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Nitrate .50 Phos.03 Now what? Coral frenzy?


Dogfish

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My tank has now reached 6 months in age. They count months when they are babies up until 2 ? I think ? My nitrate has been between .25 and .75. With the addition of the fuge to grow pods I think nitrate is going to drop. Tested today, looked a bit lighter than the normal pale pink. I started to dose some phyto in the fuge daily to help out the pods until I get film algae in the rock rubble. There is a good coating on the glass. I have been feeding my 16 small fishies  pretty heavy. 3 cubes a day a little rods and a pinch of pellets with some white worms.

I am thinking about feeding the tank 1 tsp of  Reef Roids and 1 tsp of Coral Frenzy, 3 times a week. Plus a squirt of phyto feast. I started this tonight. Tank room smells like the ocean full of seaweed.  Every Sunday it gets 1 oz of phyto and 1 oz of oyster feast with a spoon of roids and frenzy, already.

Questions: Do you think the nitrate level will rise? Will I run into a phos issue? If I dose nitrates will it remove the little phos I have left ? Is there another solution besides more fish? I want to avoid more fish until I get the nems.

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I had a marked reduction of nitrate about three months ago - used to hold steady at 4.0 but then disappeared.  For over two months I ran between zero and .25 and noticed dulling of the corals. This is with 14 fish in a 120g, feeding a mix of pellets and frozen four times a day, reef chili twice a week and reef roids twice a week.  Evidently, my tank is pretty efficient at removing nitrates.

I now dose nitrate in the form of NaNO3 to 3 ppm when needed after testing on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  Usually, it drops to around .5 to 1 in between tests.  Everything looks much better to my eye.  I took my GFO offline during that time as well.  Phosphates stayed somewhat steady at .012 to .037 the entire time.  I got a little algae on the sandbed for a week after removing the reactor and then it went away.

 

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I would keep phospahtes above .03 mg/l.   Research* done a closed system over a 10 year period at the University of Southampton shows phosphate deficiency causes serious problems with corals and their simbionts making coral very sensitive to changes in lighting, temperature and increases in nitrogen.

 

*  Phosphate deficiency promotes coral bleaching and is reflected by the ultrastructure of symbiotic dinoflagellates
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X17301601?via%3Dihub

 Nitrate enrichment can increase the susceptibility of reef corals to bleaching
http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/Nutrient enrichment.pdf

Ultrastructural Biomarkers in Symbiotic Algae Reflect the Availability of Dissolved Inorganic Nutrients and Particulate Food to the Reef Coral Holobiont
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2015.00103/full

 

 

 

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Made my own:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KZOEBS8/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Use this calculator to make your solution.  http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/calculator.htm

Choose the potassium nitrate option and multiply the answer in grams you get by .84 to get the correct amount of sodium nitrate to use.  For example, I have a 120 gallon.  I wanted a solution in a half gallon of water so that when I add 10ml of the solution I would raise the tank by 2.5 ppm.  The calculator tells me I need 350 grams of potassium nitrate in the solution to accomplish this.  Multiplying by .84 yields 294 grams of sodium nitrate needed to do the same thing.

 

That half gallon will last me a year.

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17 hours ago, Dogfish said:

Timfish

if I dose nitrates will that lower my phosphates which I do not want to happen?

 Yes, corals need phosphate to utilize nitrogen.  If corals do not have enough phosphate to utilize nitrogen it causes the coral to start making sulpholipeds instead of phospholipids which makes caoral very sensititve to changes in light intensity and and temperature.  It also forces the coral to store the excess nitrogen as uric acids crystals inside the coral cells and as they grow the crystal rupture the cell walls. 

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6 hours ago, Timfish said:

 Yes, corals need phosphate to utilize nitrogen.  If corals do not have enough phosphate to utilize nitrogen it causes the coral to start making sulpholipeds instead of phospholipids which makes caoral very sensititve to changes in light intensity and and temperature.  It also forces the coral to store the excess nitrogen as uric acids crystals inside the coral cells and as they grow the crystal rupture the cell walls. 

 

21 hours ago, Sierra Bravo said:

Made my own:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KZOEBS8/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Use this calculator to make your solution.  http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/calculator.htm

Choose the potassium nitrate option and multiply the answer in grams you get by .84 to get the correct amount of sodium nitrate to use.  For example, I have a 120 gallon.  I wanted a solution in a half gallon of water so that when I add 10ml of the solution I would raise the tank by 2.5 ppm.  The calculator tells me I need 350 grams of potassium nitrate in the solution to accomplish this.  Multiplying by .84 yields 294 grams of sodium nitrate needed to do the same thing.

 

That half gallon will last me a year.

I ordered Sodium Nitrate and Postassium Phosphate

My calculations come out close to this;

Sodium Nitrate for 500 gallon
335 grams in 1 gallon of water / dose 30 ml of solution to raise 1ppm

Potassium Phosphate for 500 Gallons
100 grams in 1 gallon of water / dose 1ml of solution to raise by .01ppm

My plan will be to dose 1/2 the amount of sodium nitrate solution above and then test. If nothing goes wrong I will dose another 1/2 and test.

Phosphate I will dose the 1ml and test, then another test, then another until my hanna ul  sees the change.

I plan to double my tank levels and let it sit for a week. If that goes ok I will keep them up with dosing. If that goes ok I will try to raise them again.

Does this sound like a reasonable plan of trying to keep the current ratio?

 

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