FarmerTy Posted May 7, 2014 Author Share Posted May 7, 2014 Censored! Only 18 and over allowed to look at my tank. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluemoon Posted May 7, 2014 Share Posted May 7, 2014 I have taken all the training from my pokemon days and use my honed skills of collecting now on corals. Gotta catch 'em all! They just never emphasized QT'ing practices on the show so I had to learn that trick myself. Imagine one pokemon getting the rest sick and and then you loosing your whole collection! Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk Your coraldex is weak ty! just kidding, id like to see a pokedex pronounciat stylophora pistalata. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 8, 2014 Author Share Posted May 8, 2014 You lost me! I used up all my pokemon knowledge to make that joke. I'm just a pokemon poser! Doh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 8, 2014 Author Share Posted May 8, 2014 Quick update: Who would have thought feeding ridiculous amounts of food and taking your biopellets offline for a little more than a month would cause your nitrates to sky rocket? Haha. Uh, duh! Total rookie mistake! I figured out why it's taking my SPS so long to color back up. I measured yesterday and it was 50ppm, from what I could tell from the color chart. Yikes! Did one water change last night and doing another today to bring it down to a less toxic level and then kicking back up my biopellets. I'll vodka dose for a little bit in the interim until the bacterial population gets ramped up in the biopellet reactor and feed a little less for a bit. Good thing I turned that center chamber in my sump into a refugium the other day... that should help out some. Also took my GFO reactor offline to allow for a better ratio of PO4 and NO3 so that the bacteria can thrive. In my reasoning, with the GFO still running, the environment would be too PO4 poor to allow the bacteria to thrive. They need PO4, NO3, and a carbon source to thrive (biopellets). So I have shut down the GFO reactor and then when the biopellets are ramped up and at full throttle, I'll reintroduce GFO if needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 8, 2014 Author Share Posted May 8, 2014 I can't wait until my whole tank is in balance again! I miss having it in cruise control like the last tank! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 If you use redfield on your current nitrate (16N-0.1P) you would be at 0.03 PPM as the ideal ratio. You're probably above that currently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 8, 2014 Author Share Posted May 8, 2014 Did I lose a decimal somewhere? Wouldn't it be 0.3 PPM? Can't trust my calculations these days since I left consulting. Not that I'm going to let my PO4 get to 0.3 PPM but I'd like to let it go up a little so that the bacteria won't be PO4 limited in their growth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 8, 2014 Author Share Posted May 8, 2014 Once the biopellets hit a saturation point with the bacterial population, I plan to add just enough GFO to remove the residual PO4 down to an acceptable level for SPS, my target being between 0.03-0.05 PPM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 Did I lose a decimal somewhere? Wouldn't it be 0.3 PPM? Can't trust my calculations these days since I left consulting. Not that I'm going to let my PO4 get to 0.3 PPM but I'd like to let it go up a little so that the bacteria won't be PO4 limited in their growth. Derp. I'm still in consulting and you definitely shouldnt trust my decimals. Especially when i send an invoice. Heyoooo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 8, 2014 Author Share Posted May 8, 2014 You mean I only owe you $1.20 for the red field calculation? Please send me your invoice immediately so I can pay it. I'd rather not pay your hourly consulting rate for a Hydrogeologist III or whatever your designation is these days! Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 GIfmaster IV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 8, 2014 Author Share Posted May 8, 2014 Nevermind, I see the problem was the initial documenting of the ratio in the first place. The Redfield Ratio is 16:1 for nitrogen to phosphorus, not 16:0.1. In that case, we're looking at 3.125 PPM of phosphate for my 50 PPM of nitrates currently in the tank. Yeah, not going to let my phosphate get that high. So, my target concentration of phosphate at 0.03 PPM will yield me a nitrate level of 0.48 PPM. Basically, if I can keep my nitrates hovering at 0.5 PPM using only bacterial or macro algae uptake, then my phosphates should stay roughly in the 0.03 PPM range. Now I can understand why some users of biopellets or macro algae as an export medium for phosphate and nitrate can effectively keep levels in desired ranges without any other technologies (i.e. GFO) while others cannot. The one's that CAN keep their systems in desired ranges have a ratio of nitrate to phosphate very similar to the Redfield ratio of 16:1, therefore they are not nitrate or phosphate limited and their export method (via bacterial or macro algae uptake) can reduce levels down to desired targets (0.03 PPM phosphate and 0.5 PPM of nitrates). If there is an imbalance in your system, say you had more phosphate than nitrate in your system, once you introduce either carbon dosing (bacterial uptake) or macro algae, you will be nitrate-limited and will end up with a higher amount of residual phosphate. The opposite would be true too. If you have a much higher concentration of nitrate to phosphate (for example, currently in my system where I have 50 PPM nitrate to 0.05 PPM phosphate), then it would be phosphate-limited and natural methods of removal/uptake will not occur, leaving me with the 50 PPM of nitrate I have currently. If I were able