Dosing potassium nitrate or coral foods?

[hybridazn]

To keep corals happy and healthy they need nutrients, so that brings me to this question. Which one do you think is better? Dosing the potassium nitrate or a coral food (oyster feast, reef energy, etc)? Do corals need a solid type of food to be happy or is the liquid diet better of dosing nitrates, Or both?

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

I have no science to back this up and my tank isn't to the point where I have to add nitrate, but I know when I am diligent about feeding my corals consistently, they respond really well and have better color and polyp extension. I've sort of dropped the ball lately with feeding them and for the most part coloration hasn't been impacted but I've noticed my Acropora do not have as much daytime polyp extension as they used to have. I think I'm gonna try to get back into a regular feeding schedule with them and see what happens.

 

[hybridazn]

I have no science to back this up and my tank isn't to the point where I have to add nitrate, but I know when I am diligent about feeding my corals consistently, they respond really well and have better color and polyp extension. I've sort of dropped the ball lately with feeding them and for the most part coloration hasn't been impacted but I've noticed my Acropora do not have as much daytime polyp extension as they used to have. I think I'm gonna try to get back into a regular feeding schedule with them and see what happens.

Yea that does happen, I'm guessing your nitrates took a dip because of the lack of feedings.

I've been dosing red sea reef energy a&b twice a week and oyster feast twice a week. This is on top of daily feedings of LRS reef frenzy for the fish.

I don't mind dosing all that, but if my corals will respond the same to dosing nitrates I would think that would be so much easier to do since

1. It doesn't need refrigerated, and
2. It can go on a doser no problem.

 

[chomoney]

Can’t speak to results yet, but I’ve been on the road of dosing nitrate and phosphate as well. What I can say so far is, my dosing requirements are far far higher than anticipated. At about a week in, I am at 4ppm nitrate and .06ppm phosphate and still reading zero on both after 24 hours. It’s worth noting though that there is a 40 breeder plumbed in full of cheato, so that probably accounts for a lot of the consumption.

To me, I think it’s evidence of how far filtration equipment has come. I lost a lot of frags in this new system because I refused i believe that after all the years of fighting nitrate I actually needed to add some.

Oh well, lesson learned!

 

[Anthonykp17]

I have 750 gallon system, 5 tanks total with 100 fish. I don't just love the corals I love the fish too. my 265 has 15 anthias of 3 different species and I feed them 3 times a day with 5 different types of food. I prefer to jst feed to keep nutrients up and weekly water changes and cleaning of my tank, I prefer the kiss method. keep It simple stupid.

 

[Labridaedicted]

I do both and still can't get my nitrates to stay up :-/

Using a food will give many nutrients, whereas KNO3 will only give you K and NO3. *Phosphates* are rarely an issue as they should be incredibly low anyways and feeding usually introduces those. I do find feeding coral food increases polyp extension, but there is one huge downside to coral foods.... vermetids..... they love that size of partical and if they stay well fed, your tank will be covered in snot webs that will actually irritate your corals.

I think if your issue is low nitrates, I would go the KNO3 route just because it's cleaner and more accurate dosing from a chemistry standpoint. (Make your solution to a concentration that will raise your nitrates by .25 per 5 mL or so and you'll have great control.)

Also, I would use lab grade KNO3 if you do it. I know a lot of people use the spectracide stump remover, but purity goes a long ways in this hobby and lab grade compounds have regulations. Stump remover has much less strict purity requirements. (Although this part is a personal preference and largely a peace of mind thing. I prefer to be confident I'm not adding anything unwanted to the system. Plus even the lab grade stuff is pretty cheap, so why chance it.)

Edit: realized I put nitrates where I meant to put phosphates earlier. Edited with asterisk.

 

[Scott.h]

Ironically I used to dose a mixture of oyster, phyto, arctic pods, and roti. I quit that awhile ago and now only dose liquid no3 and po4 daily. Of course that depends on how close those levels are to bottoming out, but my sps tank has a small fish bio load purposely. Going from zero to
2-4/.018-.025 has shown a good deal of improvement in vibrancy and better health specifically in lps. Although it may be from adding specific trace elements though. I'm not sure which I started dosing first.

The real reason I quit dosing coral foods of any kind was because I'm found them to be a build up of contaminates. I have two full triton method tanks. No water changes and run both tanks pretty much the same with the exception of coral food. My other tank has a heavy fish bio load and nutrient levels were always quite high. I never felt the need to add anything. Maybe a little target feeding but nothing consistent. I'd do my ICP tests and I'd always have contaminates in the one tank, so I stopped long ago. For someone doing regular water changes I don't see this as a problem, but I haven't seen one bit of a negative impact from not adding extra either.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

To keep corals happy and healthy they need nutrients, so that brings me to this question. Which one do you think is better? Dosing the potassium nitrate or a coral food (oyster feast, reef energy, etc)? Do corals need a solid type of food to be happy or is the liquid diet better of dosing nitrates, Or both?

