It contains carbohydrates that gets converted to glucose (sugar)
Sure. I'm not opposed to dosing additives in some situations, but I don't generally believe they are the best course of action. You mentioned us needing to be aware of what we are adding to a system, and therein lies my reservations with much of the dosing mentality these days. With each additional layer of additives in a system, the overall complexity and variables compound and lend themselves to more problems than solutions.
Would the situation have to be evaluated before the advice, I believe that just feed more is not always the solution and in some situations actually detrimental to the system
There is a reason why they don’t last as much, most ready made products are not intended to raise nitrates they are in a different form to be used by the tank organisms. (Nitrogen) for nitrates calcium and sodium nitrate will always be a more effective choice.
The problem is, you can't just go from zero nitrates to 5 or even 10ppm without having an negative impact in many cases. Typically this impact is due to biological competition swinging in the wrong direction, which means algae or worse pops up. I don't think there's a situation where overfeeding a reasonable amount to gradually raise nitrates is going to cause an ammonia spike simply because bacteria that's already established in the system is generally going to take care of that problem for us. This is why many of us with established tanks have lost fish, never found them again, yet have not seen any noticeable issue with other livestock. Maybe in a new tank that was poorly cycled, but generally not in an established tank unless you lost a big snowflake eel or something. Going from three frozen mysis cubes to six isn't going to be much of an issue ammonia-wise. I've tried both approaches here as I'm an sps guy and bottoming out nitrates and phosphates is terrifying. Talking from experience, I've had WAY more issues (mostly a strange turf algae on the back panel that a pain to get rid of) post manually dosing N03 or Po4, than just letting things ride and doubling my daily feeding amount for a week. It's just not worth messing up the N&P ratio and you really don't have that problem by increasing feedings. Nature is the way.
The system is either carbon dosing with a protein skimmer for export, macro algae, or water changes OR have so much coral that the system struggles to sustain a good nutrient level, which would be the case for a coral supplier and not so much an issue for most of us hobbyists. Well maybe aside from those with absolutely packed systems who started by being deathly afraid of having too much N&P and now have to do things to increase levels such as leaving filter socks in for way too long and skipping water changes. This is why I tell people to not go by "master" reef tank water parameters when starting out. It's a process to get to that point and is done out of necessity because the tank is so grown out that it would probably crash at NSW levels.
I agree there is a time and place for each additive encouraging discussion on the subject should bring more information to many users so that they can do informed decisions
I’m a believer that both methods are effective and each one should use the one that they believe that is optimal for they’re system
this is some of the information that should be available to all of us, your experience dosing nitrates made you believe that nitrate dosing raises alkalinity.
I agree with you, most systems that require dosing to avoid a bigger issue are often young, more mature systems that are not overstocked often find a balance.
I used seachem "bottled" products and had to dose daily for a week before nitrates stabilized at a detectable level.
Have you got a link for the new neonitro?
Can I ask for the name? they have a few different ones available? most part of the range is made of nitrogen that can be used by several photosynthetic organisms in our systems before nitrates can be detectable similar situation to neonitro that many observe as most ingredients are in a organic form.
Flourish Nitrogen ("Derived from: potassium nitrate, urea") and Phosphorus ("Flourish Phosphorus™ is a safe solution (4,500 mg/L phosphate) of potassium phosphate." The algae obviously popped up in force after dosing Flourish Phosphorus for a few days as that was the lowest parameter. I was dosing nitrates to achieve 1ppm and phosphates for .06ppm as it was being completely consumed on a daily basis (as per hanna ultra low range P04) even before seeing nuisance algae.
I can see why the bad experience and I wouldn’t blame you, both products will have a high content in potassium that is one of the macro nutrients that can be a limiting factor for algae and phytoplankton including dinoflagellates, in addition potassium nitrate contains nitrates, nitrogen and potassium, Urea is fairly high in nitrogen, all together is the ideal product to raise algae and plants. I believe that this is part of the current misinformation around nutrients, inorganic nitrates and phosphates have little impact on algae and coral alone imo it’s the several different forms that they can be obtain that we should take in consideration wend dosing to achieve the desired outcome without any adverse consequences.
