Why folks don’t like adding nutrients

[LeftyReefer]

Have you got a link for the new neonitro?

It's on the Continuum site. link below.

NeoNitro 5X

 

[Crustaceon]

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.

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.

I considered that as a possibility, but remembered in the past, I had dosed sodium nitrate and trisodium phosphate but had similar results, typically after a 5-6 days of dosing. One commonality besides the nuisance algae was a gnarly case of dinos, which would make sense considering everytime this happened, I was carbon dosing.

 

[Crustaceon]

I think opinions also differ and change based on the maturity of the tank and the reefer. My tank is going on 2 years and In the 2 years I ran into problem after problem. Nutrients bottomed out, started dosing to hit measurable nitrate and phosphate which led to more issues. Eventually I just stopped adding anything but food to the tank.

Things are slowly turning around and I'm still measuring 0 0. The balance In a newer tank starting steril just swings too wildly to mess around with in my opinion.

My acros are starting to show decent growth out of months of nothing when trying to keep nutrients at a specific number. I think I may try it again once things mature more.

I also target feed which may be why my corals are doing great regardless of the nutrient test readings.

Again I have no doubt when the tank becomes rock solid stable that I will start slowly increasing nutrient availability in the water.

I think opinions also differ and change based on the maturity of the tank and the reefer. My tank is going on 2 years and In the 2 years I ran into problem after problem. Nutrients bottomed out, started dosing to hit measurable nitrate and phosphate which led to more issues. Eventually I just stopped adding anything but food to the tank.

Things are slowly turning around and I'm still measuring 0 0. The balance In a newer tank starting steril just swings too wildly to mess around with in my opinion.

My acros are starting to show decent growth out of months of nothing when trying to keep nutrients at a specific number. I think I may try it again once things mature more.

I also target feed which may be why my corals are doing great regardless of the nutrient test readings.

Again I have no doubt when the tank becomes rock solid stable that I will start slowly increasing nutrient availability in the water.

That sounds like my experience. My last nutrient "event" nearly wiped out a large montipora spongodes colony. It turned totally brown and had evidence of necrosis over probably a quarter of the colony. A month of heavier than usual feeding and it almost completely bounced back and colored up. Back when I tried to correct low nutrients by dosing, it would take a few months before everything looked normal. Maybe it's because I was also fighting algae/ dinos and trying to make things look "right", which meant lots of hands in the tank and lots of messing with stuff which = instability. The last time, I just let things be ugly, fed more and the issues kid of fixed themselves. Like you mentioned, our tanks vary.

 

[sixty_reefer]

I considered that as a possibility, but remembered in the past, I had dosed sodium nitrate and trisodium phosphate but had similar results, typically after a 5-6 days of dosing. One commonality besides the nuisance algae was a gnarly case of dinos, which would make sense considering everytime this happened, I was carbon dosing.

With the exception of nutrients bottoming out that may cause dinoflagellates, I can’t see any issues with sodium nitrate and trisodium phosphates with the small exception that may raise alkalinity slightly as we discussed before. There’s other factors besides the addition of nutrients that could of being the culprits.

 

[sixty_reefer]

It's on the Continuum site. link below.

NeoNitro 5X

Thank you, not much information there and it’s not on the brightwell website just yet. I would be curious if they changed the formula due to the increase demand to raise nutrients.

 

[leon.1980]

I am currently purposely trying to keep my nutrients up with phyto as my tank is currently fallow. I dose 10 ml a night.
I am trying to adopt a all natural reef. I feel if the ocean can naturally maintain it there is something natural we can use to maintain things too. We’ll see how that goes.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I am currently purposely trying to keep my nutrients up with phyto as my tank is currently fallow. I dose 10 ml a night.
I am trying to adopt a all natural reef. I feel if the ocean can naturally maintain it there is something natural we can use to maintain things too. We’ll see how that goes.

Natural is a fine goal, but phyto is not naturally raising nutrients in the ocean, since it took those nutrients out of the ocean to grow in the first place.

Inorganic dosing is natural, since organism excretions do the same sort of recycling as phyto, and rivers, vents, and other mechanisms sends N and P into the water from the breakdown of rocks.

