping PO4 at a readable level. Also your using chaeto witch also reduce PO4. Seems like you are stripping your tank of PO4 before your corals can use it. I don't see the point of GFO/chaeto if your still dosing PO4.

I'm no expert but it seems like your doing alot of work and not gaining anything from it.

I have plenty of P04, I use GFO at a very slow rate to keep it down to about 0.08. It's the Nitrate that is 0, one of the hopes with dosing some nitrate was to get the Cheato to grow faster and maybe remove the need for GFO to control the phosphate.

Whiskey

 

[Wiskey]

I popped some Poly Filter in a bubble trap in the sump to help get any heavy metals. I figure it won't hurt.

Whiskey

 

[Pablo M Castro]

Hello all!

I found that my NO3 was at 0, which isn't good for Cheato growth, my Phosphate was at 0.08 which is about where I like to have it. To correct the issue I started dosing NO3 to 10PPM which I figured was a good number.

Lo mantuve allí durante aproximadamente una semana, y mis corales se veían cada vez peor, luego tuve alrededor de 6 Frags RTN, y más comenzaron a STN. Perdí alrededor de 8 fragmentos en total, y algunas de mis colonias más grandes comenzaron a tener tiras de tejido.

La mayoría de mis corales estaban bien, el 75% mostró un cambio positivo, o poco o ningún cambio, pero el 25% murió o estaba muriendo.

En ese momento dejé de agregarlo y esperé un par de semanas, las cosas comenzaron a verse un poco mejor, luego el NO3 fue 0 nuevamente, así que comencé a agregar solo un poco, el NO3 apenas era detectable en el verificador Hanna, 0.2 y los corales comenzaron a verse peor nuevamente, así que me detuve.

¿Cuál es el trato? Siempre he evitado mantener 0 Fosfato o 0 NO3. ¿Alguien ha visto esto? ¿Alguien sabe lo que está pasando?

Estadísticas básicas:
Par está entre 150 y 300 prácticamente en cualquier lugar del tanque. Combo T5/LED.
KH - 7.5
CA - 440
Mag - 1350
Fosfato todavía 0.08 - 0.1

¿Alguna idea?
Whisky

base rtn o consejos, ¿revisaste los niveles de potasio o yodo?

Translation:
base rtn or tips, did you check potassium or iodine levels?

 

[Wiskey]

base rtn o consejos, ¿revisaste los niveles de potasio o yodo?

Translation:
base rtn or tips, did you check potassium or iodine levels?

Thanks for the translation Pablo!

For most corals they died tip down, however I had a number die from the base up. I didn't check potassium or iodine, and I don't regularly check those. I do know that the Core 7 adds that, and I just sort of trust it. I will send in an ICP test though now that I discovered that the RO/DI had given out on me, and I have no idea for how long.

Whiskey

 

[Wiskey]

By way of update, I dumped 90 gallons of water I had on hand, even the topoff for my nano, and I've been making water for the last 48 hours non stop.

I did a 45 gallon water change yesterday and I have another 45 gallons mixing. I might wait a few days just because I don't like changing too much at once. The total system is about 200 Gallons. I did put in a Polyfilter I got at my LFS, and I'm happy to report that it has not changed color so the situation isn't too bad.

I'm also pleased to report that I saw pylops deep down inside of a California tort that had really bad branch die off. This is the first time I've seen that in a while. The tissue loss seems to have at very least slowed down and I have my fingers crossed that everything is on the mend. Time will tell.

Whiskey

 

[ohiomike]

I would stop chasing numbers and let your corals tell you what they need

Amen to that. It doesn't matter what #'s we would like to see. All that matters is what your inhabitants respond well to.

 

[Wiskey]

Sooooo,.. at the end of the day I'm not totally sure what happened here. It's been about 4 months since my last update and for the most part corals are surging back in growth, I lost a couple pieces early on but the ones that made it through are doing great and growing at full speed again.

I did end up sending off that ICP test, and everything came back just fine for the most part, couple low minor trace elements but nothing to raise an eyebrow.

