Does anyone dose ammonia and/or how would one try?

[schuby]

I recently read a thread where @jda suggested dosing ammonium (from Home Depot or Lowe's) instead of ammonia. He's brought it up multiple times that our phosphate and nitrate levels are the result of unused ammonia/ammonium in our tanks. His point seems to be why dose the end-result instead of the initiator? I like his thinking.

He also agrees with many others that we shouldn't let our phosphate and nitrate levels go to zero.

 

[brandon429]

what level of nh3 is being unused in our systems?

is the claim that adding more base ammonia will alter that constant exchange rate/turnover from nh3 into next step safer

 

[schuby]

The unused ammonia/ammonium (by corals) is the amount that is converted to nitrate. I don't know if phosphate comes from ammonia or not. I'm sure @Randy Holmes-Farley or @jda will correct my statement.

 

[brandon429]

@blasterman was the first guy to mention it Id seen back at nano-reef.com about a dec ago I did not believe him at the time lol. I was of the impression it would burn the tank heh in case someone digs up the thread its admitted on file.

 

[2Sunny]

what level of nh3 is being unused in our systems?

is the claim that adding more base ammonia will alter that constant exchange rate/turnover from nh3 into next step safer

The end goal is organisms taking up ammonia, not forming nitrate.

As Schuby said above I am ready to be corrected, but I believe the crux of the argument that was presented is that dosing nitrate causes an unneeded step as organisms (corals and bacteria) need to convert the nitrate to ammonia within their cell walls but said organisms have the ability to use ammonia directly without the step necessary when dosing nitrate.

 

[brandon429]

fantastic to know. Finding a helpful rate of input will be neat, i think it would take a lot to cause harm. fish and sensitives will close up/show it in behavior I bet once near the maximums

wouldnt trust any of the non digital testers to give out live time dosing info, seems like a job for lab gear or a working seneye.

*curious to know what ammonia tester someone used to define an input rate for raw ammonia into our reefs.

ammonia is uptaken so fast it turns out, I'd still like to know which is used at the faster rate: oxygen or ammonia in a reef tank. oxygen holds at a nice surplus for us typically in spite all our captive life, even through night and day variances, so Im going with ammonia being possibly the quickest used/most in demand substrate in our reefs for my guess. it could also be that o2 production during day phase is quite high/net gain not necessarily slow use

*also tied into our vast cycling threads: that we can instantly take on more ammonia here, without more cycling time.

that's because bacteria dont stack up infinitely in response to a bioload, they alter colony counts about the same rate given the same surface area constants, tank current /water shear etc. the current bacteria can simply handle more loading, no extras needed. Dr. Tim mentioned that in a thread here not long ago. neat. another reason our tanks dont need more bacteria to handle this + new ammonia loading is because there is no where for them to attach, all surfaces are used so the residents on site get the job done.

 

[SMSREEF]

I recently started another discussion: When and where did dosing nitrate start?
In the course of 10 pages of discussion one of our resident scientists argued quite convincingly in my mind that dosing ammonia is scientifically preferable to dosing nitrate. Now I'm curious and would like to try myself, but I'm afraid it may be a little to avant garde an idea for me to try easily.

Not that I want to argue with resident scientists, But If you just dose nitrate and it is used by algae to grow, Then your CUC eats algae, later excretes ammonia and feeds coral Nitrogen in a preferred form. Isn’t this better that possibly overdosing NH4?

 

[flampton]

I have two different ammonium sources I'm trying. I have ammonium chloride as my standard and I'm experimenting a little with ammonium acetate (hypothetically much safer than NH4Cl). As with kalk you won't probably be safe enough to dump in a weeks worth at one time though. First thing first you need to order some from Amazon or the like. Don't buy premade solutions unless you're not comfortable with weighing out your ingredients. 1 pound Of NH4Cl is 8.49 from Alpha chemicals. As with any ammonium compound make sure to have ppe and be aware of breathing any of it in. Basically don't just pour it out like it's flour.

Next you have to decide your initial dose. Not sure of your tank size. You can start with a solution that you can dose 0.125-0.25ppm (mg/L NH4) over a 24 period. If you want to monitor your ammonia you can but I don't think you'll see anything unless you use something that can detect these low concentrations accurately. (with the dosing over 24 hours it would be unlikely to see anything from these starting doses)

Now here is where it will get a little more complicated. For all readers this is VERY important. If you dose any carbon (including using macros and ATS) this will effect the rate of ammonia turnover. Meaning that you may need much more ammonia then you realize to get nitrates to show up.

So go slow, read nitrates, and you'll find the sweet spot. However if you alter your carbon dosing or remove some macros or ATS algae you will see a bigger nitrate number until the carbon dosing is resumed at the same level or the ammonia dose is adjusted. (oh and change fish amount or food amounts, even changing food types can effect this balance)

Any thing I'm missing please let me know.

