Nitrite Secondary Effects

[FishyFishFish]

Apologies if this has been asked before, but with the many threads suggesting that nitrite is not a factor for the safety of reef inhabitants during the cycle, are there any potential secondary effects for stocking the tank before nitrite reduction.

I am completely clueless on this but am wondering if stocking in the presence of nitrite (with the accompanying short cycle) will have any short or long term effects to other parameters.

Is there likely to be any impact on any of the 'nasties' later down the line or is the presence of nitrite at this stage truly irrelevant.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I'm not aware of any toxicity concerns with the levels of nitrite you are likely to encounter:

Nitrite and the Reef Aquarium by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

what do you mean nitrite is not a factor for fish? Thats wishful thinking and denial by anyone that says that. Fish can probably survive a small amount of nitrite but that doesnt mean they like it nor does it mean that people should subject them to it. Nitrite makes it hard for fish to breath, and the stress of having trouble breathing can bring on other stress induced diseases.

Personally I wouldn't purposfully add fish to a tank that has nitrite.

 

[FishyFishFish]

I'm not aware of any toxicity concerns with the levels of nitrite you are likely to encounter:

Nitrite and the Reef Aquarium by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com

That's an excellent article. thankyou.

One quick question on that, which relates to my original question. In it you state that diatoms can directly take up nitrite. So is there any likely impact on the presence of nitrite and the likelihood/severity of diatoms?

 

[Azedenkae]

Apologies if this has been asked before, but with the many threads suggesting that nitrite is not a factor for the safety of reef inhabitants during the cycle, are there any potential secondary effects for stocking the tank before nitrite reduction.

I am completely clueless on this but am wondering if stocking in the presence of nitrite (with the accompanying short cycle) will have any short or long term effects to other parameters.

Is there likely to be any impact on any of the 'nasties' later down the line or is the presence of nitrite at this stage truly irrelevant.

I wonder if it might have been my posts that you might saw talking about nitrite and its effect on fish, in which case I would like to clarify that 1. this has more to do with marine fish than other organisms, 2. this refers mostly to nitrite levels high, but still measurable. If nitrite gets too high, it can still harm fish. And, I have yet to look into the long term side effects of elevated nitrite levels, as I don't ever intend to keep fish in prolonged elevated nitrite levels. There was maybe three days I had high nitrite levels (4ppm) after the death of an anemone that cascaded into other deaths, but otherwise I do want to keep ammonia and nitrite as low as possible. If my posts were not at least part of the source of your thread, then apologies, my bad. XD

With that said, to answer your question - a reason to caution against adding fish while nitrite is still lowering, is that if the tank is not fully cycled yet (which in my view is that the microbes should be able to handle 2ppm ammonia (and the respective amount of nitrite produced) each day), then nitrite might just keep climbing to a point where it can actually be harmful to the fish.

But if microbes were handling nitrites, and seem like they should be close to be established to a point where they will be able to handle all the nitrites produced, then it should not be an issue.

Of course, if you add 'pre-cycled' biomedia, including live rock that already has the beneficial microbes established as needed, then it could not even be a problem at all.

 

[Righteous]

what do you mean nitrite is not a factor for fish? Thats wishful thinking and denial by anyone that says that. Fish can probably survive a small amount of nitrite but that doesnt mean they like it nor does it mean that people should subject them to it. Nitrite makes it hard for fish to breath, and the stress of having trouble breathing can bring on other stress induced diseases.

Personally I wouldn't purposfully add fish to a tank that has nitrite.

In freshwater this is absolutely true. In marine however the chloride ions block much of the toxicity. You need magnitudes higher levels before it becomes a concern (100s-1000s ppm)

 

[Azedenkae]

I'm not aware of any toxicity concerns with the levels of nitrite you are likely to encounter:

Nitrite and the Reef Aquarium by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com

This. This was the article that really told me the true effects of nitrite in our saltwater aquariums. To be fair, I never had to deal with high nitrites in the past, but I was curious and stumbled upon this article recently.

Thank you for writing it up, and having actual references that can be verified. A few of the links are obsolete now, by the way, but otherwise it was very helpful to be able to validate claims with peer-reviewed articles.