 

[92Miata]

is it mainly because there’s a lack of literature on the understanding of enclosed systems nutrition or mainly just a personal choice because the subject is not well understood for most.

There are two main factors IMO:

The first one is that much of reefkeeping knowledge/canon/etc is essentially misapplied freshwater fishkeeping rules. The "Cycle" is a good example of this - people worry about nitrite, and spend weeks watching their nitrite drop - because nitrite is really toxic to freshwater organisms - but it's almost completely non-toxic in saltwater because of the higher levels of chlorine ions. And yet, people keep pushing these 4 month cycles when we're pretty much done with the important part in a couple days.

The second one is that we've had drastic improvements in technology and equipment and testing over the last couple of decades, and much of reefkeeping knowledge/advice/etc hasn't caught up. The average 90 gallon tank in 2000 probably had 4 maxijets in it doing 296 gph each. Now it has a couple of wavemakers/gyres/whatever doing 3-4000 gph each.

Decent equipment is also drastically cheaper than it was two decades ago - ASM skimmers (as an example) have managed to hang around for a couple decades largely unchanged - and prices have largely been flat. A G3 used to run you about $300. They're still $300 - with two decades of inflation, they should be $600+

What this means is that it's way, way, way easier to remove waste from a modern reef tank than it was to remove it from an old reef tank. It's not only possible, but relatively easy to strip a modern reef tank to the point where you're killing corals. Back 20 years ago - it was hard to do this without systems like Zeovit. And that's not even getting into the prevalence of dry rock today, and the fact that it tends to suck up phosphate.

And the advice just hasn't caught up. I see soooo much nonsense telling people who clearly have problems in their reef tank because they're either phosphate deficient or nitrogen deficient - and people telling them that they need to scrub harder - and then they just get into this endless cycle of dinos and cyano and everything else, when a couple of mls of phosphate would have fixed the problem.

 

[92Miata]

Because...if a system is properly set up, adding additional direct supplements (such as those you mentioned, like carbon dosing or n03 or p04) should never be necessary and can often become a more precarious balancing act to maintain long-term.

There is no evidence for this statement.

 

[sixty_reefer]

There are two main factors IMO:

The first one is that much of reefkeeping knowledge/canon/etc is essentially misapplied freshwater fishkeeping rules. The "Cycle" is a good example of this - people worry about nitrite, and spend weeks watching their nitrite drop - because nitrite is really toxic to freshwater organisms - but it's almost completely non-toxic in saltwater because of the higher levels of chlorine ions. And yet, people keep pushing these 4 month cycles when we're pretty much done with the important part in a couple days.

The second one is that we've had drastic improvements in technology and equipment and testing over the last couple of decades, and much of reefkeeping knowledge/advice/etc hasn't caught up. The average 90 gallon tank in 2000 probably had 4 maxijets in it doing 296 gph each. Now it has a couple of wavemakers/gyres/whatever doing 3-4000 gph each.

Decent equipment is also drastically cheaper than it was two decades ago - ASM skimmers (as an example) have managed to hang around for a couple decades largely unchanged - and prices have largely been flat. A G3 used to run you about $300. They're still $300 - with two decades of inflation, they should be $600+

What this means is that it's way, way, way easier to remove waste from a modern reef tank than it was to remove it from an old reef tank. It's not only possible, but relatively easy to strip a modern reef tank to the point where you're killing corals. Back 20 years ago - it was hard to do this without systems like Zeovit. And that's not even getting into the prevalence of dry rock today, and the fact that it tends to suck up phosphate.

And the advice just hasn't caught up. I see soooo much nonsense telling people who clearly have problems in their reef tank because they're either phosphate deficient or nitrogen deficient - and people telling them that they need to scrub harder - and then they just get into this endless cycle of dinos and cyano and everything else, when a couple of mls of phosphate would have fixed the problem.

Very well said, I believe that in addition to what you just said on the evolution of filtration we should add that there is many more additives that contain dissolved organic carbon in comparison to a few years back.

 

[sixty_reefer]

I am currently purposely trying to keep my nutrients up with phyto as my tank is currently fallow. I dose 10 ml a night.
I am trying to adopt a all natural reef. I feel if the ocean can naturally maintain it there is something natural we can use to maintain things too. We’ll see how that goes.