Oh and I understand the caution but I really don't think people realize how much ammonia turnover is going on in a tank. They remember adding that pinch of food, or a few drops of NH4Cl in the beginning causing this massive increase. Yet some of them are feeding massive amounts of food now over 24 hours with the only care being nitrate and phosphate.

And if your really worried just understand the immediate solution for ammonia excess is more organic carbon. You need it out quick nothing will do it faster than adding a bit of carbon (and phosphate if that's truly limiting, but this is unusual for heterotrophic bacterial growth). Just remember you will need something to remove the bacteria, as well as keeping your O2 up (skimmer and surface agitation)

 

[jda]

No phosphate in ammonia/ammonium.

Ammonia and ammonium do not act the same to harm fish and their gills.

This is going to be simple, but micro algae (zoox/dinos) cannot get nitrogen from nitrate. Some coral hosts can convert no3 back to ammonium, but it costs them a lot of energy - some cannot. Assume that dosing no3 on the back end does not help the zoox - this is not completely true in all cases, but it won't hurt to do this. Micro algae needs to get their nitrogen from ammonia/ammonium.

You need some no3, but only to build/repair tissue. It is not food. It is not fuel. A trace is enough for this. Excess can do things like poison dinos and some matting cyano bacteria, but it also can inhibit calcification and interrupt biological processes when it gets too high - the level of badness is different with each organism. Macro algae will love your for increased levels of no3. Most of the time, I guess that excess no3 just builds a larger anoxic bacteria population which is why so many people have had to add more, and more and more as they dose it.

I understand that this might be hard to get a grasp on. I think that the recent trend to raise the N and P in a tank is because people can test and put a number to something, but this is somewhat of a simple exercise... the prize is in high availability of ammonia/ammonium for coral use and then low residual levels of N and P so that calcification and cellular activity is not slowed down. Heavy import and heavy export. Of course, people cannot measure high import and high export, so it is not as easy to type and parrot on a message board. The people who dose N to the back end are not likely doing what they think that they are doing. The people who have raised no3 by feeding more have certainly had more availability for their corals, which is good and the availability has helped them, not the residual buildup on the back end.

I dose Ace Hardware ammonium into my frag tank when I get new clams... seems to help then get started. This is all anecdotes and nothing scientific. I add 2 mls of the stuff (10%, I think) into a 60g frag tank a few times a day when I remember (300g system). I can never detect any of it.

Remember that some single cell stuff, bacteria and some types of algae all will really love the ammonium too.

I have always wondered if I can dose ammonium in a ATO with RO, or if the ammonium will break down over the week. This would be the easiest for me if it would work.

FWIW - freshly mixed Instant Ocean has some ammonia in it. I always considered this a good thing.

In the end, the people who have always told you to feed more and skim heavy (or otherwise clean up the back end) were always right. This is why I think that dosing N and P is just a fad that will stop one day.

 

[jda]

The fearmongers never have a problem with any other chemical we add but ammonia. I find this fascinating.

I am completely amazed by this too.

 

[jda]

In most tanks that have established sand beds and rocks (not fresh dead/dry that are not functioning will yet), the increase of fish and feeding often does not raise in the residual no3 level. In my tank, if I were to add 10x more fish, the sand bed and rock would just have an increase in anoxic bacteria to keep the no3 very low - the sand and rock are doing their job. They seem to keep no3 at about .1 to .2. Phosphate is a different story and I don't know if my fuge could keep P that low - I might have to use a chemical.

The ability for anoxic bacteria to process nitrate is why I don't think that no3 testing on the back end would ever make this easy to calculate an ammonia addition.

 

[SMSREEF]

This is going to be simple, but micro algae (zoox/dinos) cannot get nitrogen from nitrate.

Could you please link the articles that prove this?
as I understand (and I very well could be wrong) micro algae can use nitrate and phosphate. which is why waste water treatment plants use them to purify waste water.

 

[flampton]

The ability for Symbiodinium of each clade to utilize nitrate has not been studied but I believe that most can utilize nitrate. My beef with this approach though is that it is thought that the nitrogen flux from the Symbiodinium is rather weak while the carbon flux from the Symbiodinium to the coral is strong. So nitrate won't help the coral as much, just the symbiote, while ammonium will help both. However I also extend this to the whole holobiont and the resident heterotrophic bacteria and other community members were ammonium may be their only nitrogen source.

Subcellular Investigation of Photosynthesis-Driven Carbon Assimilation in the Symbiotic Reef Coral Pocillopora damicornis - PMC

Reef-building corals form essential, mutualistic endosymbiotic associations with photosynthetic Symbiodinium dinoflagellates, providing their animal host partner with photosynthetically derived nutrients that allow the coral to thrive in ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Nitrogen cycling in corals: the key to understanding holobiont functioning?

Corals are animals that form close mutualistic associations with endosymbiotic photosynthetic algae of the genus Symbiodinium. Together they provide t…

www.sciencedirect.com

 

[naterealbig]

Great conversation here, and I have considered dosing ammonia for all of the reasons stated.

