When to start dosing NO3/PO4

Anthrax15 · Aug 25, 2020

Tank is going on three months old now and Nitrates/Phosphates have bottomed out. NO3 and PO4 supplements are on the way but should I start dosing right away? I've been doing 20% WC's every other week and feeding daily but parameters continue to be 0. Should I wait for more livestock/tank maturity or is it fine to start dosing with the tank being as new as it is?

Ron Reefman · Aug 25, 2020

Saying N03 and P04 have "bottomed out" isn't exactly helpful. What are the levels?

Anthrax15 · Aug 25, 2020

Nitrates - 0 (Tested with Salifert)
Phosphates 0.00 (Tested with Hanna)

LRT · Aug 25, 2020

Hey Anthrax. Do you have livestock?
What kind of live rock?
The consensus ive seen reccomended is at least 2-5ppm Nitrates and .03 for 1st- 2nd year established system.
Go slow when you do dose. Nitrates should be registered pretty quickly. May take a little longer to get phoshphates to register.

Anthrax15 · Aug 25, 2020

LRT said:
Hey Anthrax. Do you have livestock?
What kind of live rock?
The consensus ive seen reccomended is at least 2-5ppm Nitrates and .03 for 1st- 2nd year established system.
Go slow when you do dose. Nitrates should be registered pretty quickly. May take a little longer to get phoshphates to register.

6 fish at the moment, rock is CaribSean Life rock so dead rock. Will be adding another fish or 2 this week. I feed daily or every other day but skimmer seems to be doing too good of a job as well as the high flow in my display, not allowing any wasted food to settle.

Just wasn't sure if it was too early to start dosing. I don't forsee a spike in nitrates/phosphates unless it is something I cause.

LRT · Aug 25, 2020

Anthrax15 said:
6 fish at the moment, rock is CaribSean Life rock so dead rock. Will be adding another fish or 2 this week. I feed daily or every other day but skimmer seems to be doing too good of a job as well as the high flow in my display, not allowing any wasted food to settle.

Just wasn't sure if it was too early to start dosing. I don't forsee a spike in nitrates/phosphates unless it is something I cause.

Plan on adding coral?
If it was me I'd dose to get levels at least registerable. Been watch alot of BRS videos and doing alot of research lately. Seems like Its right about this time when nutrients bottom out and reefers start running into the uglies, dyno etc. Especially with dead rock.
I'd go real easy with phosphates. I went with .01 per my system size using the planted tank calculator.
I tested everyday. Sometimes I dosed .02. Took me a cpl weeks to get it to register.

mfollen · Aug 25, 2020

I would just keep feeding your fish healthy amount of food. Not too much food. Feeding the fish is a sustainable way to slowly build nutrients. There will be some phosphate in the water from food & nitrate will slowly build as the nitrification bacteria & microfauna build.

sam2110 · Aug 25, 2020

If you tank is only 3 months old how have you got them to hit 0? Either your cycle has crashed, you have dosed something to lower them or test kit errors? At 3 months you would expect high nitrate reading at least 10ppm before water change.

Anthrax15 · Aug 25, 2020

LRT said:
Plan on adding coral?
If it was me I'd dose to get levels at least registerable. Been watch alot of BRS videos and doing alot of research lately. Seems like Its right about this time when nutrients bottom out and reefers start running into the uglies, dyno etc. Especially with dead rock.
I'd go real easy with phosphates. I went with .01 per my system size using the planted tank calculator.
I tested everyday. Sometimes I dosed .02. Took me a cpl weeks to get it to register.

I've added plenty of coral already. Thankfully this isn't my first tank but will be the first tank I take dosing seriously. My tank has cycled with Nitrates peaking at 15ppm based off of API test kit. Since upgraded to Salifert test kit but nitrates still reading zero.

sam2110 said:
If you tank is only 3 months old how have you got them to hit 0? Either your cycle has crashed, you have dosed something to lower them or test kit errors? At 3 months you would expect high nitrate reading at least 10ppm before water change.

Tank has cycled properly, seeing an Ammonia spike, then Nitrites, then finally Nitrates at 15ppm. Have been doing 25% WC's every other week so I suppose I have striped all the nutrients out doing so.

sam2110 · Aug 25, 2020

Anthrax15 said:
I've added plenty of coral already. Thankfully this isn't my first tank but will be the first tank I take dosing seriously. My tank has cycled with Nitrates peaking at 15ppm based off of API test kit. Since upgraded to Salifert test kit but nitrates still reading zero.

Tank has cycled properly, seeing an Ammonia spike, then Nitrites, then finally Nitrates at 15ppm. Have been doing 25% WC's every other week so I suppose I have striped all the nutrients out doing so.

It took me like 6 months to get mine down to 2-5ppm nitrates and even now I still have to dose a small amount of nopox, run algae reactor and use bags of matrix to keep my nitrates low. I also do a 25% water change every 2 weeks now, it used to be weekly but it no longer needs weekly changes.

Anthrax15 · Aug 25, 2020

sam2110 said:
It took me like 6 months to get mine down to 2-5ppm nitrates and even now I still have to dose a small amount of nopox, run algae reactor and use bags of matrix to keep my nitrates low. I also do a 25% water change every 2 weeks now, it used to be weekly but it no longer needs weekly changes.

I believe mine being so low is a combination of a highly effective skimmer, possibly too many water changes, and high flow not allowing food or detritus to settle. I believe I might have a slight case of Dino's due to zero phosphates. I have a bottle of Nitrate and Phosphate in the mail so I can start dosing.

Thaxxx · Aug 25, 2020

Why put any chemicals in if you don't need them?
Why not try a simpler way? Feed more, turn off the skimmer, and skip a water change or 2.
Do those 3 things for a week, and report back.
You can keep the skimmer running, just take off the cup.

Anthrax15 · Aug 25, 2020

Thaxxx said:
Why put any chemicals in if you don't need them?
Why not try a simpler way? Feed more, turn off the skimmer, and skip a water change or 2.
Do those 3 things for a week, and report back.
You can keep the skimmer running, just take off the cup.

Dosing NO3/PO4 will most likely be in my future just to keep things rock solid as possible. My plan is to feed every day now and only do WC's once a month to see if that will help.

Difrano · Sep 8, 2020

sam2110 said:
If you tank is only 3 months old how have you got them to hit 0? Either your cycle has crashed, you have dosed something to lower them or test kit errors? At 3 months you would expect high nitrate reading at least 10ppm before water change.

That's not true, you can struggle with 0 parameters with a new tank. I have my RSR250 since May and had been a struggle to get parameters above 0. Only after the cyano outbreak and the use of Chemi-Clean to nuke it I was able to get some P04 and NO3.

Anthrax15 · Sep 8, 2020

I've been dosing No3 and Po4 from FishofHex. They work well but I am competing with new tank algaes like cyano/left over diatoms. For now, I've just been over feeding and dosing Reef Roids which skyrocket my Phosphates.

Difrano · Sep 8, 2020

Nice, I refused to start dosing NO3 or PO4, but started feeding heavy and increased the bioload. I have a nice carpet of GHA growing on some rocks on DT and Caulerpa growing in the fuge, when my parameters bottomed out, the GHa receded and the caulerpa melted to almost nothing, then the cyano took over literally took over the tank. I was concerned about Dinos more than Cyano because Dinos would nuke my tank, after using chemi clean my parameters started rising up and now sits around 5 No3 and 0.09 OO4 and everything is super happy