Bad experiences with nitrate and/or phosphate dosing

[CMO]

1. Did you see any positive effects while dosing?

I'll let pictures speak for themselves. First set is prior to NO3 and PO4 dosing taken on 7.28.18. Second set is taken tonight on 11.6.18 after a few months of NO3 and PO4 dosing. I tried everything I could within reason to get nutrients up without dosing including much heavier feeding, reduced skimming and shorter fuge cycle but still had zero NO3 and PO4 no matter what I did.




2. What negative effects did you see, if any, or did you just not like the instability?
Zero. NO3 and PO4 are rock solid with dosing on my tank. The key to stability I think is setting your nutrient export system via skimming, fuge cylce, etc. to target zero nutrients if possible. This then gives you a constant to work from while dosing. I test NO3 and PO4 once a week and can pretty much target any number or ratio I'd like with relative easy and high stability by adjusting dosing levels once a week (or maybe twice a week if I'm trying to change something and monitor the shift). A doser like the DOS with adjustments available via apex makes this pretty simple.

This was done on a new tank started with dry clean rock and dry sand in January '18 so at least in my experience new tank syndrome isn't a cause for dosing failure.

3. What formulations of nitrate and phosphate did you use?
Brightwell NeoNitro and Neophos.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Red sea has a po4 product?

Red sea has a po4 product?

Red Sea NO3O4-X

 

[BigJohnny]

Red Sea NO3O4-X

Yea that's not po4, that's to reduce po4.

 

[BigJohnny]

1. Did you see any positive effects while dosing?

I'll let pictures speak for themselves. First set is prior to NO3 and PO4 dosing taken on 7.28.18. Second set is taken tonight on 11.6.18 after a few months of NO3 and PO4 dosing. I tried everything I could within reason to get nutrients up without dosing including much heavier feeding, reduced skimming and shorter fuge cycle but still had zero NO3 and PO4 no matter what I did.




2. What negative effects did you see, if any, or did you just not like the instability?
Zero. NO3 and PO4 are rock solid with dosing on my tank. The key to stability I think is setting your nutrient export system via skimming, fuge cylce, etc. to target zero nutrients if possible. This then gives you a constant to work from while dosing. I test NO3 and PO4 once a week and can pretty much target any number or ratio I'd like with relative easy and high stability by adjusting dosing levels once a week (or maybe twice a week if I'm trying to change something and monitor the shift). A doser like the DOS with adjustments available via apex makes this pretty simple.

This was done on a new tank started with dry clean rock and dry sand in January '18 so at least in my experience new tank syndrome isn't a cause for dosing failure.

3. What formulations of nitrate and phosphate did you use?
Brightwell NeoNitro and Neophos.

Yea so the 3 questions you answered were not directed at everyone. They were in a quoted reply to someone's post and specific to his account.

This thread is also supposed to be for people to share negative experiences, hence the title.

Glad you believe its working for you though.

 

[CMO]

Yea so the 3 questions you answered were not directed at everyone. They were in a quoted reply to someone's post and specific to his account.

This thread is also supposed to be for people to share negative experiences, hence the title.

Glad you believe its working for you though.

I don't believe. I know. And you liked posts by others who answered these same questions not posed to them so really not sure what's with the hostility towards me.

This thread is just going to drum up many examples of failures seen as being due to dosing vs being caused by incorrect dosing (such as dosing NO3 only which will drop PO4 significantly, causing alk swings and potentially very low dangerous PO4 levels). Dosing correctly will not harm anything.

 

[BigJohnny]

I don't believe. I know.

Ok.................I'm not here to argue with you. Again, not the purpose of the thread anyway. Looking for negative experiences.

Not sure why farmertys post from apparently another thread was quoted as well, must've been a mistake?

 

[CMO]

Thanks!

So my questions are:

1. Did you see any positive effects while dosing?

2. What negative effects did you see, if any, or did you just not like the instability?

3. What formulations of nitrate and phosphate did you use?

My 150 gal mixed reef has tested for years 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates, thank you prolific refugium. LPS and Softies did fine, SPS did not grow well or color up. After I went fallow 76 days, all corals were very pale and growth stopped. So I decided to start slowly hand dosing nitrates and feeding fish extra for phosphates.

