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

[brandon429]

It’s also fair to state some unspoken yet to be discovered mechanism has killed Betex’s bacteria while the whole tank runs normally


but I knew by placing that thread among reefs who’d never consider the possibility, some neat conflicts can be studied. This is how we slog through ammonia tracing works with only .005% of aquarists using a decent device. seneye pun alert

 

[brandon429]

Can we please get some api test readings from the users here, need those too as baselines for cycled tanks adding ammonia but converting it safely.

it’s my opinion this thread proves no reef tank allows lingering ammonia


no lingerers here, noted.

 

[CoralClasher]

I had my LFS test my ammonia with API they say 3ppm lol.

It’s also fair to state some unspoken yet to be discovered mechanism has killed Betex’s bacteria while the whole tank runs normally


but I knew by placing that thread among reefs who’d never consider the possibility, some neat conflicts can be studied. This is how we slog through ammonia tracing works with only .005% of aquarists using a decent device. seneye pun alert

 

[brandon429]

Thank you for the comparison read it can help alleviate fear for api only owners.

Just so it doesn’t seem I’ve totally hijacked a thread even though I have:

What are the specific conditions in which a post-cycle reef cannot begin this ammonia dosing regimen from this thread?

We didn’t list any the first seven pages.



I struggle to think of a single instance among all reefs ever made, post cycle, where ammonia will not be rapidly uptaken like the substrate gold that it is.

but if we title a thread “sudden ammonia spike” then twenty affirmations will be posted that the particular tank lost its uptake ability. Just not here, ever, not once. this thread is a weighted iron anchor in a swirling sea of panic in the general forum. Thankfully the chemist clique tends to run grounded in reliable patterning, if y’all change from that then I’ll have no more sound anchors I guess. We will then be in retrograde cycling madness.

what happened to GameStop will happen to bottle bac sellers and they’ll take over everything, if we lose a grounded perspective

 

[Jon_W79]

.

 

[LegendaryCG]

Manually adding ammonia to your tank is like first world reefing problems.

 

[brandon429]

What this thread has done for reef tank filtration microbiology can't be understated

All reef tanks have this rapid uptake ability. It means no cycle stalls after the known completion time, the uptake for even very small levels of free ammonia is very fast. None left over

The reason this thread is going so well is because seneye streamlines it. If this was api driven it would look like tank massacre but only in tests... the actual tanks do fine after dosing.

 

[Subsea]

I dose ammonia in every tank I own. In the ten years that I have dosed ammonia, only once have I adversely effected anything. A fresh water mollie thinking ammonia was food got hit with one drop.

In my 120G with 40G algae refugium I dose 20ml of ammonia and 40ml of ChaetoGrow every other day. Of recent, I have noted Flower Anemone food response to ammonia.

For those that choose to use stump remover, which is potassium nitrate, I suggest you check potassium readings in your tank.

 

[Subsea]

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

[Corals can live successfully at a wide range of nutrient concentrations, ranging from highly oligotrophic to eutrophic conditions [31]. In addition to regulated nutrient transport within the holobiont, denitrification in combination with nitrification may thus help corals to survive elevated nutrient concentrations and to maintain internal nitrogen limitation of Symbiodinium at the same time (Figure 1). Future research should therefore aim to identify the acclimation capacity of corals to anthropogenic nutrient enrichment by nitrification and denitrification processes.]

@flampton
From having read Volume 3 of Reef Aquarium by Julian Sprung & Charles Delbric, I knew “close coupling” of nitrification & denitrification happened but I didn’t know to what purpose. I know now. Thank you for that knowledge.

 

[CoralClasher]

I dose ammonia in every tank I own. In the ten years that I have dosed ammonia, only once have I adversely effected anything. A fresh water mollie thinking ammonia was food got hit with one drop.

In my 120G with 40G algae refugium I dose 20ml of ammonia and 40ml of ChaetoGrow every other day. Of recent, I have noted Flower Anemone food response to ammonia.

For those that choose to use stump remover, which is potassium nitrate, I suggest you check potassium readings in your tank.

Do you have a Seneye on the tank that gets 40ml ammonia? If you do what does the ammonia level go up to and how long do you see the dose on the Seneye? I have been dosing ammonium but no where near that much maybe I’ll up my dose.

 

[Subsea]

@Jon Malkerson

I do not have that instrumentation. Note: 20ml of ammonia in 120G tank. 40ml of ChaetoGro.

I will say this about titration testing of ammonia. I made first test 2 minutes after dosing and second test 5 minutes later. In my mature reef tank, it disappeared in 5 minutes.

The initial goal was to encourage macro and absorb excess phosphate in sandbed. It has worked very well for that purpose allowing abundant macro to compost tomatoes. Of recent, I noted feeding response of large Flower Anemones to ammonia addittion.

 

[Subsea]

So, after an interesting discussion on nitrate dosing and looking at my Walt Disney coral and seeing it slightly less colorful than I have seen it in others tanks, I have decided I want to learn about and then try dosing ammonia instead of buying 20 damsels. Nitrate additives I see abound and have directions, but I see no ammonia additives for sale. In my limited knowledge, I understand stump remover is a form of ammonia, but I would have zero idea on how to make use of such . . .

so . . .