to increase the level of phosphate in my system, the bacteria or macro algae would have enough phosphate again to continue to grow/divide as my system wouldn't be phosphate limited anymore. I know I'm looking at a simplistic view of a biological process that has many other complex processes involved in it. It does help me to understand how my nitrates could have gotten so high while my phosphate stayed so low, especially when I am using GFO to depress the concentration of phosphate even lower than naturally possible. So, after all of this blabbing, what's your conclusion Ty? Well, my conclusion is my current nitrate and phosphate removal strategy is currently phosphate limited as I have depressed it unnaturally with GFO. Shutting off the GFO will allow for my phosphate levels to rise, thus removing the phosphate-limited condition in my tank and allowing my bacterial populations via my biopellet reactor and my macro algae to effectively remove my nitrates and my phosphates in the system at roughly the Redfield ratio of 16:1 nitrate to phosphate. My target goal is to lower my phosphate concentration down to 0.03 PPM and according to the Redfield ratio, will leave me with 0.5 PPM of nitrates in my system, which is reasonable level in the tank. If I can achieve that, then essentially, I won't need GFO anymore. Wheww... my brain is worn out! Please feel free to poke holes in my theories. I don't claim to be error free. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 errors. errors everywhere. your post is solid. i don't know where i got 0.1... i blame the weather, sleep dep or obama. all three are very convenient. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 10, 2014 Author Share Posted May 10, 2014 Hey Ty, what were you doing last night after dinner? Oh, just dosing phosphates to my system... All in the name of science! Results of the experiment will be posted later this weekend! Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 13, 2014 Author Share Posted May 13, 2014 Alright, interesting experiment I have caught myself up in. To sum up, I have determined that my system is phosphate-limited and my nitrates have gone out of control (last read 50ppm). I hypothesized that this occurred because I was unnaturally lowering my phosphates via GFO causing it to be too limited to support bacteria/macro algae from uptaking both nitrates and phosphates in roughly the 16N:1P ratio that the Redfield Ratio has documented. Now we can't take this ratio as an exact number as this is only one type of macro he experimented with and there have been documented experiments showing different uptake ratios for different macro algaes. For sake of simplicity, I'll run with the 16N:1P ratio as a generalized ratio of uptake for macro/bacteria. When my wife was asking me what I was working on, I tried to explain to her the above but it was late and she wasn't interested in me nerding it up with her. She was eating chips and salsa at the time, so I used it as an example. Imagine if the nitrates are the chips and the phosphates are the salsa. If you ran out of salsa, would you still continue to eat the chips? She said no. I said... bingo. The bacteria/macro want to eat their chips with salsa. So in my system, my GFO removed all the salsa (phosphates) and I'm left with a giant bag of chips (nitrates). So what's a guy to do? Well, get some more salsa (phosphates)! Okay, enough with the chips and salsa, but hopefully everyone is following where I am going with this. I picked up a bottle of Seachem Flourish Phosphate. A pure potassium phosphate source with no added nitrates. Below is my phosphate dosing schedule and the corresponding nitrate level at each interval. Please note that GFO has been taken offline since last week and I am currently not running biopellets. I did convert my frag area in the sump into a refugium last week and have a large ball of chaeto and some ulva in it currently lit by an Aqua R series large LED refugium bulb. I have a Skimz Monster E-series 201 unit that is rated up to 550 gallons running and during the experiment, I was vodka dosing (carbon source) and adding about 15 mL of 80 proof vodka a day. No other filtration, media, or water changes occurred during this time. I did do 2 water changes (roughly 20% volume total) when I first noticed the nitrates were >50ppm. Once the experiment below started, it was reading about 50 ppm and I did not perform any water changes from that point on. I will note that I am running a CaRX. Date Phosphate (ppm) -Hanna ultra low range meter Nitrate (ppm) - API 5/9 0.02 ~50 5/9 0.06 (after dosing 10ml phosphate) ~30 5/9 0.09 (after dosing 10ml phosphate) ~20 5/10 0.05 ~20 5/11 0.09 (dosed 10ml phosphate) ~20 5/12 0.05 (after dosing 10ml phosphate) ~10 First, let me say that if I was more serious about the results, I would have stuck to a more time consistent dosing schedule and also used a better nitrate test kit than the API which has very poor resolution and would not have been considered for a true test. As you can see, the general trend is that the nitrates decreased as I added phosphate (Seachem potassium phosphate) and a carbon source (vodka). I wish I could quantitatively say the chaeto and ulva grew in mass but a visual observation will have to suffice. It looked like it got thicker at least. My skimmate got darker as well indicating to me that there was more bacterial growth in the system. For me, this confirmed that my tank was indeed phosphate-limited and the addition of phosphate and a carbon source allowed the bacteria/macro to uptake the superflous amount of nitrate in my system. Am I advocating people start adding phosphate to their system. No way! Just sharing my particular situation and the resulting data I collected as I remedied my high nitrate situation and struck a better balance in my tank by correcting my phosphate-limited condition. I started back up my biopellets tonight and look forward to tweaking my nitrate/phosphate balance once the biopellets are fully online. I'm running with the new Ecobak plus pellets that boasts a new multi-polymer, multi-carbon source formula. Watch out, in a few weeks... maybe I'll be adding some nitrate to the system! