Carbon dosing, long vacation coming up

[ATXreefer]

I’d like to start dosing elimi np in low volume, but I’m heading on a 3 week long vacation and do not have time or space to set up a dosing pump. Am I going to have problems if I carbon dose low volumes for a month, then stop for three weeks?

Tank is coming up on 7 months old, soft corals and hammer are doing well and growing. Nitrate has been very consistent (between 7-10ppm) but phosphate likes to sit high at around .22-.29ppm and steadily increasing.

Algae is under control and only need to scrape glass every 3-4 days.

Please share thoughts if you have experience with this to help me make my decision. Thank you!

 

[cooltowncorals]

Nothing bad will happen, you will find that carbon dosing is really effective for nitrates, not sure it will solve you phosphates issue before bottoming out nitrates. Now a lot of people carbon dose on a small scale to control nitrates and feed coral.

But yeah you will start to grow bacteria


Then stop for a while when you get back start again

 

[Lavey29]

Carbon dosing primarily removes nitrates. Your nitrates levels are fine. You need to lower phosphate level some then use bacto balance to maintain proper levels.

 

[ATXreefer]

Understood. I was confused and thought it reduced phosphate more so than nitrate. I will bring it down with some GFO then start dosing the bacto balance. Thank you for the help.

 

[ATXreefer]

Actually I do have a follow up about the tropic Marin products regarding this; why do they make product recommendations based on phosphate levels? Seems odd considering the product has the most impact on nitrate.

 

[cooltowncorals]

You need enough phosphate to reduce nitrates without bottoming out.

think of it like a triangle carbon +nitrate + phosphate = some kind of bacteria that consumes all three

If you have none of one of these you get no bacteria

If you use to much carbon you get a white bacteria bloom that everyone warns about

People will dose what’s missing including 2 of 3 to get desired result

So you could dose carbon source and nitrate to lower phosphates

You could dose just carbon source

Or carbon source and phosphates to lower nitrates

 

[bushdoc]

As Lavey29 stated, carbon dosing primarily effects nitrates, which are fine in your case.
I would reconsider dosing carbon, but if you decide to, I would do it AFTER vacation. And yes, bad things can happen when you start somethong new and leave it unchecked and unattended for 3 weeks.

 

[ATXreefer]

This is all very helpful. I have a bottle of brightwell’s nitrate product and will experiment with low doses when I’m back from vacation.

Are most people dosing carbon product manually or via automatic doser?

 

[Uncle99]

I use a doser, during lights on hours, evenly, on the hour.
Can depress PH a bit so that’s why I hit only during lights on when photosynthesis is happening and PH on the higher end of what’s possible in my system.

Have you been carbon dosing? If, not wait till you return. Carbon dosing is not as effective in phosphate reduction as nitrate and your nitrate seems fine, stable, and phosphate at.2ppm ish is not out of scope for a 7 month system.

 

[gbroadbridge]

This is all very helpful. I have a bottle of brightwell’s nitrate product and will experiment with low doses when I’m back from vacation.

Are most people dosing carbon product manually or via automatic doser?

I dose automatically during lights on.

I wouldn't start something new before a vacation trip.