Relationship of Temporature and Carbon Dosing

[Treefer32]

As many of you following me on this journey know. I've been struggling to maintain phosphates and nitrates without water changes on my 340 gallon display / 75 gallon sump.

I have lots of filtration in place, and many of them redundant - a 4 month old pellet reactor with 1 liter of pellets. An ATS, an oversized skimmer, a roller mat, and vodka dosing.

I upped my dosing over the last few weeks from the low of 30 ml per day up to 60 ml per day. Before I left on vacation, my nitrates were starting to drop. They hit 28 ppm. My phosphates bottomed out at .04 ppm after dosing Phosphate - E for a few days in a row.


Lowered my dosing down to 50 ml per day before I left on vacation as I saw nitrates coming down. Now a week since I left on vacation, my nitrates and phosphates are lower than I anticipated!

Nitrates hit 4.6 with high range hanna checker.

Phosphates are still at .04 ppm with ULR Phosphate checker.

Alk is steady at 9.3.

The only thing that changed from when I was dosing the last 3-4 months to now... Is slightly more vodka and temperature. I raised the AC in my house to 73. So, the tank / fish room is now consistently hitting 80 - 81 degrees during the day and 79 degrees at night.

I was keeping the tank at 76-78 prior to me leaving on vacation.

I know that some bacteria grow better in warmer temperatures. Would the tank running at 81 degrees hit some type of bacteria tolerance threshold causing it to blossom and consume all my nitrates?

4.6 ppm would be well within margin of error of between 0 ppm and 9 ppm on a high range test kit). I've since lowered my daily dosing routine further via the apex. I don't want this constant. Oh, nitrates are rising now, need to increase dosing. I'd to get it dialed in so nitrates stay consistently between 5 and 20 and phosphates stay between .02 and .1.

When I get home, temp will drop in the house as we like to keep it around 67 at night and 70 during the day, which causes the tank to drop down to 76 at night and 78 during the day respectively.

Maybe its just another coincidence that bacteria grew with tank temp increasing.

 

[blaxsun]

Were you also feeding less while on vacation? The temperature thing is definitely an interesting question though. Ordinarily you don't necessarily want to be running the tank at 81°F for any prolonged period of time though...

 

[taricha]

I know that some bacteria grow better in warmer temperatures. Would the tank running at 81 degrees hit some type of bacteria tolerance threshold causing it to blossom and consume all my nitrates?

I think not. The temp difference might change slightly the rate at which the bacteria do something, but probably not enough for you to notice a tankwide nutrient change.

 

[Dan_P]

As many of you following me on this journey know. I've been struggling to maintain phosphates and nitrates without water changes on my 340 gallon display / 75 gallon sump.

I have lots of filtration in place, and many of them redundant - a 4 month old pellet reactor with 1 liter of pellets. An ATS, an oversized skimmer, a roller mat, and vodka dosing.

I upped my dosing over the last few weeks from the low of 30 ml per day up to 60 ml per day. Before I left on vacation, my nitrates were starting to drop. They hit 28 ppm. My phosphates bottomed out at .04 ppm after dosing Phosphate - E for a few days in a row.


Lowered my dosing down to 50 ml per day before I left on vacation as I saw nitrates coming down. Now a week since I left on vacation, my nitrates and phosphates are lower than I anticipated!

Nitrates hit 4.6 with high range hanna checker.

Phosphates are still at .04 ppm with ULR Phosphate checker.

Alk is steady at 9.3.

The only thing that changed from when I was dosing the last 3-4 months to now... Is slightly more vodka and temperature. I raised the AC in my house to 73. So, the tank / fish room is now consistently hitting 80 - 81 degrees during the day and 79 degrees at night.

I was keeping the tank at 76-78 prior to me leaving on vacation.

I know that some bacteria grow better in warmer temperatures. Would the tank running at 81 degrees hit some type of bacteria tolerance threshold causing it to blossom and consume all my nitrates?

4.6 ppm would be well within margin of error of between 0 ppm and 9 ppm on a high range test kit). I've since lowered my daily dosing routine further via the apex. I don't want this constant. Oh, nitrates are rising now, need to increase dosing. I'd to get it dialed in so nitrates stay consistently between 5 and 20 and phosphates stay between .02 and .1.

When I get home, temp will drop in the house as we like to keep it around 67 at night and 70 during the day, which causes the tank to drop down to 76 at night and 78 during the day respectively.

Maybe its just another coincidence that bacteria grew with tank temp increasing.

Reaction rates double for every 10 C increase near room temperature. This would increase bacteria metabolism and reproduction as well.

In one week the nitrate level decrease from 28 ppm to 4 ppm. What was the drop the week before?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'm not inclined to think that temp is making a big difference in this situation.

 

[Treefer32]

Reaction rates double for every 10 C increase near room temperature. This would increase bacteria metabolism and reproduction as well.

In one week the nitrate level decrease from 28 ppm to 4 ppm. What was the drop the week before?

