fragit
2500 Club Member
Links from a thread I have referenced for dosing spectraside.
Question about Spectracide Stump Remover dosing
@twilliard has a thread going with a link to it in the above thread but I can't seem to find it.
Sps high nutrients myth?
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Links from a thread I have referenced for dosing spectraside.
Question about Spectracide Stump Remover dosing
@twilliard has a thread going with a link to it in the above thread but I can't seem to find it.
Thank you. Did you treat for the Phosphate or did It lower as the organisms used it. And was the drop after the change in light?
Ive done what I believe was similar.
I have had higher nitrates and had some sps die off. I got them down to zero and I haven't had an issue yet and have more pe in the sps. I think it's the higher alk you want higher no3 and po4 the lower alk you want lower no3 and po4. I could be wrong
Really you can absolutely do it many ways. I have seen highly successful tanks with N at 25-30 and ones where they actively work hard to keep N at undetectable levels. Coloration is more of a personal preference and lower N will pretty much always get you paler colors. Personalty I have kept tanks with both and I am finding that I like the color and saturation in SPS that come from some nutrients. Rather than keeping N at 0, I now try and keep it around 5-10 ppm. Although I have to dose KNO3 to keep it at those levels I find that keeping an SPS tank easier than it was when trying to always maintain undetectable levels of N and P. Currently keeping a 270 gallon SPS tank with 68 fish, no carbon dosing, no GFO, no water changes for the last year and still dose nitrates to keep the corals healthy. I stopped caring about phosphate levels some time ago but that last time I had an ICP test (2 months ago) it was 0.08 ppm.
fragit
2500 Club Member
And potentially lower light levels. I was/am attempting an ULNS with the AF proBio method, and ran into difficulties. I'm still trying to figure it all out, but concensus with folks here, and early results from observing my livestock are this. I lowered my lighting intensity to a little less than 50% of what it was, and have increased my nitrates undetectable to 2-3 and alk from 7.0-7.3 back up to 8.0-8.2 . Bleaching has seemed to stop, and no more tissue loss. One coral seemed to be exhibiting a little PE last night.
I encounter the same scenario occasionally with my species-specific tank. The corals that just don't like my conditions self select themselves out of the equation and the ones that align with it flourish.
Do you have any closer shots of your acros in particular? Or top-down shots? I'm curious of the types you are keeping (I see some stags) and their coloration in closer detail.
Saturday? They're on your doorstep now! Ahhh! [emoji12]
ReeferMadness80G
Valuable Member
Raising No3 Via Spectracide Stump Remover (Potassium Nitrate)
https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php...ide-Stump-Remover-(Potassium-Nitrate).283886/ here's my thread if anyone wants to follow along, and maybe give me some input!
https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php...ide-Stump-Remover-(Potassium-Nitrate).283886/ here's my thread if anyone wants to follow along, and maybe give me some input!
Well thats good news.
fragit
2500 Club Member
It is and I am feeling a little less dumb. And thanks for the link to the low par thread. I watched the video this morning it was very interesting. I am thinking I'm going to bump up my nitrates up to like 10ppm and see what happens.
Really you can absolutely do it many ways. I have seen highly successful tanks with N at 25-30 and ones where they actively work hard to keep N at undetectable levels. Coloration is more of a personal preference and lower N will pretty much always get you paler colors. Personalty I have kept tanks with both and I am finding that I like the color and saturation in SPS that come from some nutrients. Rather than keeping N at 0, I now try and keep it around 5-10 ppm. Although I have to dose KNO3 to keep it at those levels I find that keeping an SPS tank easier than it was when trying to always maintain undetectable levels of N and P. Currently keeping a 270 gallon SPS tank with 68 fish, no carbon dosing, no GFO, no water changes for the last year and still dose nitrates to keep the corals healthy. I stopped caring about phosphate levels some time ago but that last time I had an ICP test (2 months ago) it was 0.08 ppm.
Tank looks great JBNY! That's quite impressive with your specific filtration methods. Its so interesting the different types of systems run and the examples of success in such varied environments.
I wonder because your colonies are so large that they are basically your processors of your nitrates and phosphates... Like large sponges to absorb nutrients? I find myself having to use less and less GFO every month which is interesting considering the amount I feed. I don't have 68 fish but I do have a good number of larger fish to help fertilize my corals.
I had to rehab my 30g from a cyano disaster and high Po4 and used a $14 HOB refugium, a LOT of coral, weekly 5g water changes and high lighting. No gfo.
I do know the phosphate wa bound on the rocks(covered in slime, joy!) as I tested the rocks in a separate container. I did the same with the sand (also coated). took about 2 months.
I guess this is pertinent to the conversation at hand but when I decided to run fallow for 76 days, I had dosed potassium nitrate to keep my nitrate levels around 5 ppm once I noticed the corals had lightened up.
Upon reintroduction of the fish, I had stopped dosing the potassium nitrate and allowed the feedings and fish poop to supplement nitrate. While maintaining the same nitrate levels, my coral colors took a major leap with the fish back in the tank. My theory is the particulate matter from the fish poop as well as the direct uptake of ammonia/ammonium resulted in the color difference, even though the same nitrate levels were maintained.
Upon reintroduction of the fish, I had stopped dosing the potassium nitrate and allowed the feedings and fish poop to supplement nitrate. While maintaining the same nitrate levels, my coral colors took a major leap with the fish back in the tank. My theory is the particulate matter from the fish poop as well as the direct uptake of ammonia/ammonium resulted in the color difference, even though the same nitrate levels were maintained.
folks forget this fact.
Just writing the last post out, I'm sure there were a number of other elements that increased as well with the fish being back in the tank. Potassium, iodine, etc that could be added with the fish food.
The tank was started with tiny frags a year ago. So all the growth is just recent. This tank has been up for about eight years, but a had a bad crash about 4 years ago that took me almost 2 years to come back from. So while the tank has been up for a while the growth and all is only recent.
This is the one reason why I will never go without GFO but I admit its because I'm mostly paranoid. With increased nitrates, its as simple as water changes to remove the nitrates. Things don't accumulate over time and you can always do a reset with water changes with no repercussions.
With phosphate however, it can bind to your live rock so removal is not as straightforward and a potential accumulation effect could be occurring over time without you realizing it. You then realize its been binding to your rocks and start running GFO but even after it removes the phosphates from the water column, you still have it leaching over time from the rocks. You have to continue to run the GFO until it is entirely leached out to finally be rid of a phosphate issue. In my opinion, phosphate is like the smoking grenade in a lot of "old tank" syndromes.
I purposefully removed all GFO and carbon dosing as I thought they were causing problem with my inability to keep SPS a few years ago. I switched to an algae reactor and have never had to worry about N and P since.
Which algae reactor do you run JBNY?
Also, do you really have 68 fish? If so, thats amazing! [emoji15]
