Like the title says was wanting some tips for using NoPox. My nitrates are runninh a little high and was wanting to c if it would help coral color. Thanks for any info you have.
What is high? Could you give some numbers from your latest readings? What are you feeding and how often? What's your goal? What kind of coral are you having? How old is the tank? All those answers will help with defining the parameters of a proper response. Also check this recent thread for some more info.
Without knowing about your tank my tip would be to set up some sort of doser for NOPOX. I tried it for a few months and dosing daily manually was a pain to be honest. After a couple of months I gave up as I didn't see a lot of change in my nitrates. I then set up a biopellet reactor and love it. I set it up and don't have to worry about it and my nitrates are half of what they were 6 weeks ago.
I'm sure NOPOX works but its a lot of work and not easy to dial in during my experience with it. If you're going to start carbon dosing I'd go with an easier or at least cheaper route to be honest.
Ok....sorry it took me so long. I did a test this morning.
NO3-64
PO4-.08
MAG-1560
CAL-410
KH-7dkh
Everything looks normal but my NO3. I have 125 gal. with a 55gal sump. My NO3 normal stayed less than 10. I started feeding a little more because I had a fish getting skinny on me. I feed 2 cubes of frozen a day and do about 25 gal. water change a week. Idk if my test has went bad or what
I use red sea test kits and salt. Thanks for your reply so far.
Best to get a doser. Drew's dosers are perfect because they're a 4 roller @ 1.5 ml/min.
Makes it super easy to dose a single drop or more, but it adds stuff slowly enough to avoid spikes.
Best you can do though is get the doser, then start low, at like 1/4 the dose suggested by red sea. Wait a week, then adjust.
If you see nitrates bottom out to 0, cut the dose by 75%. Wait a week, then reevaluate.
May I ask, what frozen food do you feed? Is that all you feed? Pretty surprised by the ratio of nitrate:phosphate you have going there. (or do you run gfo?)
I tried biopellets, denitrate, and now I use nopox. Ive been using nopox for months with excellent results, I had none of the negative results like I did with the cyano from the biolpellets. Once I was sure it was working for me, I got a doser from brs and an apollo digital timer and dialed it in. I find it to be inexpensive and all you have to do is refill the dosing container, test weekly and adjust as necessary.
May I add to what @Kungpaoshizi said and say that IMO an even better solution/pump is a medical infusion pump like this one for instance. Cheaper than the aquarium pumps and much more reliable (it's medical!).
Other than that, I would do what was suggested, dose about half the dose and monitor closely your nitrates and my personal preference is bring them down to about 2-5 ppm or so.