This 'method' (if it worked in practice) would be particularly helpful in my coral quarantine tanks. I ghost feed the tanks to maintain the nutrient cycle, but without fish to eat the food, they get messy. It would be great to be able to add fuel to the system for corals, without the drawback of detritus (yes, I understand it is mostly inert).

Any benefit you smart folks see in using ammonia in my QT systems? Any groups of corals that may be negatively impacted? (I.e. Zoas, LPS, SPS, ect?)

Thank you

 

[brandon429]

In cases of highly reduced surface area, qt systems, the amounts added need to decrease in my opinion. All the safety in dt application was due to excessive active surface area redundant orders over

 

[naterealbig]

In cases of highly reduced surface area, qt systems, the amounts added need to decrease in my opinion. All the safety in dt application was due to excessive active surface area redundant orders over

Makes sense. I do use live rock in the QT, but perhaps the reduced amount of ammonia needed would be a function of the smaller bacterial colony vice smaller surface area. (I assume it's smaller due to no/smaller regular addition of ammonia via rotting food?). Thank your for the feedback.

 

[SMSREEF]

Following excerpt from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966842X1500075X
Nitrogen uptake and symbiont control in the coral holobiont
The coral holobiont is highly efficient in the assimilation of nitrogen. Heterotrophic feeding by the coral can meet a large part of its nitrogen requirements if sufficient food is available [24]. In addition, corals acquire nutrients from their symbiotic algae from the genus Symbiodinium. This symbiotic relationship forms the foundation of coral holobionts and shallow-water coral reefs. In this association, the phototrophic dinoflagellates provide photosynthates to the coral host. However, the translocated photosynthates have been referred to as ‘junk food’ because they show a high C:N ratio and therefore require additional nitrogen supplementation to sustain coral growth [25]. The symbiotic algae benefit from inorganic nutrients which are released as metabolic waste products by the host 5, 26 Their capacity for efficient uptake and utilization of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) facilitates the acquisition of nitrogen from the surrounding seawater. Although both the coral host and associated Symbiodinium have the enzymatic machinery to incorporate ammonium, the algae account for most of the uptake of dissolved inorganic nitrogen from the environment, mainly in the form of ammonium (NH4+) and nitrate (NO3−) [27]. This nitrogen, together with host-derived nitrogen compounds, is either stored by the algae or used in their metabolism, and may be partially translocated to the coral host in form of organic nitrogen compounds, for example, amino acids 28, 29, 30. Together with an efficient recycling of coral metabolic waste products within the holobiont, this symbiosis thus enables efficient utilization of nitrogen compounds from surrounding seawater.

 

[flampton]

Read the discussion of ref 27. Just because Symbiodinium take more out of the water during a pulse dose does not negate that the coral animal can use ammonium as well. Oh and the holobiont as well. And the reference used does not study nitrate at all which means they forgot to add a reference here.

A single-cell view of ammonium assimilation in coral–dinoflagellate symbiosis - The ISME Journal

Assimilation of inorganic nitrogen from nutrient-poor tropical seas is an essential challenge for the endosymbiosis between reef-building corals and dinoflagellates. Despite the clear evidence that reef-building corals can use ammonium as inorganic nitrogen source, the dynamics and precise roles...

www.nature.com

What needs to be understood in relation to these papers and reviews is that they sometimes are based on one animal, they are sometimes based around unusual circumstances, they sometimes include unsubstantiated conjecture. This is unfortunately the problem when reading the literature.

And I've made a mistake pointing to papers because I really need to introduce a little more background on why I think a paper is useful, and possibly any problems that I run across. It just takes a lot of time, lol!! That's why I tend to not post papers. If not done carefully it may appear to be cherry picking. (Using references that only support your position while neglecting to introduce contradictory sources and your arguments against them)

Posting those papers was just to introduce nitrate utilization by Symbiodinium and that corals can utilize ammonia.

Again sorry about that!

 

[Daddy-o]

Couldnt I just tinkle in my sump???

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I recently read a thread where @jda suggested dosing ammonium (from Home Depot or Lowe's) instead of ammonia. He's brought it up multiple times that our phosphate and nitrate levels are the result of unused ammonia/ammonium in our tanks. His point seems to be why dose the end-result instead of the initiator? I like his thinking.

He also agrees with many others that we shouldn't let our phosphate and nitrate levels go to zero.

The selection of ammonia vs ammonium (if that is the point) is a non issue (IMO), and I don't think that anyone who understands the chemistry of ammonia would seriously suggest dosing ammonia. it is technically very challenging and would require a cylinder of compressed gas/liquid. Ammonia in water is ammonium hydroxide.

If someone did buy a cylinder of ammonia ( ammonium hydroxide such as ammonia in water) and tried to dose it, it still makes no difference except that it will eliminate the small pH and alkalinity lowering effect that one would get from using a material such as ammonium chloride.