How would one get hold of ammonia? What calculations would be required? What would one monitor to check the impact?

And, no, I'm not going to run out and start dumping ammonia in my tank so don't worry. I'm just starting the learning process so I can understand what would be involved.

Thanks to any and all that have answers.

@2Sunny

Yes, I dose ammonium as a source of inorganic nitrogen. When you buy 20 damsels and feed them, you have introduced organic nutrients into the mix. Now you have enzymes and bacteria working on proteins to make amino acids. Take your pick.

 

[Jon_W79]

I believe that out of the beneficial things that feeding fish adds to an aquarium, that ammonia is the thing that is generally the most aggressively and disproportionately consumed (I believe that nitrifying bacteria generally dominate the ammonia consumption). I think that in most lightly and moderately stocked reef tanks, dosing ammonium when lights are on will increase coral growth and/or color(when kept at an appropriate nitrate level). I think there are at least three important things that are added as a result of feeding fish, ammonia, phosphate, and I think that fulvic acid is indirectly added and may be important. I have read that fulvic acid is beneficial to at least some algae, bacteria, and that at least some corals can consume it. I think it may be needed by a reef tank to be able to have some important biological processes. I would like to do a fishless frag tank experiment, where I dose organic fulvic acid, phosphate, and ammonium(and maybe dose some other things).

 

[brandon429]

Nice post. Agreed, there was a time in reefing I’d have said ammonia = bad and it’s not the case when used at beneficial fertilizer levels it’s a perfect ecosystem match in fact all these posts and oxidation proofing tests show. I’d give blasterman credit for showing that trick to me in about 2007 ish, long before anyone could accurately test for ammonia nh3 speed of conversion. He knew it would be rapidly uptaken and it was

BLsterman do you remember that conversation at nano reef.com about fourteen years ago, that one post. You said ‘people dose ammonia into their reefs you know’ and since memes didn’t exist then I had no way to communicate back.

@blasterman

 

[Jon_W79]

If dosing ammonium when the lights are on is the best time to add it, ammonia could be added in a much more efficient way compared to fish(with fish, based on a Seneye reading I saw, I believe about half of ammonia was added during the day, and about half at night). If you can add a lot less ammonia by adding it more efficiently,(and still get at least the same growth and/or color benefits)I think you can very significantly improve ph, and ph stability at least partly because nitrifying bacteria would be consuming a less oxygen, and having less fish mass would consume less oxygen.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I dose ammonia in every tank I own. In the ten years that I have dosed ammonia, only once have I adversely effected anything

Did you ever evaluate if you were positively effecting anything, compared to not dosing or dosing nitrate?

 

[Subsea]

Did you ever evaluate if you were positively effecting anything, compared to not dosing or dosing nitrate?

I both feed heavy and dose ammonia. Yes ammonia dosing with ChaetoGro simplifies nutrient management in my systems that are skimmerless by exporting seaweed.

I always feed more but then I needed more janitors
As skimmerless for 30 years, I carbon dosed vinegar once for 6 months and I saw a lot more muck in system, I attributed it to biofloc with accelerated bacteria growth and no place to go.

I have never dosed nitrate except to feed fish a lot.

 

[2Sunny]

Wow! As the OP I just want to say thank you to everyone that took part in this discussion. Some, however, may find a bit of irony that in the end I resorted to what I know best and decided not to try dosing, but instead just bought a whole lot more fish. Still to great benefit

 

[brandon429]

2Sunny I rate this thread in the top five aquarium microbiology threads of all time

About ten thousand past and future ammonia non control alert posters will benefit from your collection of rogue activities here, we thank you. They can rest assured their tank never failed to oxidize that final tenth ppm

or have to wonder how fast it happened. they can look at the rolls of pics and videos on dosed tanks you've collected, to see what happy fish and corals look like.



_________________________________________________________

before this thread, nobody had arranged a patterned and seneye-bolstered group of tanks to prove all post cycle reef display tanks control ammonia.

nobody has trouble participating here due to that rule. still being worked out by chemists: what % of nh3 is handled by bacteria, plant mass and animal fixation in the aquarium, we just know so far the job gets done.

its not like some folks can participate in your thread and some can't, this is specifically the conferred ability after completing a reef tank cycle with rocks and or sand present in high flow.

only we get to measure it clearly home to home this time, for once.


an entire sub-industry of remedial bottle bac sales depends on folks believing what you've arranged here is impossible, this thread has undercurrents. specifically because tuned seneye owners keep reporting the same thing in any standard arrangement and tank maturity level, that's a big big deal for this hobby and for new cycling science.

 

[brandon429]

Team

would anyone with a seneye dose one mil of 3% per ten gallons and lets track if nitrification is affected one iota


this data is missing from all of reefing by the way. Dont begin peroxide dosing if you don’t already use it whenev


but if someone has already used it and owns a seneye we could really use that data. Remember the known sensitives are lysmata shrimp (killed) and anemones get mad when it’s dosed. all else is tolerant in systems that have already dosed it. We have never been able to measure nitrification impacts during its effective window estimated to be 3-4 hours after dosing.