Struggling to with zero Nitrate

[Emmanuel Karras]

Hi All,
I am struggling with very low and often zero Nitrate in my marine aquarium. My Phos levels are Ok (~0.15) but unless I dose a large amount of NeoNitro my Nitrate will go down to zero. I have a 1000 litre tank so its getting expensive. I have read that DIY solutions with Sodium Nitrate, Calcium Nitrate, Ammonium can be made but cant find details. Any clear instructions would be greatly apprenticed. Thanks in advance.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Welcome to Reef2Reef

What does your tank's filtration look like?
What kinds of foods and how often are you feeding?
What test kits are you using?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hi All,
I am struggling with very low and often zero Nitrate in my marine aquarium. My Phos levels are Ok (~0.15) but unless I dose a large amount of NeoNitro my Nitrate will go down to zero. I have a 1000 litre tank so its getting expensive. I have read that DIY solutions with Sodium Nitrate, Calcium Nitrate, Ammonium can be made but cant find details. Any clear instructions would be greatly apprenticed. Thanks in advance.

How are you testing levels?

 

[vetteguy53081]

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Hi All,
I am struggling with very low and often zero Nitrate in my marine aquarium. My Phos levels are Ok (~0.15) but unless I dose a large amount of NeoNitro my Nitrate will go down to zero. I have a 1000 litre tank so its getting expensive. I have read that DIY solutions with Sodium Nitrate, Calcium Nitrate, Ammonium can be made but cant find details. Any clear instructions would be greatly apprenticed. Thanks in advance.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

A DIY is a better bet from both cost and a purity guarantee perspective.

I recommend dosing ammonium bicarbonate. All of these have recipes.

DIY Ammonia dosing for low nitrate systems

Some reef aquaria have chronic low nitrogen availability. One indicator is very low nitrate. Nitrate dosing is a fine remedy, but it is possible that ammonia dosing may be more beneficial for some organisms since ammonia can be energetically easier to assimilate than is nitrate. For this...

www.reef2reef.com

DIY Nitrate Dosing Recipe

Here’s a quick guide of the DIY nitrate recipes we commonly use for reef tanks. Sodium nitrate and calcium nitrate are the most common materials used. It’s crucial to ensure that these compounds are food-grade or have a purity rating. Sourcing pure chemicals is more economical than purchasing...

www.reef2reef.com

This has more:

The Complete Guide to Raising Nutrients

Raising nutrients can feel like an uphill battle for many tanks. It’s not always clear which products to use, what to dose, or which filtration methods to adjust or remove. Chronically low nutrients can influence coral bleaching, pale colors...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[slingfox]

How old is your tank? It is not uncommon to have bottomed out nitrates for the first year or two. Zero nitrates can also happen in very mature tanks with a lot of coral. I have also had zero nitrates since I had too much biomedia in the sump. Different ways to approach the issue depending on the reason why nitrates are zero.

 

[commod0re]

I recommend dosing ammonium bicarbonate. All of these have recipes.

not to derail the thread but I am honestly curious, what is the benefit of ammonium bicarbonate over ammonium chloride or ammonium hydroxide? is it just less effect on pH/alk?

 

[BriDroid]

Are you dosing any bottled bacteria supplements? I was dosing a lot of them trying to combat dinos. While it helped, they would drive the NO3 to 0 within hours. I’ve since stopped the bacteria, and my NO3 is starting to stabilize. Just a thought.

 

[BryanM]

I have read that DIY solutions with Sodium Nitrate,

This is the way - Randy already responded with recipes.

I'll just add this, I have used neonitro in the past, and it barely moved the needle. This DIY recipe is "potent", it makes a change you can test and see, and it does it quickly.

 

[Emmanuel Karras]

Welcome to Reef2Reef

What does your tank's filtration look like?
What kinds of foods and how often are you feeding?
What test kits are you using?

 

[Emmanuel Karras]

I have a clarisea cleaner, skimmer, chaeto refugium, and algea scubber.
Feeding frozen twice a day because I have anthias.
Using Hanna testers

 

[BryanM]

I have a clarisea cleaner, skimmer, chaeto refugium, and algea scubber.
Feeding frozen twice a day because I have anthias.
Using Hanna testers

Hmm. I know someone that had cheato, added an ATS, and the ATS worked so well that his cheato pretty much disintegrated.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

not to derail the thread but I am honestly curious, what is the benefit of ammonium bicarbonate over ammonium chloride or ammonium hydroxide? is it just less effect on pH/alk?

