How to rise the Nitrates?

DakotahSteel · Mar 17, 2023

I’m dosing 15ml of neonitro in my 240 once a day for a week and my nitrates are still undetectable. I’ve been fighting the same

Miami Reef · Mar 17, 2023

pygoplites77 said:
I have noticed that every time I dose sodium nitrate or any product containing nitrate, I have an increase in nitrite values and this is negative, the sps do not strip and tend to darken. I believe the increase in nitrites is due to the second phase of the nitrogen cycle, that of the reduction of nitrates into gaseous nitrogen, with the intermediate transformation into nitrites. Wouldn't it then be suitable to dose organic nitrogen or ammonium so that these are then oxidized into no2 and no3 by bacteria? Maybe dosing carbon to help them. If the reasoning were right, what would be a source of ammonium and organic nitrogen to dose?

Nitrogen containing compounds can feed zooxanthella, which can make them proliferate, resulting in a darker coral.

How do you know the nitrate isn‘t directly causing darkening as opposed to nitrites?

pygoplites77 · Mar 17, 2023

Miami Reef said:
Nitrogen containing compounds can feed zooxanthella, which can make them proliferate, resulting in a darker coral.

How do you know the nitrate isn‘t directly causing darkening as opposed to nitrites?

Because it never exceeded 2ppm despite dosing it, still low value. Also I noticed sps that didn't spolipano or started tissue recession, symptoms not connected to the dosage of no3 in those doses. Nitrites are poisonous, they must be undetectable.
Perhaps dosing ammonium could be ideal, for example AT N which compensates for a lack of no3 without increasing no3 but dosing ammonia

Randy Holmes-Farley · Mar 18, 2023

DakotahSteel said:
I’m dosing 15ml of neonitro in my 240 once a day for a week and my nitrates are still undetectable. I’ve been fighting the same

Dose more.

DakotahSteel · Mar 19, 2023

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Dose more.

I was just thinking this.. what should I be dosing? I want to do it safely

vabben · Mar 19, 2023

DakotahSteel said:
I was just thinking this.. what should I be dosing? I want to do it safely

The calculation on how much to dose is on the bottle. I dose 40-50ml to my 120 to raise to 5ppm.

xCry0x · Mar 19, 2023

I started running my skimmer just 24 hours a week.

Helped bump mine from sub 1.0 to ~4.0

Randy Holmes-Farley · Mar 20, 2023

DakotahSteel said:
I was just thinking this.. what should I be dosing? I want to do it safely

My recommendation is to begin dosing at 2 ppm per day, and adjust from there based on the reading 24 h later to match your target.

Neonitro is weak, has no potency guarantee, and is expensive.

Food grade sodium or calcium nitrate from a place like Amazon is cheaper, has a purity guarantee and can be made to nearly any potency you like.

Dburr1014 · Mar 20, 2023

Why wouldn't you just remove 50% cheato?
Now your filter is doing 1/2 the job. That, and feed more.
These alone will give you more nitrates.

biom · Mar 20, 2023

I also think that nitrate dosing should not be the first choice, if there are other ways of increasing of nutrients.
If you have cheato adding nitrate will just accelerate the growth of cheato in result PO4 will drop, then you should start dosing PO4 but then trace elements will start drop and corals will not be happy again. Just remove some of the cheto reduce the light in the fuge if possible.