What are you using to dose Nitrates?

[Oshengems]

what are most people using to dose nitrates?home made solutions? Stump remover ? Food grade potassium/sodium nitrates and what’s the difference between these 2? Just curious to see what are most people using since I’m kinda getting tired to feeding 4-5 times a day, I think I’m taking the dosing No3 route instead.

Also the ones dosing have you noticed any advantages i dosing ? Better sps colors ? More encrustation? Better growth?

 

[PatW]

You can use spectracide sold as a stump remover at hardware stores. It is potassium nitrate. I use sodium nitrate in an ACS reagent grade. Two reasons: adding sodium to a reef tank will have a trivial effect and the purity is almost certainly better than spectracide.

 

[Wen]

I use sodium nitrate from loudwolf.
A doser now adds 100 ml daily to maintain nitrates at 4 ppm.
My corals colored up nicely.

 

[dwest]

what are most people using to dose nitrates?home made solutions? Stump remover ? Food grade potassium/sodium nitrates and what’s the difference between these 2? Just curious to see what are most people using since I’m kinda getting tired to feeding 4-5 times a day, I think I’m taking the dosing No3 route instead.

Also the ones dosing have you noticed any advantages i dosing ? Better sps colors ? More encrustation? Better growth?

Sodium nitrate

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0190TOJUS/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[beaslbob]

I think calcium nitrate could be used also. Available at most feed and seed stores or nurseries.

 

[lapin]

http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/calculator.htm

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Either sodium or potassium nitrate would work. I personally use sodium nitrate for two reasons.

Because sodium is present in much higher concentration than potassium, there are no concerns with dosing additional sodium when dosing NaNO3 for nitrates. While it takes a lot of potassium nitrate to raise K levels significantly, it could happen if you dosed enough KNO3.

Additionally, because potassium is heavier than sodium, sodium nitrate actually has more nitrate by weight than potassium nitrate.

Either one is likely fine though. I would at least go with something that's food-grade. Spectracide offers no guarantees about the purity of its stump remover, so there's not really any way to ensure that it's safe for use in reef tanks. Food-grade (or better) additives are available on Amazon and Etsy for cheap. I personally use Loudwolf brand nitrate and phosphate salts for my nutrient additives.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Spectracide definitely has some impurities but I still dose it lol. So far no ill effects after years of dosing it. Maybe in 10 years after my stump remover bottle is finished off, I'll switch.

 

[Oshengems]

Found some Sodium nitrates on Amazon might try out the 4oz bottle, will Potassium Nitrates affect my potassium levels ?

 

[reeferfoxx]

Found some Sodium nitrates on Amazon might try out the 4oz bottle, will Potassium Nitrates affect my potassium levels ?

Yes

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

As reeferfoxx said, yes, potassium nitrate will raise your potassium. For every 3 ppm of nitrates you dose, you're increasing K by 2 ppm. Is this a problem? It depends how often you do water changes or how high your potassium is to start with. If you're adding 1 ppm of nitrates per day using KNO3, over a two month period you will increase your K by 40 ppm provided nothing uses it. While a 10% increase in K might not be a problem if your tank has low K or if something uses it, it could be a problem if your K is normal or already elevated.

Sodium nitrate (NaNO3), on the other hand, has about a 3:1 ratio of nitrate to sodium. That is, every 3 ppm of nitrates you dose will only increase Na by 1 ppm. Sodium is also present at much higher quantities in seawater, between 10,000 and 11,000 ppm, so the little bit that is added when dosing sodium nitrate is less significant.

Both KNO3 and NaNO3 will work fine. Overall though, NaNO3 is simpler and alters your tank's chemistry less.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Both KNO3 and NaNO3 will work fine. Overall though, NaNO3 is

Yes exactly. I offset K with water changes and you could offset Na with skimming wet and letting the ato compensate.

 

[CMO]

what are most people using to dose nitrates?home made solutions? Stump remover ? Food grade potassium/sodium nitrates and what’s the difference between these 2? Just curious to see what are most people using since I’m kinda getting tired to feeding 4-5 times a day, I think I’m taking the dosing No3 route instead.

Also the ones dosing have you noticed any advantages i dosing ? Better sps colors ? More encrustation? Better growth?