The recipe link also provides a recipe for ammonium chloride. Drawback to it is that it depletes alkalinity.

Ammonium hydroxide is OK if you can get a good quality at known concentration, and can use with without too much ammonia loss to the air over time. . Ammonium bicarbonate is inexpensive as a solid sold in food grade for baking: "baking ammonia".

 

[FrugalReeferJon]

 

[Emmanuel Karras]

How are you testing levels?

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

A DIY is a better bet from both cost and a purity guarantee perspective.

I recommend dosing ammonium bicarbonate. All of these have recipes.

DIY Ammonia dosing for low nitrate systems

Some reef aquaria have chronic low nitrogen availability. One indicator is very low nitrate. Nitrate dosing is a fine remedy, but it is possible that ammonia dosing may be more beneficial for some organisms since ammonia can be energetically easier to assimilate than is nitrate. For this...

www.reef2reef.com

DIY Nitrate Dosing Recipe

Here’s a quick guide of the DIY nitrate recipes we commonly use for reef tanks. Sodium nitrate and calcium nitrate are the most common materials used. It’s crucial to ensure that these compounds are food-grade or have a purity rating. Sourcing pure chemicals is more economical than purchasing...

www.reef2reef.com

This has more:

The Complete Guide to Raising Nutrients

Raising nutrients can feel like an uphill battle for many tanks. It’s not always clear which products to use, what to dose, or which filtration methods to adjust or remove. Chronically low nutrients can influence coral bleaching, pale colors...

www.reef2reef.com

Great info - thanks a lot

 

[SantaMonica]

I prefer zero nutrients; the "old school" way.

Many people have heard that reducing nutrients to "zero" (nitrate, phosphate, etc as measured by hobby test kits) is not good for coral growth. The answer is, it depends. "Zero" is not really zero of course; hobby test kits don't need to test super low levels like lab tests do. In other words, there is always a level of nutrients there, even if you have "all zeros".

First thing to know is that natural reefs always test "zero" for nutrients with hobby test kits. Yet, they have very high growth rates; acro's can grow two feet in one year. But yes, some hobbyists do see less growth with zero nutrients. Why is this, and what is different with tanks compared to natural reefs?

One answer is food particles. The enormous amount of visible food particles (and invisible dissolved particles) in natural reefs is so high that at night some divers can't see their own hands. And the enormous level of photosynthesis on reefs consumes most of the resulting nutrients. But hobbyists can't have this level of food particles because of nutrient build up, so they reduce feeding, to as little as 1/1000 of natural reef levels. Thus, corals can starve from lack of food particles.

So one bandaid to help with this is to keep tank nutrients above "zero". This feeds bacteria around the corals, and the bacteria then become coral food. Softies take it in directly, by inflating with water, and polyps eat the microbes and pods that eat the bacteria.

This works but is self-limiting, because in most cases higher levels of phosphate is going to slow the coral growth, and also because bacteria are hard for polyps to grab. So the trick is to keep food particle levels up high, and keep nutrients down low, at the same time. In other words, try to duplicate natural reefs.

Also, some people say they get some brown dust algae (usually dino's) when nutrients go to zero. However this is temporary, because of phosphate leaving the sand and rocks. After a few weeks, this will go away.

 

[slingfox]

I have a clarisea cleaner, skimmer, chaeto refugium, and algea scubber.
Feeding frozen twice a day because I have anthias.
Using Hanna testers

You have pretty much the whole gamut of nutrient export. Why not take some of that offline to see if you can avoid dosing nitrates which is being stripped out by your fuge and ATS?

 

[Emmanuel Karras]

You have pretty much the whole gamut of nutrient export. Why not take some of that offline to see if you can avoid dosing nitrates which is being stripped out by your fuge and ATS?

Thanks but that's all keeping my phosphate down to 0.15. Taking that away will increase my phosphate to undesirable high levels.

 

[Emmanuel Karras]

How are you testing levels?

Hanna testers