The week before it went from 36 ppm to 28 ppm in a 7 day period. That's why I was shocked to see a drop from 28 to 4.6. unless bacteria growth was just ramping up adapting to the increase in carbon dosing.

 

[Treefer32]

I did switch to a new home made food recipe. I used to put the fish eggs (from BRS) in it and Red Sea Coral Amino AB+ and tuna was a 1/3 of the protein in the mixture.

This food is fish Amino acids (can't remember the brand) (1 bottle), 1 bottle of selcon, no tuna, and no fish eggs. I'm wonder if my old fish food recipe was adding too many nitrates. Obviously too many changes to say removing tuna from the recipe reduced nitrates or switching up the brand of amino acids from coral amino acids to fish amino acids would directly affect nitrate introduction.

I don't think my fish keepers are feeding less, my fish are voracious. If they don't get enough they would start eating each other. . .

That said, it could be the changes in food recipe I made, the increased dosing, and the mixture of the temp, and temp is just a red herring.

 

[Dan_P]

The week before it went from 36 ppm to 28 ppm in a 7 day period. That's why I was shocked to see a drop from 28 to 4.6. unless bacteria growth was just ramping up adapting to the increase in carbon dosing.

I see what you mean, though bacteria do increase exponentially. Who knows. I presume the system survived your vacation

 

[Treefer32]

I see what you mean, though bacteria do increase exponentially. Who knows. I presume the system survived your vacation

I'm not back yet, but according to the people checking on it and feeding and my wyze cams, all is well so far! I'm back Sunday. (full 9-10 days away from the tank!)

It barely survived though. Talk about redundancy monitoring systems saving my 350 gallon reef!

I have 2 wyze cams - one on separately outlet from the sump on the display and one on the sump. I have my apex classic heart monitor hooked up. I first got a notification last weekend saying the apex lost contact. At first I thought maybe just an internet glitch. I checked the wyze cams. The one on the display was offline, but the one on the fish room (on a separate circuit) was still working. I checked my top off lights - they were all off, my tank lights from the back. were all off (when they should be on full). My sump ATS and skimmer and return pump were all on. I've had issues with one breaker flipping usually when I do something downstairs. Like turn one other device on. But this was weird. The top off monitoring system is on it's own completely separate breaker and GFCI outlet, it made no sense that that had shut down.

I had a friend check it the next day (Monday of this week) and determined that 5 breakers, and 3 GFCI outlets were all tripped. Come to find out my basement fridge / freezer had turned off (where i had one pack of freshly made home made fish food). My kitchen fridge was ok, but my deep freezer in the garage (6 more pounds of frozen fish food had also tripped off. (It hasn't done that in 3 years). The food in the deep freeze was starting to get slushy. Slushy, but still cold. So, deemed edible still if refrozen quickly. He was able to walk around the house and get all the GFCI outlets turned back on and the breakers reset. (The home is only 6 years old).

I could have lost everything. However, getting everything turned back on, all I lost was the fish food in the basement freezer. It was completely warm. Raw Seafood at room temp for any period of time is not servable to anyone...

Thankfully, no livestock were affected. Enough redundancies in place that my sump pump, heaters, and dosing systems all remained functional!

 

[Dan_P]

I'm not back yet, but according to the people checking on it and feeding and my wyze cams, all is well so far! I'm back Sunday. (full 9-10 days away from the tank!)

It barely survived though. Talk about redundancy monitoring systems saving my 350 gallon reef!

I have 2 wyze cams - one on separately outlet from the sump on the display and one on the sump. I have my apex classic heart monitor hooked up. I first got a notification last weekend saying the apex lost contact. At first I thought maybe just an internet glitch. I checked the wyze cams. The one on the display was offline, but the one on the fish room (on a separate circuit) was still working. I checked my top off lights - they were all off, my tank lights from the back. were all off (when they should be on full). My sump ATS and skimmer and return pump were all on. I've had issues with one breaker flipping usually when I do something downstairs. Like turn one other device on. But this was weird. The top off monitoring system is on it's own completely separate breaker and GFCI outlet, it made no sense that that had shut down.

I had a friend check it the next day (Monday of this week) and determined that 5 breakers, and 3 GFCI outlets were all tripped. Come to find out my basement fridge / freezer had turned off (where i had one pack of freshly made home made fish food). My kitchen fridge was ok, but my deep freezer in the garage (6 more pounds of frozen fish food had also tripped off. (It hasn't done that in 3 years). The food in the deep freeze was starting to get slushy. Slushy, but still cold. So, deemed edible still if refrozen quickly. He was able to walk around the house and get all the GFCI outlets turned back on and the breakers reset. (The home is only 6 years old).

I could have lost everything. However, getting everything turned back on, all I lost was the fish food in the basement freezer. It was completely warm. Raw Seafood at room temp for any period of time is not servable to anyone...

Thankfully, no livestock were affected. Enough redundancies in place that my sump pump, heaters, and dosing systems all remained functional!

Lesson learned. Never go on vacation or leave home