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sascha D. Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Interesting write-up Ty. I'll have to admit that I wasn't expecting an experiment like that. Although I am not surprised. Most people don't have a problem adding phosphorus to their tanks, but most people don't have an exceedingly high uptake like you do in that monster tank. If you were teetering on the edge of balance and then added that large mass of chaetomorpha then it would have put you over the edge easily. Chaeto has an extremely high nutrient uptake and adding as much as you did would cause a spike. So are you done with Iron Oxide Hydroxide? I think it causes more problems than it solves, so I don't run it at all. However, you do make a compelling argument for BP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+olaggie01 Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Interesting Ty. Guess we should have found that problem a while back. How much phosphorus is in each mL of the Seachem product? How did you come up with 10 mL of phosphorus to add? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 13, 2014 Author Share Posted May 13, 2014 The hope is that I will be able to tweak my nitrate to phosphate ratio in my tank to match the uptake of my macro and bacterial culture within the biopellet reactor. I will plan to add increments of whatever is limited in my system at the time until I achieve target levels with just the biopellets. If my phosphates start creeping higher and my nitrates are at zero, then I will add nitrates until I start seeing my phosphates drop... and vice versa. The goal is to have lower phosphates and a moderately low level of nitrates, without using GFO (iron oxide hydroxide as Sascha mentioned). If I can't ever get the phosphate level down low enough, then I will supplement with GFO at that point and just keep an eye on my nitrates. Ol Aggie, we definitely should have found that out awhile back... I blame you... you're the biologist. I'm just a lowly environmental scientist turned real estate agent. I got the 10ml from the suggested dosing instructions on the bottle. Using their formula, I calculated that 10ml should bring my phosphate levels up approximately 0.05 ppm. The only thing is I have no idea what my actual net water volume is with the displacement of live rock, sand, corals, fish, reactors, etc. In practice, 10ml raised it roughly 0.03 -0.04 ppm... barring the resolution error on the hanna meter itself. I guess I could just plug the resultant phosphate change back into the formula and back calculate my what my net water volume is after removing displacement from the items mentioned above. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sascha D. Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 The reintroduction of BP should lower the nitrates without any coaxing. The phosphate issue may be resolved by replacing the Chaetomorpha with a less nutrient demanding macroalgae like Ulva - with the secondary benefit of being able to feed it to your tangs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 The main problem with your theory here is, that if i ran out of salsa, i would continue to eat chips. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 13, 2014 Author Share Posted May 13, 2014 Not in my tank man! It's salsa and chips only or no chips for you! That's where I would hope that I could observe the limiting condition if it presents itself once the biopellets are fully online again. If I have no limiting condition and the nitrates and phosphates stay at a low enough level to not warrant GFO, then I have no issues just leaving it alone. If I have a phosphate-limiting condition again and then dose phosphate but nothing happens, then I know that it may not be a functional solution anymore and GFO may re-enter the picture. Either way, I'll aim to tweak the levels in my tank to get the best efficiency of removal for nitrates and phosphates. At worst, I ran my old 125-gallon off of the GFO and biopellet regiment and never had phosphate or nitrate issues. The tank was gorgeous to me and I had great success with SPS in the old tank. The new tank is having some growing pains from the transition through error on my part and just some tank newness issues but I hope to achieve the same success in this one while having a little fun with some experiments as I go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 So maybe (probably), I'm just missing something here, but why not just bring your BPs back on line to reduce nitrate and get it in line with your phosphate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted May 13, 2014 Author Share Posted May 13, 2014 I just kicked them back on last night... way to not read every word of my 2000+ words I posted last night! The experiment was fun to just do... throw me a bone man... you know I miss "sciencing" sometimes! Haha. The biopellets once fully online will be the primary mechanism for export of nitrates and phosphates if I can find a balance between the two. If not, then GFO will be implemented to remove the residual phosphate which was my tank maintenance regiment for the old tank. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 I'm putting my money on "no way you control your phosphates with BP". What do we start the betting at? 1 frag of utter chaos? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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