Dosing live phyto bottomed out my Nitrates

[tee89]

Hi R2R,

Just wanted to share something I just learned. As the title indicates, I started dosing live phyto and my nitrates bottomed out. I dosed 5 ml on my 35g (30g after water displacement) for 3 days and my nitrates went from 8ppm to 0.4ppm. So is dosing phyto on a consistent schedule sustainable when addressing nutrient issues such as high nitrates and phosphates or is this temporary before nutrients jump back up?

thanks in advance.

 

[AlgaeBarn]

Hi R2R,

Just wanted to share something I just learned. As the title indicates, I started dosing live phyto and my nitrates bottomed out. I dosed 5 ml on my 35g (30g after water displacement) for 3 days and my nitrates went from 8ppm to 0.4ppm. So is dosing phyto on a consistent schedule sustainable when addressing nutrient issues such as high nitrates and phosphates or is this temporary before nutrients jump back up?

thanks in advance.

Were your nitrates consistently climbing before adding the phyto or staying around 8ppm? -Raven

 

[tee89]

Were your nitrates consistently climbing before adding the phyto or staying around 8ppm? -Raven

it was slowly climbing up, i maintained low nitrates with large water changes when ever it went upto 10-15ppm and then drop down to 4ppm. 4 days later (depending on my feeding) I would say nitrates went back up to around 7 -9ppm. I'm super happy with the ocean magik but was not expecting the nutrients to bottom out.

 

[Miami Reef]

This is exciting news! Have you observed a similar effect with phosphates?

 

[tee89]

This is exciting news! Have you observed a similar effect with phosphates?

I agree with you, it was news to me as well. PO4 Not much or at all. I tested PO4 two days ago, it was at 0.08. Tested today and it was 0.07 so I would say it remained the same but based on my testing records I have always seen my PO4 go up and since I started dosing phyto its been at 0.07ish .

 

[sixty_reefer]

Phytoplankton will drop nitrates although I haven’t seen that happening before on such a low dose. To drop phosphates in a tank it will depend greatly on the residual phosphates in the culture water.

 

[fryman]

I've dosed large amounts of live phyto (I'm talking gallons). It does not significantly affect my nitrates (or phosphates for that matter).

Using recommended f2 dose, after a week of growth I centrifuged tetraselmis culture water to remove phyto for testing. I found 10 - 20 ppm nitrate, 0 ppb phosphate remained in the culture. I sent a sample for ICP testing, which measured 9 ppm nitrate, 0.12 ppm phosphate.

I'm guessing your observed nitrate trend is probably unrelated to phyto dosing.

 

[Jekyl]

I've dosed large amounts of live phyto (I'm talking gallons). It does not significantly affect my nitrates (or phosphates for that matter).

Using recommended f2 dose, after a week of growth I centrifuged tetraselmis culture water to remove phyto for testing. I found 10 - 20 ppm nitrate, 0 ppb phosphate remained in the culture. I sent a sample for ICP testing, which measured 9 ppm nitrate, 0.12 ppm phosphate.

I'm guessing your observed nitrate trend is probably unrelated to phyto dosing.

+1
In my experience dosing phyto can actually increase my nitrate a bit.

 

[47aquatics]

+1
In my experience dosing phyto can actually increase my nitrate a bit.

I dose a mix of 4 live Phyto strains I culture myself and that are very dense - it soaks up phos and nitrate from my tank quickly and if I don’t dose nitrate or phosphate at least once every few days it will bottom out - it can take it from 10-0 nitrate in a little over a week and from 0.05 to 0 phosphate in a few days so need to be careful

 

[DaJMasta]

Frankly, I don't think that's the cause. Phyto gets filtered out of the tank water mighty quick, and while it multiples quickly, its total biomass is still quite small, so unless it's growing to the point to maintain visible tint in your water, I doubt there is enough uptake to have an effect on nitrates that is measurable with home test kits.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Frankly, I don't think that's the cause. Phyto gets filtered out of the tank water mighty quick, and while it multiples quickly, its total biomass is still quite small, so unless it's growing to the point to maintain visible tint in your water, I doubt there is enough uptake to have an effect on nitrates that is measurable with home test kits.

Phytoplankton has a high carbon content, this will work the same way as any other carbon dosing method

 

[DaJMasta]

Phytoplankton has a high carbon content, this will work the same way as any other carbon dosing method

What? Since when are live organisms an available carbon source for bacteria to use?

The argument for phyto reducing nitrates has always been that they multiply and use the nitrate as food for that multiplication. While the conditions are fine for it to do so (temp, salinity, light), there are thousands of filter feeders in any established tank, and some types of filtration can remove (skimmers) or kill (UV or ozone) them, so they simply don't stay in suspension long enough to multiply at any number.

If there's any nitrate reduction from adding phytoplankton it's a secondary or tertiary effect where the addition of phytoplankton to the local food chain has enabled the growth of something which enables the growth of something else that uptakes nitrate. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that actually is, and it's certainly not happening in every tank that doses live phytoplankton.

Dosing live phyto may increase your phosphate levels, it does not reduce nitrate or phosphate in any substantial way and should not be used as a treatment for that.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Not a guess.

Phytoplankton contains 7-10% carbohydrates with the main form being glucose in addition phytoplankton can also release carbohydrates into the water column wend stressed.
The decomposition and deterioration of phytoplankton will increase the organic carbon in an aquarium. I’ve made a few threads a few years back on how to automate a phytoplankton culture with this same purpose, I’ve also made a demonstration thread were nutrition we’re constantly reduced by the same method.
Many folks observe different results due to the fertiliser used to farm phytoplankton for example f2 has a ratio of 1:1 or 2:1 N to P as phytoplankton assimilates N and P on a 16:1 ratio there will be a high phosphate left in the water of the culture that many folks usually just dump into their tanks increasing the nutrients that way, what really increases nutrients for most folks it’s the fertiliser that the phytoplankton couldn’t assimilate, in some of my threads I encourage folks using a fertiliser that respects redfield a little more.