What is "better" may depend on how you define it. What criteria?

Both can work, assuming the foods are appropriate for all the corals you have (and I won't be able to say which are appropriate for which corals).

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

I'm a fan of dosing actual food so that my critters can eat it (corals and other critters). I have no knowledge of the actual uptake of corals to contribute to this conversation but I figured I'd give my opinion anyway and the logic (or lack of it) behind my reasoning.

 

[Fourstars]

Fish and corals are fat and happy, but still no nitrate reading. I started dosing last week. I like the idea of controlling Nitrate while not dumping tons of food and having PO4 issues. Time will tell.

 

[lbacha]

I found that extra food only produced high Phosphate levels and still no nitrates. I run a oversized refugium full of cheato and Xenia and food alone was giving me unbalanced results. I now dose KNO3 and KH2PO4 separately with my DOS

 

[rock_lobster]

I do both and still cant keep nitrates up as well. (Mature tank syndrome)

 

[PatW]

I have an sps tank. I run low nutrients. I find dosing nitrate and phosphate and tracking the levels to just be more controllable. But the other course should work just fine also.

 

[hybridazn]

That's kind of where I'm at with this, I feel that dosing nitrates will be easier to "control" while just feeding is more of a crapshoot.

The only thing stopping me is I kind of view this as dosing foods as us eating normally while dosing nitrates is a feeding tube. Both get the job done but would you want to be fed the minimum to get by? I like sustenance lol.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Food offers more variety, but control is a valid concern as well. Maybe split the difference and feed a little more while dosing a small amount of Nitrate to be sure it registers. How is your Phosphate level? I ask because it seems Nitrate may be more of a limiting factor in a lot of tanks. Foods tend to add a lot of Phosphate.

 

[hybridazn]

Food offers more variety, but control is a valid concern as well. Maybe split the difference and feed a little more while dosing a small amount of Nitrate to be sure it registers. How is your Phosphate level? I ask because it seems Nitrate may be more of a limiting factor in a lot of tanks. Foods tend to add a lot of Phosphate.

That's a good idea, I might do that.

Po4 was at .04 a week ago. Nitrates below 4 currently.

 

[Docdiggy]

This is good info. I was on reefcentral asking about dosing nitrate. Somebody recommended brightwell. Has anyone used their nitrate additive?

 

[Marlon2024]

What are people dosing as far as p04 and n03

 

[MTBake]

Tried feeding Coral Frenzy, Reef Roids, and Rod's Coral Blend. Fed every other day for a month and still didn't register nitrates on any test kit I have. My sps colors were pale and I had some tissue necrosis problems.

I started dosing nitrates a month ago today. The difference is noticeble for sure. I use a sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate blended solution. My system used 3ppm of nitrates daily for the first 4 days before I could keep a nitrate reading. Once I got my nitrates set, the tank started using up phosphates. I now dose phosphorous in the form of Brightwell Neophos to keep phosphates readable on a test kit. The dosing of nitrates has slowed as the system caught up.

During all this, my dino problem has been subsiding and tissue necrosis has stopped. Colors are becoming more vibrant, but slowly for sure. The tank is still kinda new and filled with frags. That said, I've seen my first uptake in ca and alk since I started the tank just this past week and couldn't be happier with that finding.

I like being able to control the nutrient levels.

 

[Epicreefster]

I'm a fan of both. I travel a lot, like 3-4 months a year and tend to leave the tank on auto for weeks at a time. I can dose 10ppm nitrate and .1ppm phosphate over two or three days and read 0 a few days later, with about 1/2 tsp pellet food a day on a 45g reef. No refugium or anything special just a skimmer, kalk, and good water flow. It's simple but complicated, everything runs off the apex but just as a glorified timer/thermostat. Nothing too special.

I have had several disasters while away. Blew a seam on a frag tank and flooded the stand (it's water proofed to hold 20 gallons), had the kalk doser die, and a heater failure, luckily in Florida. At this point it's almost bullet proof, add water to the top offs, refill the feeder and scrape the glass. But my basics are feed the tank something, wether it's food or chemical nutrients

I try to keep alk stable, but I find that less important than I once thought. I can swing from 9 to 5.5 with no ill effects as long as I'm feeding. A point of interest is I haven't cleaned my skimmer in nearly a month now, feb 22 was the last cleaning. It's nothing "amazing" but a few hours a month can't complain!