Looking for advice on how to incorporate nitrate dosing

Reefinmike · Jan 25, 2019

How should I approach building up a nitrate level without causing problems with algae or the coral’s health? How much to start with, how fast to increase the dose, warning signs to look out for and how quickly can I expect to see improvement?

My reef is 8 months old, 90 gallon with a total system volume of 110g. I have very few fish- 4 large bar gobies, two small clowns, one large 14 year old clown, and a yt damsel. Also have a gang of 30 hungry nassarius snails and other various inverts. I feed 3 grams of PE mysis per day- about double what I should. I’ve tried feeding more but that just made some hydroids go nuts. I’ve implemented several other natural approaches to increase nitrate the past few months but nitrate sat at a solid 0.00.

Two months ago I increased my lighting about 20% and some sps grew almost an inch per month. Their color however is getting worse and worse. Some lps are doing fine but brains struggle. My poor acan has dwindled over 5 months and is almost stark white. My two clams are doing fantastic, my derasa has easily doubled in size over two months.

Weird new algaes ebb and flow as the tank matures but there has been a noticeable increase the past two months, lining up with the light increase. I added 10 large trochus snails to my CUC last week and i have a baby tomini tang in qt so hopefully I wont see a mass overtaking of algae. My phosphate has been around 0.08 the past two+ months. Should i address this to help curb the algae growth or should I keep it stable as I build up my nitrates?

I bought a kg of food grade sodium nitrate and mixed up a 1000ml batch with 137 grams of NaNO3. One ml should raise 100L(26.4 gal) 1ppm. Yesterday I added 4.2ml to raise the nitrate 1ppm. 2 hours after dosing it tested a little over 3ppm with my nyos kit. 6 hours later it looked like a solid 1.0. This morning it was a solid 0. A couple hours ago i added 6.3ml or ~1.5ppm. I just tested and it’s higher than 5. Probably 7 or 8. Any reason i’m testing triple what was added? I have a red sea test on the way. I’ve used a friends red sea kit in the past and it always tested 0.0 along side my nyos kit.

Thanks for any advice, i’ve owned reef tanks 14 years but this is a completely foreign subject to me.

Wen · Jan 26, 2019

My experience:
Be very consistent with your dosing regiment (buy a doser), ramp up your numbers very slowly (over many weeks), test daily (same time of day), know your phosphate levels and keep them stable Hanna url) and read everything you can about nitrate dosing here at R2R.
Your on the right track, be prepared for challenges and the rewards of happy corals.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Jan 26, 2019

It may not always be possible to boost nitrate without encouraging algae, but I would try it anyway.

Reefinmike · Jan 26, 2019

Well, 48 hours later a little cyano is showing it’s ugly face. I cant say i see an immediate improvement in coral color but they do seem to be moving in the right direction. I know that my phosphates are a little on the high side, should i try to bring them down a little or just wait to see if the coral does it for me? It’s been a few days but I’ll test again tonight. To see if dosing nitrate affected the phos.

Thanks for the reply @Wen, i’ll have to do some more reading on the subject but of course i will take it slow and never over react to a change in the system. Am I starting at an appropriate dosing level? I just dosed another 1.5ppm worth and will do the same tomorrow. Every three days i will bump it up a half ppm. Sound like a solid plan or is this too quick? I don’t mind manually dosing every day as i build up levels but automation will certainly be implemented at some point. Are there ant dosing shortcuts i can take to save an apex outlet and dosing pump? I’ve heard of people elevating the nitrate in their auto water change reservoir to effectively dose nitrate. I dose 1/2 gallon of kalk per day in conjunction with 125ml of diluted two part. Is sodium nitrate compatible with any of these? I recently started manually dosing acro power, could it perhaps be mixed with NaNO3 and dosed with a doser?

Reefinmike · Jan 27, 2019

Well, as the day has gone on several tufts of brown fuzzy algae have transitioned to deep red cyano. Dino was popping up a little before but it’s getting more prevalent. Again, i’m just fine taking it slow and dealing with weird algaes as i get things balanced out.

I tested phosphate with my hanna phosphate ulr checker and retested the same vial 5x for a more accurate number. I’ve used a friends phosphOrus ulr checker 5x and my new phosphAte ulr 5x and found it to vary .01 above and below the average reading. Anyways phosphate has dropped from .08 to .06 the past two days. It’s been at .08 the past two months so i’m interested to see where this goes.

Reefinmike · Feb 1, 2019

Update: I’m having a bunch of algae growth but i’m pretty patient as it seems to be dropping the phosphate. I was at 0.9 phosphate for months and it’s dropped to .02. Initially i had a strange bryopsis looking algae and dinos formed mainly on the algae. It seemed to smother it. Cyano also popped up the first 4-5 days and again, seemed to be smothering the now rapidly forming turf algae. I have manually removed about a cup of algae and did two 7g water changes with fresh carbon each time. After working up to 2ppm a day I’m getting a readable level of nitrate the next day. Today was ~2 ppm, yesterday was 1ppm so I adjusted my dose to 1.5ppm/day. The algae battle is rapidly evolving but seems to be coming to a close as the phosphate drops. Today I saw significant improvement in color and general health of most corals and coralline appears to be on the rise again.

Nicholas Dushynsky · Nov 22, 2019

Can I ask, have you got anymore updates? I'm already dosing phosphates as my sps went pale and died, now my phosphates are about 0.02 and nitrates have dropped from 10 to just over 1. So now I'm looking to dose nitrates aswel. I'm just wandering how your algae issue and coral colours changed over the last 9 months.