Need help dosing spectracide stump remover

[yenniffer]

Hello, my nitrates and phosphate are both measuring at 0 after using a few different tests including hanna. I was recommended to use the stump remover stuff to help with the nitrates.

how do I mix this stuff. I’m not great at calculations so you help is greatly appreciated. I have a Red Sea 750 xxl. I guess that’s about 200gallons? how much of this stuff I need?

my other question is what to do for the phosphates? I tried the neophos and neonitro for a week now and I haven’t seen any change? I followed the instructions in the bottle but nothing.

my corals are looking pretty bad right now and I have a huge Dino outbreak .

once again thank you!

 

[PatW]

I forget how I mixed my stump remover. It is potassium nitrate. I now dose sodium nitrate. Any way, I put half a cup of the crystals into a gallon of RODI to produce my stock solution. I generally dose by the tablespoon of my stock solution into my 300 gallon. A tablespoon is 3 teaspoons so you can get the same effect by putting 2 teaspoons into your 200 gallon for each of my 1 tablespoon. If I have a 0 nitrate reading, it takes about 2 tablespoons of stock to get a .25-.5 ppm reading. To get 1 ppm would take 4-6 tablespoons. I have a large amount of chaeto in my refugium so it can suck up the nitrate pretty fast. I would recommend dosing 2 to 4 teaspoons to start with and keep dosing daily until you get a measurable reading. Neither of us really knows out nitrate export rate. I often have 0 phosphates. Running 0 phosphates does not seem to bother my corals. I think they get by fine on fish poo. But if my nitrates are creeping up, I find dosing phosphates increases nitrate removal. I think my chaeto needs some extra phosphates to grow and suck up nitrates.

 

[piranhaman00]

If you want to be accurate, dissolve 200 grams into 1L rodi, I needed to heat solution to get this into solution.

That is a 20% or 200,000ppm.

Dose accordingly

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

IMO, there's never a reason to dose stump remover (a potentially impure type of potassium nitrate) when high quality (food or ACS reagent grade) sodium nitrate is readily available and inexpensive with purity assurances and no concerns about raising potassium over time.

 

[Duffer]

IMO, there's never a reason to dose stump remover (a potentially impure type of potassium nitrate) when high quality (food or ACS reagent grade) sodium nitrate is readily available and inexpensive with purity assurances and no concerns about raising potassium over time.

Randy, what product do you recommend for sodium nitrate, and how to dose?

 

[Dolphins18]

Randy, what product do you recommend for sodium nitrate, and how to dose?

This is what I have used in the past

 

[yenniffer]

IMO, there's never a reason to dose stump remover (a potentially impure type of potassium nitrate) when high quality (food or ACS reagent grade) sodium nitrate is readily available and inexpensive with purity assurances and no concerns about raising potassium over time.

Which one do you recommend and how would I dose it? What about for phosphates?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Any food grade sodium nitrate and sodium phosphate is suitable. Amazon sells them, with brands such as Loudwolf, and the one above.

This calculator allows making a dosing solution and dosing itself. For sodium nitrate, use the entry for "nitrate from potassium nitrate", and for phosphate, use the entry for "phosphate from potassium phosphate":

James' Planted Tank - Dosing Calculator