Dosing nitrate has been the best thing I've done for my ULN triton tank. SPS color dramatically improved with dosing, along with growth. But watch out, dosing nitrate can cause Alk, PO4 etc. to drop significantly due to higher growth rates. I had to double my Triton dosing nearly over night to compensate for the additionally growth spurred by nitrate dosing. I'm dosing Brightwell Neonitro.

Before Nitrate dosing


About a month or so after starting nitrate dosing

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Food

 

[CMO]

Food

Sounds like the OP already tried that feeding 4-5x per day. For many tanks, it's not practical to feed enough to get a nitrate reading. On my 165g for example, 5 cubes frozen per day + pellets 1x per day on auto feeder + eel feeding every other day + live phyto every other day + reef chilli 2-3x per week = 0.000 nitrate absent supplemental nitrate dosing.

 

[Oshengems]

As reeferfoxx said, yes, potassium nitrate will raise your potassium. For every 3 ppm of nitrates you dose, you're increasing K by 2 ppm. Is this a problem? It depends how often you do water changes or how high your potassium is to start with. If you're adding 1 ppm of nitrates per day using KNO3, over a two month period you will increase your K by 40 ppm provided nothing uses it. While a 10% increase in K might not be a problem if your tank has low K or if something uses it, it could be a problem if your K is normal or already elevated.

Sodium nitrate (NaNO3), on the other hand, has about a 3:1 ratio of nitrate to sodium. That is, every 3 ppm of nitrates you dose will only increase Na by 1 ppm. Sodium is also present at much higher quantities in seawater, between 10,000 and 11,000 ppm, so the little bit that is added when dosing sodium nitrate is less significant.

Both KNO3 and NaNO3 will work fine. Overall though, NaNO3 is simpler and alters your tank's chemistry less.

Dosing nitrate has been the best thing I've done for my ULN triton tank. SPS color dramatically improved with dosing, along with growth. But watch out, dosing nitrate can cause Alk, PO4 etc. to drop significantly due to higher growth rates. I had to double my Triton dosing nearly over night to compensate for the additionally growth spurred by nitrate dosing. I'm dosing Brightwell Neonitro.

Before Nitrate dosing


About a month or so after starting nitrate dosing

That’s a dramatic change what are your nitrates sitting at most of the time ?

Thanks My K is a bit high tested last week at 450 I was using the abcd from Red Sea the sample bottlesut finished about 2 weeks ago, yeah I can’t keep up with the x4-5 Times a day to get a faint color on my salifert test kit I’m guessing I between 0-5 but less than 5 if I don’t feed for a day back to clear readings

 

[CMO]

Thanks My K is a bit high tested last week at 450 I was using the abcd from Red Sea the sample bottles


That’s a dramatic change what are your nitrates sitting at most of the time ?

but finished about 2 weeks ago, yeah I can’t keep up with the x4-5 Times a day to get a faint color on my salifert test kit I’m guessing I between 0-5 but less than 5 if I don’t feed for a day back to clear readings,

I'm at about 2-3ppm nitrate now with dosing. The red sea pro nitrate test kit is the best I found for low range tests where you can actually distinguish levels in the 0-4 ppm range.

 

[Oshengems]

Thats on my BRS cart atm the salifert is hard to distinguis those colors did my research on test kits I think I’m a bit color blind because my gf says it clear for her

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Sounds like the OP already tried that feeding 4-5x per day. For many tanks, it's not practical to feed enough to get a nitrate reading. On my 165g for example, 5 cubes frozen per day + pellets 1x per day on auto feeder + eel feeding every other day + live phyto every other day + reef chilli 2-3x per week = 0.000 nitrate absent supplemental nitrate dosing.

Here’s the way I look at this dilemma:

In our tanks (relatively small volume H2O with large biomass in a relatively closed system), we have all of the potential PO4 and NO3 production we could ever want.

That led to, over the years, advancements in our LSS capabilities, chem media capabilities, and things like dosing to further lower nutrient levels. We then went from one side of the issue (too much) to the other side of the issue (too little).

The word you used that got my attention was ‘practical’. To me, how is more practical than contriving even more chem to deal with/control/manipulate than it is to simply dial back the use of nutrient stripping _____? Why add an additional nitrate source when we can just reduce skimming or nutrient uptake by Chaeto or whatever we’re doing to decrease NO3 or PO4?

 

[Crashjack]

I use Seachem Flourish Nitrogen. It is easy to use and made for aquariums.