Have you used it? I feel like I dumped straight acetone into my tank.
I did 2 ML twice in a 20 gallon as recommend by the fish store. My nitrates are high though. I hope it’s not too much maybe I’ll cut back to 1 ML. I do have skimmer too I waited to dose before getting it.
Honestly, disregard how high the nitrates are; high doses of nopox will bring them down too quickly, and can cause bacterial bloom issues. Start as low as you can go, and ramp up over the course of many weeks.
You need to slowly increase the dose over several weeks. Personally, and especially with a smaller tank, I would recommend dosing kalkwasser saturated vinegar, as it’s easier to titrated the dosing (not such small amounts) and because it won’t affect the PH (because of the kalk). If you want specific instructions (that I got from @RandyHolmesFarley), feel free to ask. But if you stick with the nopox, I would follow the dosing chart for Vodka (as they are roughly the same potency):
Thank you! And I don’t plan on doing a water change because of but would this hurt or help it?You need to slowly increase the dose over several weeks. Personally, and especially with a smaller tank, I would recommend dosing kalkwasser saturated vinegar, as it’s easier to titrated the dosing (not such small amounts) and because it won’t affect the PH (because of the kalk). If you want specific instructions (that I got from @RandyHolmesFarley), feel free to ask. But if you stick with the nopox, I would follow the dosing chart for Vodka (as they are roughly the same potency):
Dosing 2ml right off the bat is a lot for a small tank, you want to start much smaller (can create a bacteria bloom). If you decide to go with Vinegar, you will dose 8x what this chart calls for. You need to dose it daily for it to work though, it’s not something you dose periodically, and if you ever decide to stop, you need to titrate the dose back down. Also, you’ll want to run your skimmer on the wet side (it will be pulling out some of the bacteria that are holding nitrates as biomass). If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Oh, and to answer your question, yes it smells like solvent, it’s basically vinegar and ethanol mixed, but if your titrate the dose slowly it’s completely safe.
Honestly everything we add to our tanks is a chemical of some sort. But what's in nopox is basically ethanol and acetic acid (vinegar). When I need too I just mix my own vinegar and vodka.
Okay I understand it does smell like acetone to me though probably because I’m not willingly smelling methanol/ethanol and acetone is a smell I’m more familiar with as it’s nail polish remover.
Also in terms of dosing. I have been dosing magnesium to get the level up and I regularly dose fish vitamins and occasionally bacteria because I know you can’t overdose it and now NOPOX but that’s it. I just try to avoid super harsh chemicals or chemicals that would make the corals unhappy.
Acetone would have the same effect in terms of carbon dosing.
You can continue to do water changes/maintenance as usual. IME you won’t see a massive reduction in nitrates over night, it’ll be a slow gradual reduction over several weeks. When you get to where you want your nitrates to be, you’ll start lowering the dose (on the same schedule you raised it) and then as soon as you see nitrates going back up, you’ll raise the dose back up one step, and that will be your maintenance dose (assuming feeding/bioload stays the same, though you may need to adjust a little bit periodically).
yep, thats what I did, and I've been dosing about 10ml a day for the last 5 years on my 90 gal system.
And is it supposed to create this white fluffy stuff on the rocks? It looks like smoke almost and it won’t pickup on camera. I heard of it happening but what is it. If you know.
