Sharp NO3 decrease after 4 days of TM A and K dosing

[mook1178]

I started dosing TM A and K 4 days ago due to low trace elements in an ICP test. I am starting at the low dose of 1 ml/ 100 l. I expect my TA and Ca consumption to increase as the corals start to grow again. I have not seen that yet, but only 4 days. What I did see is my NO3 drop from ~15 ppm on my last 3 test days, ( ~10 days from the 1st to 3rd), which I would call stable, to 4 ppm this morning.

I was not expecting that, but also makes sense as the algae in the tank will begin to grow better as the trace elements are being renewed.

Just wanted to mention this as I did not consider it and it is not greatly discussed, at least in the research I did about dosing trace elements.

Cheers!

 

[Lasse]

What I did see is my NO3 drop from ~15 ppm on my last 3 test days, ( ~10 days from the 1st to 3rd), which I would call stable, to 4 ppm this morning

What are you measuring with and have you PO4 decrease too?

Sincerely Lasse

 

[mook1178]

What are you measuring with and have you PO4 decrease too?

Sincerely Lasse

Hanna for NO3 and PO4. PO4 I have been slowly decreasing using GFO, so it is hard to answer about PO4

 

[Lasse]

I ask because I am investigating a rather easy way to – using measurements – prove or at least get an indication of whether a decrease (or increase) in one of the nutrients NO3 and PO4 is due to biological growth or other factors – which only affect one of these substances. I would love to see your NO3 and PO4 values for the last two weeks.


Sincerely Lasse

 

[mook1178]

Ask and Ye shall recieve!

NO3 PO4 Date

17.7 0.25 5/23
13.7 0.29 5/27
13.9 0.36 5/31
14.9 0.30 6/3
10.7 0.21 6/7 Note: 6/6 started TM A and K dosing, also changed GFO to a HC GFO on same date.
4.0 0.20 6/10

 

[mook1178]

Well my format did not keep with the post...

 

[Lasse]

Thank you

Now I will be creative - someone may say that I will do a creative bookkeeping My thoughts is if you have a stabile aquarium with both stable input of food and GFO (loss of PO4) and also losses of NH3/NH4 and NO3 that´s not biological - your biological growth by photosynthetic organism will consume N and P atoms in a steady ratio. Long term measurements would be able to get a possibility to reveal your system's normal ratio between NO3-N and PO4-P (-N and -P refer to the N and P parts of the entire molecules) i.e. the number of N atoms on a P atom. As an example I have done this with your figures but it needs to do more measurements in order to get a better understanding. Calculation in order to get the ratio in Molar is mg/L NO3/mg/L PO4*1,53

I will stress that this is something I have coming up with and as they say it - Lasse can make mistakes, so double check This is a total different way of analyze compared with what we normally have seen and I think it is very aquarium specific. its an idea and I will work further with it. @Dan_P - what you say

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Dan_P]

Thank you

Now I will be creative - someone may say that I will do a creative bookkeeping My thoughts is if you have a stabile aquarium with both stable input of food and GFO (loss of PO4) and also losses of NH3/NH4 and NO3 that´s not biological - your biological growth by photosynthetic organism will consume N and P atoms in a steady ratio. Long term measurements would be able to get a possibility to reveal your system's normal ratio between NO3-N and PO4-P (-N and -P refer to the N and P parts of the entire molecules) i.e. the number of N atoms on a P atom. As an example I have done this with your figures but it needs to do more measurements in order to get a better understanding. Calculation in order to get the ratio in Molar is mg/L NO3/mg/L PO4*1,53

I will stress that this is something I have coming up with and as they say it - Lasse can make mistakes, so double check This is a total different way of analyze compared with what we normally have seen and I think it is very aquarium specific. its an idea and I will work further with it. @Dan_P - what you say

Sincerely Lasse

Lasse, Clever idea! Here are some ideas..

Element input stoichiometry is not likely to be a constant over time because organism growth is not constant over time. Organisms may use different element ratios during rapid growth than during slow or stationary growth. This is on top of there being many different organisms competing for the same food. Stepping back from an organism point of view to a system-wide view, where all these stoichiometric ratios average out, I am more optimistic. I would say keep working on the idea.

When nitrate-phospate are mostly consumed by one organism type, like during carbon dosing, you could see a trend that makes sense. And just maybe, mostly coral or mostly photosynthetic organism growth might also give a usable trend. I wonder what the ratio would look like if a system went from coral dominated growth to algae dominated growth?This is going to be tricky to detect a signal but I think your chances are better than SETI.

What I am doing to help find trends in amino acid data is to generate signals in model aquaria and look for similar amino acids patterns in one-off aquarium measurements. You might try this approach for generating a pure nitrate-phosphate trend. Using simpler systems, algae dominated or coral dominated, will give you an idea of what type trend to expect.

This looks like a fun moon shot.

Dan

 

[Lasse]

Because of the different volatile forms that some inorganic nitrogen forms exhibit, I think it is important to include the Molar ratio in the analyses for you as well - but the question is whether you can measure the small changes in nutrient content in small-scale experiments accurately enough.

This method is probably more suitable for longer "epidemic" surveys in established and relatively stable systems.

But let's discuss this somewhere else and not hijack this thread more than necessary.

One question to OP - Do you have macroalgae in your system? - they are known for large and rapid uptake of inorganic N.

Sincerely Lasse