Carbon dosing benefits explanation. Great video

[Cichlid Dad]

 

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

Dang you must have watched it the second it dropped.

I like Lou. I am very familiar with his talks on the TM carbon products and adopted the tm NP line as it made complete sense to me the assumptions he makes.

I am checking this out to see if there is any new info.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

I'll have to check out this video when I get some free time!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Dang you must have watched it the second it dropped.

I like Lou. I am very familiar with his talks on the TM carbon products and adopted the tm NP line as it made complete sense to me the assumptions he makes.

I am checking this out to see if there is any new info.

I didn't watch the video, but I'm always concerned about products that do not tell you the ingredients. It makes one fall back on trusting someone who knows nothing about your aquarium to decide what is best for it. Sometimes that works fine, and sometimes it does not.

 

[Cichlid Dad]

Dang you must have watched it the second it dropped.

I like Lou. I am very familiar with his talks on the TM carbon products and adopted the tm NP line as it made complete sense to me the assumptions he makes.

I am checking this out to see if there is any new info.

I got lucky

 

[Cichlid Dad]

I didn't watch the video, but I'm always concerned about products that do not tell you the ingredients. It makes one fall back on trusting someone who knows nothing about your aquarium to decide what is best for it. Sometimes that works fine, and sometimes it does not.

Morning, I mostly watch these and share not for the product selling, but new easy to understand explanation of something about reefing. This video is chalked full of good information and explanation of the reasons for and also why someone may have issues with carbon dosing and what causes the issue.

I run a very simple reef, but enjoy learning. When I see something that may help explain a process better I like to share.

 

[Northern Flicker]

So if this is true, what is using our Nitrate?

My Nitrates are always bottoming out. Very little sandbed, very little waterchanges, heavy feeding. Rock is about 2.5 years old, some of it much older (decades).

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

So if this is true, what is using our Nitrate?

My Nitrates are always bottoming out. Very little sandbed, very little waterchanges, heavy feeding. Rock is about 2.5 years old, some of it much older (decades).

Corals? Algae?

If nitrate is bottoming out and it is not due to excessive export, I recommend dosing ammonium bicarbonate to maintain at least 2 ppm nitrate.

 

[Northern Flicker]

Corals? Algae?

If nitrate is bottoming out and it is not due to excessive export, I recommend dosing ammonium bicarbonate to maintain at least 2 ppm nitrate.

Lou is saying that corals do not use nitrate though - I always thought they preferred ammonia but would use nitrate as well. Do we know if it's one or the other with any certainty?

 

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

I didn't watch the video, but I'm always concerned about products that do not tell you the ingredients. It makes one fall back on trusting someone who knows nothing about your aquarium to decide what is best for it. Sometimes that works fine, and sometimes it does not.

I had not considered it's a mystery juice.

The story they tall about how the coal nutrients, vs what is in our tanks, vs good and bad guy bacteria makes so much sense to me it's easy for me to buy into.

I was hoping to see him elaborate on the good bact vs bad bact and why it's known that it just so happens the good ones like this product and use it better than the bad. In my head I rationalize it as the bacteria that spends energy to fix these molecules, do this as opposed to spending energy doing stuff we don't like and that's why, but I know that's a fairly ridiculous simplification.

The one new thing that came from this video, or two actually, was;
1: Lou changed his .03 to .1 range for being good phos to .05 and .15.

2: is that the consideration of nitrate levels is, to not consider them as any indication to the NP line's efficacy. Nitrates may go up using plus NP as it is putting not nitrate but "nitrogen compounds" in the water, and get used instead of nitrate which may cause nitrate to become measurable. And if nitrate is high, just aggressively change water until it's back down. This is more clear than the "just wait until it goes up"

This is still assuming that the product does exactly what the story they tell is, and while I am inclined to believe it, I know it is at it's heart, a sales pitch, and I can't help but fall for it.

What I do know is I had good luck no longer having to dose Neophos and Neonitro while using plus NP, and that when I stopped using the plus NP line due to vacation and holiday time allowing me to neglect testing, that once I let everything bottom out I got dinos again.

 

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

Corals? Algae?

If nitrate is bottoming out and it is not due to excessive export, I recommend dosing ammonium bicarbonate to maintain at least 2 ppm nitrate.

Lou makes it sound like nitrate is unused by corals all together. Which I am sure is not the case and doubt he means it to the degree he says it, but in the beginning he also says the reason ammonia is never registering in our tanks is because the corals use them up, which I know from dosing ammonia is true, but a strange thing to say given the fact that everyone who will ever watch this video already know about nitrifying bacteria.

Edit: looking through google scholar, it appears most corals under higher nitrate concentrations absolutely increase zooxanthellae, which infers that corals use nitrate, while also, as we all know, slows the rate of skeletal formation. We know this, so interesting choice of words from Lou, though I think we all know Lou knows this and it's more of a demonstation as to the logic behind the product line. It would be super cool if we get a good study on what's in the NP line and how it really affects the tank. The story they tell fits too well in my mind and I still believe lol.