I would believe that adding nitrate knocked the entire system off balance. I would believe that the RO/DI failing caused issues with something not tested. I would believe that corals just don't like change. -shrug-

At this point I have my lights turned back up, I'm still dosing NO3 to keep it around 10 and everything is growing faster and looking better for it.

Whiskey

 

[East1]

I just skimmed the thread, but I've experimented for a few years with dosing and particularly the NO3 PO4 balance, basically you went too fast from 0 - 10, your corals were adapted to a low-nitrogen and high (relatively) phosphate concentration, this causes some physiological changes in the coral tissue particularly the tissue:skeleton ratio and how much slime it can produce, going too fast will cause immense stress (and is often why when moving established corals to a new tank, they just die.

there owuld have been a second order effect, where adding nitrate would have alleviated your tanks nutrient limitation thus tending PO4 to zero which exacerbates the above. In my experience if you dose nitrate you also need to dose, at minimum a tiny a mount of phosphate to ensure you're not nitrate limited. All tanks will feed and all tanks will be adding a different amount of indirect NO3 and PO4, so when dosing the key is to dose to bring these two to balance at a 100:1 ratio ie 10ppm NO3 should necessitate a 0.1PO4 reading, if you obserrve this ratio t hen no matter the absolute amounts dosed, your corals won't react so sharply to the change.

here's a source on the first point if you'd like some more indepth reading

Frontiers | Changes in Radial Polyp Tissues of Acropora Longicyathus After Long-Term Exposure to Experimentally Elevated Nutrient Concentrations

Coral tissues control growth and calcification processes that ultimately build coral reefs but relatively little information is available on the effects of n...

www.frontiersin.org

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

All tanks will feed and all tanks will be adding a different amount of indirect NO3 and PO4, so when dosing the key is to dose to bring these two to balance at a 100:1 ratio ie 10ppm NO3 should necessitate a 0.1PO4 reading, if you obserrve this ratio t hen no matter the absolute amounts dosed, your corals won't react so sharply to the change.

IMO, ratios are the latest trendy thing in reefing but make zero sense in terms of setting nutrient targets.

Having both very high or very low but at the “right” ratio does not seem sensible, while targeting both to a desirable absolute values or range of values can never be “wrong”.

 

[ninjamyst]

IMO, you were going too fast with changes. Dosing too much nitrate at once to instantly bump it from below 0 to 10. Doing very large water changes.

When things go wrong, we tend to try to find a cause and try to further do things to course correct. But in my experience, we just need to ride things out unless entire tank is crashing.

 

[East1]

IMO, ratios are the latest trendy thing in reefing but make zero sense in terms of setting nutrient targets.

Having both very high or very low but at the “right” ratio does not seem sensible, while targeting both to a desirable absolute values or range of values can never be “wrong”.

I don't think you can set a nutrient target with a ratio, I believe it's a common misconception. I think the sentimentt needs to be that you should be targeting both to desirable absolute values and by doing so the ratio will stabilise it


The way i treat it is that if you are adding either side of the equation, ie adding excess no3 or excess Po4 (as will be the case in 99% of tanks cus food isn't balanced) then the nutrient levels will not tend toward a ratio and one or the other will be limited.

Biologically that then puts corals toward one of the two sides of that paper, either depressed NO3 or PO4 relative to NSW.

As such, aiming for a ratio of NO3: PO4 is impossible and the more you try the more it tends toward exponential imbalance, to do this, there needs to be a metric correction dose and in most tanks from experience I think this will be nitrogen, BUT it's important to note that when one doses nitrogen, then the next thing that will be limited (usually in days to weeks) will be PO4

If you are mindful of this, then it's possible to supplement the missing side of the equation, which will allow both nutrient levels to stabilise in a ratio (which in most tanks like a 50-100:1 N : P ratio seems to happen naturally)

I do this by both adding PO4 and NO3 and then feeding on top, so that the cyclical additions allow both sides to be processed naturally and there's never limitation in a 24hour setting, and unless I mess up my dosing schedule or feed too much I'll never have too much PO4 or NO3.