what nitrate and phos supplement?

[Victoria M]

Working out some phos and nitrate issues...what product for dosing nitrate and phosporous do you recommend? I searched older posts and a couple of the Amazon products are not available. Thank you.

 

[Reefahholic]

Working out some phos and nitrate issues...what product for dosing nitrate and phosporous do you recommend? I searched older posts and a couple of the Amazon products are not available. Thank you.

Victoria, I use the Loudwolf NaNO3 and have been for a while. It works well once you figured out your dosage. Ideally you only wanna raise NO3 by 1-2 ppm at a time. You gotta go slow especially in a young system.

Use this calculator to help aid in your dosage amount. I’ve got my solution to where 4 ML’s = 1 PPM > in NO3. Hope this helps you.

 

[Victoria M]

Victoria, I use the Loudwolf NaNO3 and have been for a while. It works well once you figured out your dosage. Ideally you only wanna raise NO3 by 1-2 ppm at a time. You gotta go slow especially in a young system.

Use this calculator to help aid in your dosage amount. I’ve got my solution to where 4 ML’s = 1 PPM > in NO3. Hope this helps you.

Thank you!
Any phos recommendations folks?

 

[Reefahholic]

Thank you!
Any phos recommendations folks?

 

[hotdrop]

TSP also makes an excellent addition to laundry detergent

 

[immortl]

Victoria, I use the Loudwolf NaNO3 and have been for a while. It works well once you figured out your dosage. Ideally you only wanna raise NO3 by 1-2 ppm at a time. You gotta go slow especially in a young system.

Use this calculator to help aid in your dosage amount. I’ve got my solution to where 4 ML’s = 1 PPM > in NO3. Hope this helps you.

Is there an online calculator or a formula for mixing up a solution for the above mentioned products from loudwolf?

Thanks,
Joe

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Here's one. You can enter potassium versions and the answer will very close (closer than you can detect with a hobby kit).

James' Planted Tank - Dosing Calculator

For example, pick the entry for potassium nitrate, and if you want high accuracy when dosing sodium nitrate, multiply the answer by 0.84 to get the dose needed (so 0.84 grams instead of 1.0 grams).

 

[PatW]

I use sodium nitrate and trisodium phosphate. I have been using Eisen-Golden laboratories ACS reagent grade. But loud wolf food grade also looks good. The ACS is a bit purer. But the food grade looks good to because food grade would have restrictions on toxic metals.

I have been using a rather crude method of making stock solution. I use half a cup of sodium nitrate crystals in 1 gallon of RODI water. I dose 1 or 2 tablespoons of this into a 300 gallon tank. 2 tablespoons does about .5 ppm. On a 100 gallon tank, you would use 2 teaspoons.

I have been using 2 tablespoons of trisodium phosphate crystals into 1 gallon of RODI for my stock solution. 2 tablespoons produces about .03 ppm of phosphate in a 300 gallon system.

Maybe one of these days I will spring for a decent balance so I can actually precisely calculate dosage. Now I just make up the solution, add some to the tank and rest to see what the increase has been.

 

[Reefahholic]

Here's one. You can enter potassium versions and the answer will very close (closer than you can detect with a hobby kit).

James' Planted Tank - Dosing Calculator

For example, pick the entry for potassium nitrate, and if you want high accuracy when dosing sodium nitrate, multiply the answer by 0.84 to get the dose needed (so 0.84 grams instead of 1.0 grams).

I use this one too. Randy pointed it out to me a while back. Doses seem to come out fairly close. I like it.

 

[immortl]

Thanks for the links and information folks, I really appreciate it. I have a small Biocube with about 23g of water (based on other calculators, using 23g as water volume seems to produce accurate and repeatable results). Looks like I would only require very very small amounts of these supplements and I am actively testing for them.

I started looking into this because surprisingly over past 3 weeks, Nitrate and Phosphates have been measuring 0 and I'm starting to get some brownish algae looking stuff on the sand bed. I was reading last night about dinos and the drop to 0 seems to correlate with this brownish stuff showing up which fits with what I read about dinos.

