How to add nitrates and keep them stable?

[Aaron Soliz]

This is driving me kinda crazy at this point. I feel like I have done everything I could to keep nitrate in my softy tank.

For a long time I was dosing ESV Nitrate. After 9 months of dosing daily to keep my nitrate stable at 10PPM… i noticed my alk and calcium rise. From 440 calcium to 525 calcium and 9 alk to 11.5.

I stopped dosing and tried to feed more frozen. That doesn’t work. Bought another fish for my 20 gallon and that didn’t do anything.

I started doing water changes to slowly bring my calcium back to 440 and alk at 10. I know by a water change, I’ll remove nitrate so I’m only doing 1 gallon water change weekly but i do add 1 mil of ESV nitrate in there bringing my new 1 gallon salt water from 0 to 13PPM. I add that into the tank and even then… still don’t have any nitrate in there. I’m checking with Hanna HR checker.

What else can I do at this point!? Phosphate is .07

 

[KrisReef]

IF the coral are doing ok then they are telling you to keep doing what you are doing and stop testing for nitrates so often. Maybe test them 1/month or if the corals don't look happy. Chase coral happiness, not test kit numbers for serenities sake.

Test nitrates less for the win.

 

[Aaron Soliz]

IF the coral are doing ok then they are telling you to keep doing what you are doing and stop testing for nitrates so often. Maybe test them 1/month or if the corals don't look happy. Chase coral happiness, not test kit numbers for serenities sake.

Test nitrates less for the win.

I think they could be doing a bit better. Not 100% open like they were when nitrate is present in the system. I could bet even with 5 nitrate, they would be happier.

 

[Dan_P]

This is driving me kinda crazy at this point. I feel like I have done everything I could to keep nitrate in my softy tank.

For a long time I was dosing ESV Nitrate. After 9 months of dosing daily to keep my nitrate stable at 10PPM… i noticed my alk and calcium rise. From 440 calcium to 525 calcium and 9 alk to 11.5.

I stopped dosing and tried to feed more frozen. That doesn’t work. Bought another fish for my 20 gallon and that didn’t do anything.

I started doing water changes to slowly bring my calcium back to 440 and alk at 10. I know by a water change, I’ll remove nitrate so I’m only doing 1 gallon water change weekly but i do add 1 mil of ESV nitrate in there bringing my new 1 gallon salt water from 0 to 13PPM. I add that into the tank and even then… still don’t have any nitrate in there. I’m checking with Hanna HR checker.

What else can I do at this point!? Phosphate is .07

Try dosing ammonium chloride.

 

[ryanjohn1]

Dumb question but your waiting the 7 min for the Hanna checker right?

 

[slingfox]

Dumb question but your waiting the 7 min for the Hanna checker right?

I made this mistake with the Hanna checker for nitrate and phosphorus during the entirety of my first 6 mmo the of the hobby. Just in case: after you add back the vial with the reagent, you need to press and hold down the button so that it starts a countdown timer before doing the final reading.

I dosed nitrate for a few months early on to combat dinos. I mixed my own since that was much cheaper. Other things I did was remove half of the Seachem Mateus sitting in my sump (I started with 2 gallons of that on a 140g system)---super overkill( and significantly reduced the light cycle for the refugium. Eventually parameters settled and I stopped having to dose nitrates.

 

[Spare time]

You could use amino acids. That is my go to.

 

[Aaron Soliz]

Dumb question but your waiting the 7 min for the Hanna checker right?

Of course lol!

 

[Aaron Soliz]

Try dosing ammonium chloride.

What brand and where do i get that from?

 

[Idech]

Have you tried Neonitro ? I’ve used it a few times (but not every day) and never had problems.

 

[Dan_P]

What brand and where do i get that from?

Take a look at Randy’s post

DIY Ammonia dosing for low nitrate systems

Some reef aquaria have chronic low nitrogen availability. One indicator is very low nitrate. Nitrate dosing is a fine remedy, but it is possible that ammonia dosing may be more beneficial for some organisms since ammonia can be energetically easier to assimilate than is nitrate. For this...

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