Dosing KNO3 and KPO4

[.AcroKiller.]

So as of now the tank is consuming .25 NO3 and .16 PO4 per day [emoji15][emoji15][emoji15]

 

[edosan]

Ime Po4 indetectable is good, no3 indetectable not good, corals will starve (but you will have better/different colours on acros), imo is like having "anorexic" catwalk models. (Jaja could not think in a better example)

 

[.AcroKiller.]

So last night I dosed 5.25ml of PO4 and it was at .16 then this morning same reaction as yesterday it tested .05 also my nitrates are staying steady at .75 now. One thing I notice different is that my ph its staying higher now.

 

[Matthias7]

Is there a limit to the amount you want to move your nitrate up in a day? This is my 3rd day dosing 300 gallon system I have dosed 150ml per day to try and move it up but haven't seen it move at all? Any suggestions

 

[.AcroKiller.]

Is there a limit to the amount you want to move your nitrate up in a day? This is my 3rd day dosing 300 gallon system I have dosed 150ml per day to try and move it up but haven't seen it move at all? Any suggestions

What test kit

 

[Matthias7]

API at the moment, I have a Red Sea (not pro) but it registers nitrate every test including fresh salt water so I am skeptical of its value.

 

[.AcroKiller.]

Nitrates are holding steady phosphates are back at 0 so I dosed 5.25 ml again. Coraline is starting to explode and it seems like the brown stuff has come to a stop and not growing and acros are coloring. so I guess I'm headed in the right direction.

 

[.AcroKiller.]

API at the moment, I have a Red Sea (not pro) but it registers nitrate every test including fresh salt water so I am skeptical of its value.

The problem with the Api is that the kit is not low range. So you could have a reading below 1.00 thinking you are at 0

 

[Matthias7]

Ya it is not sensitive enough but I am aiming for 5 so I believe it should be good enough for that.

 

[Reefer1978]

Are you sure your tank can consume .16 phosphate daily, and that phosphates are not binding to something, only to be slowly released back into the water column later?

Also do you have pics of this "brown algae"? In my experience the only thing that consumes phosphates that quickly is dynoflagelates.

 

[Sabellafella]

I just did a tank swap and I have some nice size colonies and a lot of acros well the tank has been going through some sort of brown algae and acro have been going pale and stning.

I've been testing nitrates with Red Sea and getting 0 and phosphorous with Hana ULR and getting 0 and for 2 weeks nothing's has changed so I came across this site after talking to two experience reefers Cruz Arias and @glennf and they recommended to dose nitrates and phosphates.

http://buddendo.home.xs4all.nl/aquarium/redfield_eng.htm#inhoud

So last night I started dosing both and got reading of both to show up and this morning phosphates are back to 0 but nitrates remain the same so I'm going to continue to dose phoshates and nitrates to keep a Reading of
.75 nitrates and .07 phosphates which will give me a ratio of 16 to see if I can beat the acros paling and stning and hopefully combat this brown crap.

Any inputs??

Sounds great to me, let us now how it turns out

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Is there a limit to the amount you want to move your nitrate up in a day? This is my 3rd day dosing 300 gallon system I have dosed 150ml per day to try and move it up but haven't seen it move at all? Any suggestions

That 150 mL corresponds to what ppm nitrate after addition? Assuming the kit is accurate, there's no special limit. Foods add a vast amount of N daily, so to actually maintain a higher steady level can require substantial amounts.

 

[Matthias7]

Here's a recipe:

Dissolve 10 grams in 1 liter of fresh water. That 10 grams contains 6.14 grams of nitrate, so that solution is 6,140 ppm nitrate.

If you add 1 ml of the solution per 2 gallons of tank water volume, that will boost nitrate by 0.8 ppm nitrate.

 

[.AcroKiller.]

Are you sure your tank can consume .16 phosphate daily, and that phosphates are not binding to something, only to be slowly released back into the water column later?

Also do you have pics of this "brown algae"? In my experience the only thing that consumes phosphates that quickly is dynoflagelates.

Hell I don't know. All I know is that the acros are doing better in terms of coloration. The brown stuff could be Dino or diatoms some people has said they think is Dino but my snails and fish are all eating it and no snails have died.
And it's not growing it looks like it has slowed down since the nutrients dosing.

This tank has never been able to keep phosphates or nitrates up even on the prior tank. Also having a huge skimmer for the size tank could be causing some of the nutrients to reduce but in reality I think is the acro colonies sucking the nutrients down.

 

[mcarroll]

Ya it is not sensitive enough but I am aiming for 5 so I believe it should be good enough for that.

I would also keep in mind to go slowly – you don't have to hit a number on a test kit to see results in your tank.

I started with only 1 mL/10 Gallons KNO3 and started seeing things change while tests were still reading zero. You're at about 1 mL / 2 Gallons, so I'd be extra cautious/patient with more changes.

So I've been playing it patient and haven't upped my doses of anything. Eventually (weeks later) I did get a number on my Salifert Nitrate kit....so the patience paid off. I may actually back off my dose here in another week or two....but I'm still letting things balance out. It'll more than likely be another 2 or 3 weeks before I change anything tho.

 

[.AcroKiller.]

Ok the tank today seems to be looking 10 times better the Dino/diatom/brown stuff it's almost completely gone and coraline just keeps exploding. One weird thing is that Cyano is starting to developed I'm guessing this is dude to an impurity on the KNO3 which u experienced before.

I dosed 5.25ml yesterday evening making the phosphates reading .16 so I'm waiting till this evening to see what the reading is.

 

[.AcroKiller.]

Here is a video of how the tank looked like before I started dosing

 

[.AcroKiller.]

How the tank is looking after dosing. Also at the end of the video you can see where the Cyano started to developed.

 

[mcarroll]

Awesome to hear!!!

Cyano may have found a niche to bloom in, but I doubt that requires any impurities in what you're dosing. If it get's to more than just spots, I think all I'd do is consider dosing a bit less nitrogen.

If it doesn't do much beyond where it is, I'd look at it as a phase...a place in the tank that needs to be shaded out by a coral. No sweat!

 

[.AcroKiller.]

Brown stuff is completely gone. So how can we explain this? Normally in this hobby people would recommend to run GFO or nutrient refusing media when the have the problems that I was having but 2 experience reefers recommended otherwise to add nutrients and the problems was fixed. [emoji15][emoji15] this hobby sometimes makes me think.

Thanks @glennf and @Cruz_Arias for the help.