I'm surprised my levels are this low because I have 5 fish (2 clowns, firefish, cardinal, and bengalil cardinal) and several target fed corals. I think I feed fairly heavily, but I'll revisit that. Additionally I was gone for 6 months last winter and while I had someone coming in an doing some maintenance, I didn't think it was as often as it should have been. I did fully vacuum the entire sand bed 2x once I returned and it looks like that was pretty darn effective at removing excess nutrients. I do also run a skimmer and have a chaeto reactor on the system, so those are likely pulling out too much as well. I'll have to think about turning the skimmer and reactor pump off more often and fattening up the livestock even more.

Thanks,
Joe

 

[7237689918]

I use the Brightwell products for each, although not that often. Seems to work well.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I started looking into this because surprisingly over past 3 weeks, Nitrate and Phosphates have been measuring 0 and I'm starting to get some brownish algae looking stuff on the sand bed. I was reading last night about dinos and the drop to 0 seems to correlate with this brownish stuff showing up which fits with what I read about dinos.

It might be dinos, or it might be cyano, and the nutrients may be low because the cyano is taking them up.

 

[Aardvark1134]

The best one I have seen is fish poop

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

The best one I have seen is fish poop

Have you actually compared it to inorganic nutrient dosing? What is better about fish poop?

 

[Aardvark1134]

1) It's almost free
2) It's what they get normally
3) It's easily controlled dose by changing how much you feed

So simply put everything about it is better.

Don't know so many in this hobby think dropping tons of chems and supplements in your tank for every issue under the son is a good idea. If your tank needs tons of supplemental dosing items constantly you are doing something wrong.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

1) It's almost free
2) It's what they get normally
3) It's easily controlled dose by changing how much you feed

So simply put everything about it is better.

Don't know so many in this hobby think dropping tons of chems and supplements in your tank for every issue under the son is a good idea. If your tank needs tons of supplemental dosing items constantly you are doing something wrong.

I guess we just disagree. I actually disagree with every sentence you wrote. lol

1. I'm not sure it is more expensive than fish food (have you checked?).

2. You can dose exactly what they normally consume. i'm not sure if any normally consume fish poop.

3. Fish poop is uncontrolled dosing of lots of stuff. With specific dosing, you can add exactly what is in short supply and not other things that may already be present in excess. Dosing is very easily controlled.

That said, feeding more is a fine approach. I'm just not agreeing it is better.
.

 

[7237689918]

For me dosing works great as I can increase either exactly in small amounts and to the level I’m shooting for.

 

[Kaiser]

Here's one. You can enter potassium versions and the answer will very close (closer than you can detect with a hobby kit).

James' Planted Tank - Dosing Calculator

For example, pick the entry for potassium nitrate, and if you want high accuracy when dosing sodium nitrate, multiply the answer by 0.84 to get the dose needed (so 0.84 grams instead of 1.0 grams).

So just to clarify, I would be multiplying the 113 grams by 0.84? I'm not sure I fully understand

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

So just to clarify, I would be multiplying the 113 grams by 0.84? I'm not sure I fully understand

Yes

 

[immortl]

For me personally, I like to know my options and understand as many as I can. I was curious about the dosing for Nitrate and Phosphate because I have only recently heard of it and started looking into it. Previously, I haven't had an issue with too low levels of these items. My initial plan is to feed a little more and reduce the amount of time skimming and flowing through chaeto reactor. I'll see what impact those have first.

From a scientific standpoint, in the interest of maintaining a steady state with minimal fluctuations in parameters, I can see where dosing could be helpful. In my opinion, our systems are minuscule fragments of nature and to maintain them with minimal parameter fluctuations, active participation and effort is not a bad thing and is often required to some extent. Like many things in life, there are multiple paths to the same result. Chemical addition happens to be a very precise and measurable approach. That's quite appealing to some mind sets.