Relation between ORP and Nutrients

JayTea1982 · Sep 28, 2020

Anyone been able too find any trends in ORP and nutrients?
I've recently been fighting Dino's and come too find out it was due to nutrients out of balance.
My P04 was .10ppm and 0 No4.
I've had my APEX running for about 3 weeks and the ORP probe was starting to level out around 330 and slowly going up a bit each night.
Once I started dosing nitrates it's been going up and not swinging back down like it normally would during the day when PH is on the rise.
From what i understand, ORP goes down with death in a tank and I would consider nitrates and related component too death in a tank.
Wondering if my tank was so deficient in nutrients, it's helping promote good bacteria I was lacking, and in turn boosting the ORP.
Just a observation I was having and wondered if anyone had any insight on it.

lapin · Sep 29, 2020

Good question. My ORP goes up and down with lighting. Never measured nutrients at night.

GillMeister · Oct 5, 2020

My ORP has also skyrocketed. It's currently running about 430 and it correlates strongly with pH. As my ORP goes up, my pH goes down. I'm seeing some of the lowest pH levels I've had since I started monitoring. What I don't know is which is cause, and which is affect. Is the ORP driving my pH down or vice versa?

GillMeister · Oct 7, 2020

After reading Randy's article on ORP I'm more convinced that pH changes cause ORP fluctuations and not vice versa. The charts in his article show movement in pH levels before the ORP changes. Similarly, I h
Just hooked up a CO2 scrubber and as my pH rises, my ORP falls.

Read Randy's articles. He's a friggin' genius.

Breadman03 · Oct 7, 2020

GillMeister said:
Read Randy's articles. He's a friggin' genius.

True, but he also knows how to speak laymen. That pairing is a huge asset for our hobby.

robbyg · Oct 12, 2020

The problem I find with ORP is that it can change due to many factors. In an Aquarium I only find sudden drops to be useful indicator. On the other hand in the use of running Ozone or for monitoring the effluent from a Sulfur reactor it is great probe to have.