UK_Pete
Active Member
Dont forget if your phosphate is zero, carbon dosing won't work the same as for most of us. Carbon can feed both aerobic and anerobic bacteria and the fast results most carbon dosers see, the ones associated with bacteria blooms when starting etc, are likely aerobic. But with aerobic bacteria they need phosphate too. So, far as I understand, if you have zero phosphates (right now - no matter you once had 0.09 etc - what you have now matters), then the only way carbon dosing can help you is to feed the anerobic bacteria, and so your results might not be the same as most carbon dosers (ie so dont be surprised if its not working like you expect). Feeding carbon to anerobic bacteria means you need anerobic regions in things like porous rock, and carbon (vodka, vinegar etc - I think nopox is the same) has to be able to diffuse to these areas, without too much diffusion (which would also imply enough oxygen diffusion to prevent anerobic conditions). Personally if I had high nitrate, was dosing carbon, and had no results, I would suspect low phosphate. If your test kit says there are phosphates, maybe check its accuracy. The tank does not look high nutrient to me (ie with substantial amounts of both essential nutrients). If you find that in fact your phosphates are limiting things, you can dose phosphate (carefully) and your nitrates should then drop. I used phosphoric acid sold for home brewing to increase my phosphate recently. Ask here before using it though because despite knowing the maths I still managed to overdose it.