1. Yes, after dosing only nitrates all corals colored up quickly. 5 stars!!!

2. While I set up a doser to keep Nitrates stable, I struggled with phosphate stability. Cyano showed up a month later. I began hand dosing phosphates, and phosphate readings were not stable. Cyano began getting out of control. Water changes, sand siphoning, rock siphoning, increased water flow, in desperation 2x chemi clean and cyano still rules 3 months later and today. All corals are still growing fast and have great color.

3. I continue to Apex dose 65 mL LoudWolf Potassium Nitrate daily (solution is 2 tsp per 800 mL RODI), and as of 1 week ago, I now Apex dose 30 mL LoudWolf Trisodium Phosphate daily (solution is 1 tsp per 1 L RODI). Nitrates are stable at 5ppm and Phosphates holding at .02. All corals have great color and growing.

My cyano plan is to continue weekly deep cleaning water changes and wait for the tank to settle in to the stable Nitrate and Phosphate levels. It is a battle. My mistake not to address phosphate stability when I tackled the Nitrate stability. I am paying the price.

Not a negative post liked by you answering questions posed to another. Sorry. At least be consistent if you want to be rude.

 

[BigJohnny]

Not a negative post liked by you answering questions posed to another. Sorry. At least be consistent if you want to be rude.

I have no idea what your talking about:

"While I set up a doser to keep Nitrates stable, I struggled with phosphate stability. Cyano showed up a month later. I began hand dosing phosphates, and phosphate readings were not stable. Cyano began getting out of control. Water changes, sand siphoning, rock siphoning, increased water flow, in desperation 2x chemi clean and cyano still rules 3 months later and today."

"My cyano plan is to continue weekly deep cleaning water changes and wait for the tank to settle in to the stable Nitrate and Phosphate levels. It is a battle. My mistake not to address phosphate stability when I tackled the Nitrate stability. I am paying the price."

You consider these positive? Interesting.....

Can you please leave? Again, I'm not here to argue with you. Stop gunking up the thread.

I'm not responding again.

 

[cracker]

will comment tomorrow morn going to bed !

 

[CMO]

I think this could be a valuable resource for people considering trying either, if enough people participate.

Thanks!

Then I'll respond directly to your post. No, IMO a one sided thread focusing only on negative experiences is not a valuable thread. A valuable resource would be an open thread where all can contribute positive and negative and perhaps highlight the reasons why some have poor results with dosing.

Sorry. But this thread will do a lot of potential dosers a disservice without both sides of the story. And likely encourage dinos as well.

Now, I'm done.

 

[BigJohnny]

Then I'll respond directly to your post. No, IMO a one sided thread focusing only on negative experiences is not a valuable thread. A valuable resource would be an open thread where all can contribute positive and negative and perhaps highlight the reasons why some have poor results with dosing.

Sorry. But this thread will do a lot of potential dosers a disservice without both sides of the story. And likely encourage dinos as well.

Now, I'm done.

I could not care less about what you think of this thread. I do care that you're done though, great news.

 

[CMO]

I could not care less about what you think of this thread. I do care that your done though, great news.

Thanks for sharing. And don't worry, I'll stand by to help people realize that most of the negative reviews here of dosing are spurious correlations actually caused by user error.

 

[BigJohnny]

Thanks for sharing. And don't worry, I'll stand by to help people realize that most of the negative reviews here of dosing are spurious correlations actually caused by user error.

Again, could not care less.

 

[Wen]

Not a negative post liked by you answering questions posed to another. Sorry. At least be consistent if you want to be rude.

How was I being rude?

I was trying to “reply” to the 3 questions asked in this thread...by sharing MY failure to dose nitrates and phosphates correctly. Cyano was the result of MY mistake. I think I’m on the right track now by dosing both daily.

Thanks for being so unkind!

