Potassium nitrate (Spectracide stump remover) dosing steps

[slip66]

I'd say over all I have seen positive results since dosing. My red planet has color'd up slightly green from the previous pale state/Ak swing. My grape juice acro has started getting more purple as well. I wish I was better at taking pictures. Slimmer showing neon green color with new growth. I was slacking the last week or so though. I had noted a rise in po4 from my usual 0.02 to 0.06. So that had me a bit worried, I was feed more as well. I did notice I had to add a significant amount of potasium nitrate. Upwards of 1ml a day (30 gallons total) to see the increase into the 1.5 range on the color wheel.

I really think my two skunk shrimp inhibit a lot of the polyp extention. They run all over the place and it doesnt take much to cover 30 gallons worth of territoty.

A bit too much purple on the base rock in this photo. over all coroal colors are close.

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[twilliard]

I'd say over all I have seen positive results since dosing. My red planet has color'd up slightly green from the previous pale state/Ak swing. My grape juice acro has started getting more purple as well. I wish I was better at taking pictures. Slimmer showing neon green color with new growth. I was slacking the last week or so though. I had noted a rise in po4 from my usual 0.02 to 0.06. So that had me a bit worried, I was feed more as well. I did notice I had to add a significant amount of potasium nitrate. Upwards of 1ml a day (30 gallons total) to see the increase into the 1.5 range on the color wheel.

I really think my two skunk shrimp inhibit a lot of the polyp extention. They run all over the place and it doesnt take much to cover 30 gallons worth of territoty.

A bit too much purple on the base rock in this photo. over all coroal colors are close.

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Looking nice!

 

[Russ265]

I'd say over all I have seen positive results since dosing. My red planet has color'd up slightly green from the previous pale state/Ak swing. My grape juice acro has started getting more purple as well. I wish I was better at taking pictures. Slimmer showing neon green color with new growth. I was slacking the last week or so though. I had noted a rise in po4 from my usual 0.02 to 0.06. So that had me a bit worried, I was feed more as well. I did notice I had to add a significant amount of potasium nitrate. Upwards of 1ml a day (30 gallons total) to see the increase into the 1.5 range on the color wheel.

I really think my two skunk shrimp inhibit a lot of the polyp extention. They run all over the place and it doesnt take much to cover 30 gallons worth of territoty.

A bit too much purple on the base rock in this photo. over all coroal colors are close.

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looks as expected when you are nutrient void.
congratz

 

[zemuss]

Question are people still using Stump remover? Didn't this leech some bad chemicals into someones tank?

 

[twilliard]

Question are people still using Stump remover? Didn't this leech some bad chemicals into someones tank?

Yes from what I know people are using it.
I personally have not found any adverse chemical reactions in my tanks and have not heard of any issues.

 

[Jonathan Presseau]

I stopped weeks ago because I cannot rid of the cyano that came from dosing (my presumption as the tank is over 1 year). Anybody else have this issue and solve it? I have tried everything from nearly 100% water change to MicroBacter7. No detectable phos in the water.

 

[twilliard]

Cyanobacteria doesn't sustain off of no3
Potassium nitrate is not a carbon source
Check out my cyanobacteria thread

 

[zemuss]

Ok glad i didn't throw the stuff away then.. Will give it a try soon..

 

[Rockhead]

I'm dosing both sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate, reason is my potassium was creeping up a little high for my liking and didn't want a K crash to happen, I did get a little cyano but that's do to the heavy feeding I was doing to try and get my nitrates up, now that I backed off of the feeding it all went away.

 

[Ellery]

I stopped weeks ago because I cannot rid of the cyano that came from dosing (my presumption as the tank is over 1 year). Anybody else have this issue and solve it? I have tried everything from nearly 100% water change to MicroBacter7. No detectable phos in the water.

Hi Jonathan,

For Cyano I have found that to be from embedded Phosphates in the plenum or rock. The only way I have found that worked for me was to run an ozone generator which raises the ORP.

If you don't have an Ozone Generator try Nano-Bubbling since from my tests the only thing that raised consistently was my ORP. So in my opinion Nano-Bubbles is a poor-man's Ozone Generator. If you read Randy Holmes Farley's ORP for the Reef article Oxygen (O2) is also an oxidizer just not as potent at Ozone (O3).

The first time I ran my Ozone generator I noticed crystal clear water the next day and the cyano I had on my sand dissipated.

Just my 2 cents from my experience. I will be writing an article on that for SaltwaterSmarts.com soon

 

[mcarroll]

Got a couple of questions 16:1 is the ratio used for no3 to po4. So if I have a No3 reading of 2ppm - 5ppm I am well above the 16:1 ratio if my po4 is .02 to .08 correct?

This calculator will help. It's in Dutch, so engage the Google Translator...
http://www.aquariumhobby.nl/zoetwater/calculators/redfielduitslag.html

Anyone know of an English redfield calculator?

Yes if they have that bottle there.
There are other stump remover brands but not 100% potassium nitrate.
Also watch all your paperwork and logs. If you spill this on them it eats a hole through your paperwork.
Learned that one the hard way

A literal "LOL" for that one. It's been one of those days and I needed that!

(Cruising old threads is always enlightening!!)