 

[Azedenkae]

what do you mean nitrite is not a factor for fish? Thats wishful thinking and denial by anyone that says that. Fish can probably survive a small amount of nitrite but that doesnt mean they like it nor does it mean that people should subject them to it. Nitrite makes it hard for fish to breath, and the stress of having trouble breathing can bring on other stress induced diseases.

Personally I wouldn't purposfully add fish to a tank that has nitrite.

As @Righteous stated, this is only really true for freshwater fish. I would suggest you read this article: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-06/rhf/index.htm, which actually references peer-reviewed articles so you are able to independently verify the claims.

I believed nitrite to be harmful to all fish as well, until I stumbled upon this article, which I was not 100% set on until I read through the referenced peer-reviewed articles and see that it is indeed the case. ^_^

It is really surprising, especially if one starts out in the freshwater side of the hobby/has been on that side for a long time. But well, facts are facts.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

what do you mean nitrite is not a factor for fish? Thats wishful thinking and denial by anyone that says that. Fish can probably survive a small amount of nitrite but that doesnt mean they like it nor does it mean that people should subject them to it. Nitrite makes it hard for fish to breath, and the stress of having trouble breathing can bring on other stress induced diseases.

Personally I wouldn't purposfully add fish to a tank that has nitrite.

You are mistaken.

Perhaps you are remembering from freshwater days. It is a serious issue in freshwater, but has almost no toxicity in marine systems because all of the chloride competes for uptake and little is taken up.

 

[brandon429]

also, if it helps

having nitrite hasn't harmed any coral, invert, fish or shrimp in our speedy cycles. I have never seen it matter one iota

it does, however, keep up retail bac sales to the tune of about 10-20% of all the repeat purchases are made due to what api nitrite says. that's where its effect is found

I recommend to thousands and thousands of tank cyclers that they not even own the kit out of curiosity. the less doubt we inject into reefing, the more corals will live and the less we'll spend supporting nonconditions.

eliminating nitrite from a cycle's end date measure has been the single best streamlining thing we've done to wrangle forum cycles into compliance, and that's like herding cats.

by never running the test not one single time, we can get new cyclers to focus on what matters:

fallow and qt

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

One quick question on that, which relates to my original question. In it you state that diatoms can directly take up nitrite. So is there any likely impact on the presence of nitrite and the likelihood/severity of diatoms?

i doubt it. Many organisms can likely take up both ammonia and nitrite, and the photosynthetic organisms in our tanks may get most of their N from those rather than nitrate, which is metabolically more expensive to use.

 

[brandon429]

@Randy Holmes-Farley I have this question

since all these different life forms aren't likely to have the same receptor base, Im wondering why we can't find any reef animals that mind nitrite, what is chloride blocking for a shrimp or a caulastrea lps for example?

given the ways testing works today, Im not convinced many testers can know if they do/don't have some nitrite, but for the very quick cycles at least well before the ~25 day establishment date on a cycle chart we can reasonably assume there is some and that this param isn't ready yet.

but we keep starting anyway, the conventions still start anyway for ages. it seems to be chemically neutral even beyond receptor matches??

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I do not deny that there may be some more sensitive marine organisms, but in general, organisms are not "looking to take up nitrite", and marine organisms are not even "looking to take up chloride "

Nitrite gets in incidentally, as a consequence of nitrite looking like something that is intentionally being taken up, and the mechanism that it gets into freshwater fish (the intentional uptake of chloride since body fluids often contain more chloride than the water, and as a way to excrete CO2 at the same time) is not likely happening in marine organisms (where they are more likely to need to excrete chloride since chloride is more concentrated in seawater than physiologic fluids):

(PDF) Nitrite and Freshwater Fish

PDF | Nitrite occurs naturally in fresh waters as a result of nitrification of ammonia and denitrification of nitrate, and its concentration can be... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

"The toxic species is the nitrite ion (NO2) which is believed to enter the blood via the branchial chloride/bicarbonate exchange and fish such as salmonids with high chloride uptake rates are more susceptible than those with low chloride uptake rates, for example carp. Nitrite toxicity is strongly aleviated by chloride and the concentration ratio of these ions is of great importance in assessing toxicity."