 

[sghera64]

I have a "story".

I could not keep NO3 levels above 1PPM (Red Sea Pro) for over a year. Phosphate was also on low side (10-30 ppBillion PO4 not Pi). I began to dose Ca(NO3)2 and Na3PO4. I had to continually increase the nitrate dose just to keep a level between 1-5 ppm. I also have a chaeto refugium - - which I cut the light cycle back to about 6 hours / 24 hrs. I did have a bit of cyano in my two frag bins which are plumbed to my 135 DT. After about 6 months, I saw cayno starting to take ahold on the DSB of my DT. I tried increasing the NO3 dosing because I heard cyano moves in when nutrients are too low for other bacteria to maintain a healthy (low to no cyano) balance.

Long story short - - I did a 3 day "black-out". Well, that worked. All the cyano disappeared and has been gone for about 1 month. BUT my nitrates shot up to 5 PPM, then 8PPM, then 16 PPM and are now more like 20PPM. As the nitrates increased, I backed off my NO3 additions. When they hit 16 PPM, I stopped all together (aside, PO4 dosing remained the same). As NO3 climbed, I increased the chaeto light cycle to 12 hrs (current). My NO3 are still at 24PPM, 12 hr refugium lighting, still dosing same rate of Na3PO4 and my PO4 levels are about 0.030 to 0.040 ppm PO4. My feeding has actually decreased. I still don't see any cyano - - or GHA in DT although there is some in frag bins. I have been dosing Vibrant (1mL/10 gal every other week) and I dose acetic acid into my kalk reactor nightly.

Lesson (or theory anyway): Someone wrote earlier in this tread that if you need to dose, there may be a problem you should address. Well, I figured I needed to dose because my system was "oh, so healthy" (given all the live sand, live rock, growing corals and chaeto). Emmmmmm, maybe not so much. I'm now thinking that I really did not appreciate the ability of cyano to affix nitrogen. I'm thinking my "cyano problem" was a super effective nitrogen sink. It was gobbling up all that nitrate, as fast as I could put it in, and then getting shot out of my skimmer. I would get about 6 oz of black liquid each day when I had a lot of cyano. Now, I get about 3 oz per week.

Hope this is one of those dosing observations you were seeking.

 

[CMO]

How was I being rude?

I was trying to “reply” to the 3 questions asked in this thread...by sharing MY failure to dose nitrates and phosphates correctly. Cyano was the result of MY mistake. I think I’m on the right track now by dosing both daily.

Thanks for being so unkind!

I was not directing that at you - it was meant for the OP. The OP rudely called me out for answering those 3 questions that were not directed at me. However, you answered them as well when they were not asked to you and the OP had no issue with it which is what I was pointing out. Again, any reference by me of your post is not derogatory in anyway and everything you said makes good sense. It was just used to point out the rudeness of the OP. Those 3 questions were asked to Phelips Ocean which according to the OP is the only person that should be answering them.

See post #44

 

[ScottB]

I did experiment with dosing to keep levels above zero on my frag tank. Without an Apex down there, it was just too much of a PITA to tweak the dosers properly for that small of a system (50G total).

Ultimately, I just took the cup off my skimmer, shortened my fuge light period, and added a couple more fish. Still a little on the low side (2-3 NO3, .02 PO4) but I am slowly upping the coral & fish food. Slow and simple.

 

[CMO]

Again, could not care less.

Me either

 

[cracker]

I'm finding it difficult to get a good balance .

 

[Oshengems]

Hey Reefers,

Nitrate and phosphate dosing has become quite popular for a variety of reasons, and most people are looking for success stories (there are many out there), but I want to hear the failures.

Please share any negative experiences you have had with nitrate and/or phosphate dosing. Try to be as thorough as possible in explaining how everything played out and also what your goals were in the first place (better color, faster growth, no cyano, no dino, or just didnt want undetectable) Also please specify the formulation(s) used.

I think this could be a valuable resource for people considering trying either, if enough people participate.

Thanks!

Can you share your experiences with dosing Nitrates and Phosphate?