 

[Browner20]

I'm in! Wish I could take pics but my camera skills blow beyond anyone's comprehension. Let's just say my sunset mili had almost 1/4 inch stringies and good plug coverage when I placed in the tank several months ago but now is brown in color, has stopped plug coverage, and almost no PE. My BC Spainbow looks ok but growth has slowed significantly and color is meh...

Red Sea test says no trace of nitrates, Alk 9.4, Calc 480, also no trace of phosphates but I feed heavy reef frenzy and reef chili so it is being consumed somewhere. I didn't have time to test mag tonight but @ a month ago it was @1275 so it should be fine.

I'll test nitrates before I go to bed and tomorrow AM.

 

[Browner20]

So Red Sea is still showing undetectable, I will give it another 10ml right now and test in the AM if I have time. Setup is about 70 gal total volume.

 

[srad750c]

Has anyone tried ammonium nitrate?

 

[Browner20]

Good news - my Red Sea nitrate test kit works! Was a little worried when I started the test this AM and the color did not budge at first but I waited the allotted time and I have about 3ppm nitrate! Well maybe I wasn't patient enough as I put in another 5ml before the test showed any change... Good news is that my results were almost identical to @twilliard in that 10ml added roughly 1.5ppm of nitrate to my 70 gal+ total volume. I am assuming it added a little more maybe 2ppm, 2 doses of 10ml "stump remover" to a total of 4ppm, and the tank consumed 1ppm overnight but I will continue over the next week to test for consumption.

 

[Browner20]

Tested last night around 8pm and maybe had 1ppm

 

[twilliard]

Go slow with the addition of no3
For a while it will bounce up and down but there will come a point where it stabilizes to your target number.
Don't increase the amount you are adding as you can overdose it

 

[morpheas]

I just started dosing KNO3 today for similar reasons as above, some colors are pale in some corals (mainly the SPS) and the nitrates and phosphates are undetectable. I had been dosing NoPoX which I cut down significantly. I will probably start another thread as a log of the attempt with pictures but in the process of preparing for the dosing I created the attached spreadsheet which is calculating concentrations of NO3 in solution and after dosing. Please @twilliard and @Randy Holmes-Farley could you give it a quick check and make sure I am not making any mistakes here? I think my math is correct because after using it I dosed 2cc of my solution and expected 0.2ppm which I think I saw on the red sea nitrate test. I will keep on checking because my eyes are not very good at this either haha

In the meantime, if you find any problems on the sheet please let me know because I think it is a useful calculator that others might find interesting. Thanks for all the hard work twilliard!

 

[Browner20]

Sorry for my delay in getting back on this thread with my experience with potassium nitrate. Been really busy with kid activities and had a couple things happen with the tank that halted my experiment. Unfortunately I lost my Sunset Mili but it is hard to say why exactly as there were several variables: changed out MH bulbs, accidentally plugged my doser into the controller in the spot where my hood fans are programmed, had high Alk, added the new controller, and I started adding the KNO3.

All of the frags looked stressed so I did a 25%water change and all look much better now. Luckily the doser mishap was with the Calc and not the Alk so I did not nuke the tank but it did empty what was left of a whole BRS container of calc into the tank. I created a fake wall for the controller for cable management, mounting, etc and purchased a label maker but only labeled a few of the cords before the somebody started crying so I rushed to get everything plugged in and hence the mishap. - just goes back to the whole logic of taking it slow in this hobby!

Once all the other variables stabilize I will get back on the program and document the process.

 

[Waterjockey]

Sorry for my delay in getting back on this thread with my experience with potassium nitrate. Been really busy with kid activities and had a couple things happen with the tank that halted my experiment. Unfortunately I lost my Sunset Mili but it is hard to say why exactly as there were several variables: changed out MH bulbs, accidentally plugged my doser into the controller in the spot where my hood fans are programmed, had high Alk, added the new controller, and I started adding the KNO3.

All of the frags looked stressed so I did a 25%water change and all look much better now. Luckily the doser mishap was with the Calc and not the Alk so I did not nuke the tank but it did empty what was left of a whole BRS container of calc into the tank. I created a fake wall for the controller for cable management, mounting, etc and purchased a label maker but only labeled a few of the cords before the somebody started crying so I rushed to get everything plugged in and hence the mishap. - just goes back to the whole logic of taking it slow in this hobby!

Once all the other variables stabilize I will get back on the program and document the process.

Ouch! Glad you didn't suffer too much loss with the mishap.

For what it's worth, I just stopped dosing KNO3 about a week ago. In order to lower my phosphates below 0.1 (hanna) I was dosing nitrates and increased my vinegar dosing to keep barely detectable nitrate levels. While it worked, (I achieved 0.0 phosphate on the Hanna (not the ulr checker tho)) all the corals in my tank (all lps and 1 tiny monti frag) just looked like crap (no colour, reduced polyp extension), and my trachys started to stn...not sure if the one is salvageable.
I suspect (but have no "proof") it was the high amounts of vinegar required with kn03 dosing....I saw similar response when I upped the carbon dosing in the past. I stopped the kno3, cut my vinegar dose back to maintain about 5 - 10 ppm nitrates.....my phosphates have risen to around 0.3...but my tank looks much healthier. I decided to stop chasing "ideal" numbers and just run the numbers where my tank seems happiest. If phosphates start to get very high again, I'll go back to dosing LC