 

[Dburr1014]

So if this is true, what is using our Nitrate?

My Nitrates are always bottoming out. Very little sandbed, very little waterchanges, heavy feeding. Rock is about 2.5 years old, some of it much older (decades).

Why do you assume it's getting "bottomed out"?
What if you changed your thinking and assume nitrate is not being made. Ammonium and urea are being consumed before it can be made into nitrate.

 

[Northern Flicker]

Why do you assume it's getting "bottomed out"?
What if you changed your thinking and assume nitrate is not being made. Ammonium and urea are being consumed before it can be made into nitrate.

I like that, but also I've gone from 8-10ppm nitrate to 0 in a week, no skimmer or w/c. Guess it could be algae, but I can only see coraline and I am don't think it is growing fast enough to suck that much out (+what's being added daily).

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Lou is saying that corals do not use nitrate though - I always thought they preferred ammonia but would use nitrate as well. Do we know if it's one or the other with any certainty?

That is not true.

It may be the case that they prefer ammonia, and is what I currently recommend dosing, but they use nitrate as well. There are loads of studies that show it can be taken up.

Nitrate uptake in the scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata

https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.4319/lo.2003.48.6.2266

"Nitrate can therefore be considered as an important source of nitrogen for corals, at least when ammonium concentrations are low in seawater."

Nutrient uptake in the reef-building coral Acropora palmata at natural environmental concentrations

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44634878

"Contrary to previous predictions from studies of uptake kinetics in isolated zooxanthellae and other coral species, mean net rates of nitrate uptake exceeded that of ammonium uptake by a factor of 2"

Nitrate uptake by the reef coral Diploria strigosa: effects of concentration, water flow, and irradiance

Nitrate uptake by the reef coral Diploria strigosa: effects of concentration, water flow, and irradiance - Marine Biology

The effects of several environmental variables on net nitrate uptake by the scleractinian coral Diploria strigosa were investigated under controlled flow conditions. D. strigosa exhibited nitrate uptake rates ranging from 1 to 5 nmol cm−2 h−1 at ambient concentrations of 0.1–0.3 μM that are...

link.springer.com

"Nitrate uptake by D. strigosa was not affected by light intensity or time of day, but was almost completely inhibited by 48 h exposure to ammonium levels found on many reefs."

Urea uptake by the scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata

Urea uptake by the scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata

Urea can be one of the major sources of nitrogen for phytoplankton, but little is known about its importance for corals. Experiments were therefore de…

www.sciencedirect.com

"Results obtained in this study show that urea is a source of nitrogen for corals, as previously suggested by Wafar et al. (1985). Once again, as for ammonium and nitrate, corals have made adaptations for taking this nitrogen source from the surrounding environment, suggesting a co-evolution process between host and symbionts"

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Why do you assume it's getting "bottomed out"?
What if you changed your thinking and assume nitrate is not being made. Ammonium and urea are being consumed before it can be made into nitrate.

That certainly can be the case, but if there is no residual nitrate to measure, one cannot easily be certain corals are getting adequate N before the ammonium and urea and organic sources are gone. Nitrate is the insurance policy.

 

[Dburr1014]

That certainly can be the case, but if there is no residual nitrate to measure, one cannot easily be certain corals are getting adequate N before the ammonium and urea are gone. Nitrate is the insurance policy.

Agreed

Edit:
This is why you switched your thinking to dose ammonium chloride. No?

 

[Northern Flicker]

That certainly can be the case, but if there is no residual nitrate to measure, one cannot easily be certain corals are getting adequate N before the ammonium and urea and organic sources are gone. Nitrate is the insurance policy.

Does this mean that a product like NeoNitrate is actually a useful part of a reefers toolkit if they are not ammonia dosing?

Ingredients


Purified water, proprietary nitrogen salts.

I decided to use it because I was bottoming out and experiencing browning in my SPS and was very surprised when I was able to quickly see tests return nitrate but also coral regained colour within 2 weeks.

Generally I consider these products snake oil maybe out of ignorance...but in this instance, it seemed to work as intended.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Agreed

Edit:
This is why you switched your thinking to dose ammonium chloride. No?

I've switched primarily based on the user experiences in the DIY ammonium recipe thread that have been very positive, and the science studies likely explain why.

 

[Cichlid Dad]

Great discussion and information. I have already learned even more, thanks Randy for adding so much more

 

[areefer01]

I didn't watch the video, but I'm always concerned about products that do not tell you the ingredients. It makes one fall back on trusting someone who knows nothing about your aquarium to decide what is best for it. Sometimes that works fine, and sometimes it does not.

At least Tropic Marin will come in and reply to you when posed a question or two. Unlike some.