Sodium Nitrate Dosing

drawman · Oct 27, 2016

Well I'm thinking about jumping on the nitrate dosing train. In my 30 gallon frag tank I've been pretty steady at 0.5ppm NO3. Would love to get nitrates up to 2-5ppm. A couple of quick questions...

1. Are there any special precautions I need to take when handling sodium nitrate?

2. Can anyone recommend a source for food/lab grade NaNO3?

I got this recipe from another thread from RHF:
Dissolve 10g in 1L of RODI water. 1mL of this solution will raise NO3 by 0.8ppm/2gallons.

Now I am not currently testing for PO4. I'm using Aquaforest Probiotic Reef Salt but I'm not adding a carbon source so I kind of doubt I would run into PO4 depletion in this scenario...

drawman · Oct 27, 2016

Bump. @Randy Holmes-Farley ?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 28, 2016

There are no significant safety risks to food grade sodium nitrate handling, except making sure kids don't eat it.

I don't have any specific source to recommend, but there are many suppliers online (try google shopping). Just make sure it is food or ACS Reagent or USP (pharmaceutical) grade.

drawman · Oct 28, 2016

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
There are no significant safety risks to food grade sodium nitrate handling, except making sure kids don't eat it.

I don't have any specific source to recommend, but there are many suppliers online (try google shopping). Just make sure it is food or ACS Reagent or USP (pharmaceutical) grade.

Thanks Randy!

drawman · Oct 31, 2016

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
There are no significant safety risks to food grade sodium nitrate handling, except making sure kids don't eat it.

I don't have any specific source to recommend, but there are many suppliers online (try google shopping). Just make sure it is food or ACS Reagent or USP (pharmaceutical) grade.

Well I placed an order from this site. It says "Pure Reagent Grade". Thoughts?

http://www.loudwolf.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=69&products_id=158

Myka · Oct 31, 2016

I wouldn't dose nitrate without also monitoring phosphate.

drawman · Oct 31, 2016

Myka said:
I wouldn't dose nitrate without also monitoring phosphate.

Yeah I agree I'm due to pick up the Elos Pro PO4 kit.

Or maybe I'll dust off my Hanna ULR

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 1, 2016

drawman said:
Well I placed an order from this site. It says "Pure Reagent Grade". Thoughts?

http://www.loudwolf.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=69&products_id=158

Reagent grade is good.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 1, 2016

I find the description of the bottle itself in that link to be hilarious (to a polymer chemist, anyway):

"Our bottles are made of durable Polypropylene Plastic, which is a natural, translucent, lightweight, durable, and chemically resistant copolymer."

First, polypropylene is not natural. There is never, ever, any polypropylene produced in nature. Second, it is not a copolymer, since it only uses a single monomer, propylene. Very strange description. lol

drawman · Nov 1, 2016

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Reagent grade is good.

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
I find the description of the bottle itself in that link to be hilarious (to a polymer chemist, anyway):

"Our bottles are made of durable Polypropylene Plastic, which is a natural, translucent, lightweight, durable, and chemically resistant copolymer."

First, polypropylene is not natural. There is never, ever, any polypropylene produced in nature. Second, it is not a copolymer, since it only uses a single monomer, propylene. Very strange description. lol

Thanks Randy. I'm still a little skeptical on the source so hopefully it proves to be good. Finding sodium nitrate online has proven to be more difficult than I would have thought (unless I'm getting more bulk quantities).

I'm also skeptical of using stump remover so hopefully this will be the lesser of two evils. Low and slow may be the method I employ regardless

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 1, 2016

drawman said:
Thanks Randy. I'm still a little skeptical on the source so hopefully it proves to be good. Finding sodium nitrate online has proven to be more difficult than I would have thought (unless I'm getting more bulk quantities).

I'm also skeptical of using stump remover so hopefully this will be the lesser of two evils. Low and slow may be the method I employ regardless

I think this will be a fine choice. Unless they are outright lying, Reagent Grade is very good. The American Chemical Society sets the specifications.

Myka · Nov 2, 2016

drawman said:
I'm also skeptical of using stump remover so hopefully this will be the lesser of two evils. Low and slow may be the method I employ regardless

This is where I bought NaNO3. http://www.sciencecompany.com/Sodium-Nitrate-500g-P16240.aspx It is Lab Grade. I'm not sure where that lies in comparison to Reagent Grade - it's the only place I could find that would ship to me in Canada. @Randy Holmes-Farley , if the grade is too low, is there a specific contaminant we would be concerned about, or a general "you don't know what else they have in it" concern?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 2, 2016

Myka said:
This is where I bought NaNO3. http://www.sciencecompany.com/Sodium-Nitrate-500g-P16240.aspx It is Lab Grade. I'm not sure where that lies in comparison to Reagent Grade - it's the only place I could find that would ship to me in Canada. @Randy Holmes-Farley , if the grade is too low, is there a specific contaminant we would be concerned about, or a general "you don't know what else they have in it" concern?

I do not know what contaminants might be most likely to be there, and I don't think lab grade has any general meaning.

Myka · Nov 2, 2016

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
I do not know what contaminants might be most likely to be there, and I don't think lab grade has any general meaning.

Well that is scary then! No such thing as lab grade...!!

Myka · Nov 3, 2016

Randy, I was just thinking...people are using stump remover. Is "lab grade" KNO3 a ligitimate enough concern that I should suggest my friend stop using it (I gave him some of my supply)? Should I try to locate food or reagent grade?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 4, 2016

Myka said:
Randy, I was just thinking...people are using stump remover. Is "lab grade" KNO3 a ligitimate enough concern that I should suggest my friend stop using it (I gave him some of my supply)? Should I try to locate food or reagent grade?

It is likely fine. I was just commenting that it doesn't have general meaning. It might mean a certain purity to a specific manufacturer.

drawman · Dec 7, 2016

So I never did get around to dosing this yet but I want to get started mixing up a solution maybe @Randy Holmes-Farley you can help me with this? It has been a long time since I had chemistry and I wasn't the best at it anyway

. Would it make sense to make a 1 molar solution? If so here is my calculation.

MW NaNO3 - 84.995g/mol
Dissolve 85g in 1 L of RODI water.
NaNO3 is about 73% NO3 so therefore 1mL of this solution would add about 62mg (85mg x 73%) of NO3.
If I add this 1mL of solution to say 10L of tank volume, then it would raise NO3 by 6.2mg/L or 6.2ppm is this all correct?

If so I can make a more dilute solution but at least I know I am on the right track. Maybe a more dilute solution would be less harmful in terms of household storage. This is for a 25 gallon tank so I don't really need a lot of it. I could dilute by a factor of 10.