Phytoplankton is very misleading in our hobby as a natural approach.

the reason why is that to cultivate phytoplankton we have to add fertilisers containing nitrates, phosphates, potassium nitrogen, phosphorus, silica, mineral and light.
In the culture the phytoplankton will utilise all the organic nitrogen and phosphorus firstly as it’s easier to assimilate and the result will be phytoplankton in a brine water with high phosphates, nitrates and silica content and some trace and potassium.

Note: f2 was initially designed to cultivate Dinoflagellates, diatoms and other types of phytoplankton it wasn’t developed to be used by aquarist to my knowledge, in addition the original f2 formula contains silica that is not useful to grow our phytoplankton species it’s only there as it’s a limiting factor for diatoms cultivation.

Every time a aquarist adds live phytoplankton it will also be adding those nutrients from the culture brine water into the system. This is the reason some folks see the nutrients raising or just staying the same depending on the residual in the brine water.

Phytoplankton itself will lower nutrients in 3 ways. Firstly by assimilation nutrients wile alive in the system, secondly by decomposition as it will release carbon nitrogen and phosphorus into the water column, as we know the carbon composition in phytoplankton is greater than N and P hence lowering nutrients by feeding heterotrophic bacteria. Thirdly by the digestive system of heterotrophic consumers (ex. Copepods) .

the only way to skip the pollutants to my knowledge is by centrifugate the live culture or by using freeze dried phytoplankton.

phytoplankton effects on nutrients in a enclosed system could be compared to some existing methods like NP bacto-balance that adds dissolved organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus to a system just less pollutants.

 

[DavidinGA]

There is no evidence for this statement.

You can literally read online forums from 10+ years ago where reefers kept systems and did not dose additives and had great success.

 

[DavidinGA]

There is no evidence for this statement.

And please explain to me your counter statement that defines why they should be necessary.

 

[Dburr1014]

You can literally read online forums from 10+ years ago where reefers kept systems and did not dose additives and had great success.

True. But, in the advancement of reef keeping, more people now are having way more success.

 

[DavidinGA]

True. But, in the advancement of reef keeping, more people now are having way more success.

Sure, but the other guy flat-out said "there is no evidence for this statement" which is simply not true.

I personally have had systems in the past that absolutely flourished and did not require dosing carbon or no3 or po4 dosing, etc. His post basically says he doesn't believe that is possible; which is obviously an idiotic statement.

 

[Dburr1014]

Sure, but the other guy flat-out said "there is no evidence for this statement" which is simply not true.

I personally have had systems in the past that absolutely flourished and did not require dosing carbon or no3 or po4 dosing, etc. His post basically says he doesn't believe that is possible; which is obviously an idiotic statement.

Lots of variables here. I dose no3 because if I don't it will go to zero in a week. Po4 is steady at 0.08 all the time.
Every tank is different and I think the purpose of this thread was in his to correct problems in a easy way. And why people are afraid to dose when in fact they may be dosing and not know it.

 

[Tamberav]

I have dosed no3 and po4 before. Seems cleaner than heavy feeding. I feed what the fish need to be healthy.

I figure people just feed more because they have food on hand and don’t have the supplements so they figure they don’t have to buy them and figure out dosing? Math is hard?

Don’t know but LRS isn’t cheap to be wasting

 

[Thales]

True. But, in the advancement of reef keeping, more people now are having way more success.

There is no compelling evidence for this statement.

Anecdotally, the same percentage of folks are still having problems as they were 10 and 20 years ago.

it is amazing to watch the wheels spin round and round over the years.

 

[hart24601]

I started dosing nitrate in 2012 or 2013 and it wasn’t unheard of at that time if coloration was pale. So people have been doing it quite a while.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

Sure, but the other guy flat-out said "there is no evidence for this statement" which is simply not true.

I personally have had systems in the past that absolutely flourished and did not require dosing carbon or no3 or po4 dosing, etc. His post basically says he doesn't believe that is possible; which is obviously an idiotic statement.

You didn't feed the tank?