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N and P dosing

ofzakaria

ofzakaria

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anyone care to share some experimce with dosing N and P products?
Am venturing in to this but want to learn from others first to know what to watch out for.
I know @Rostato and @max_nano did some dosing.
Care to share with us your experience, your dosing and lesson learned?

Thank you!
 
I’ve been dosing N for the last few months and the results have been awesome. My coral growth took off and the colors got better. Algae started growing more often. I used to clean my glass every couple of weeks. Now I clean it every 2-3 days. Didn’t need to dose P since it was in a good range.
 
bfirecat said:
I’ve been dosing N for the last few months and the results have been awesome. My coral growth took off and the colors got better. Algae started growing more often. I used to clean my glass every couple of weeks. Now I clean it every 2-3 days. Didn’t need to dose P since it was in a good range.
Click to expand...
Can you expand a bit more
What product you use?
Why you started using it?
Whats your doing regime?
How do you adjust dosing?
How did you measure success?
How long you dosing?
 
Of course.

I use Brightwell’s NeoNitro because I was too lazy to make a DIY solution.

I started using it because my N zero’d out after I had to remove all my fish from the display due to velvet. Feeding the tank some pellets wasn’t add enough and I started noticing duller color and coral growth greatly stall.

I adjust dosing by checking with a Hanna checking using Red Sea No3 tests. It makes it super easy to tell.

I measure success by coral growth and color. I knew algae would happen, but I think that’s a fair tradeoff.

I started dosing probably 5ish months ago, and even with fish back in the tank, I still dose ~5-10 ml every couple of days. I also dose AB+ and Reef Roids to increase nutrients as well.
 
bfirecat said:
Of course.

I use Brightwell’s NeoNitro because I was too lazy to make a DIY solution.

I started using it because my N zero’d out after I had to remove all my fish from the display due to velvet. Feeding the tank some pellets wasn’t add enough and I started noticing duller color and coral growth greatly stall.

I adjust dosing by checking with a Hanna checking using Red Sea No3 tests. It makes it super easy to tell.

I measure success by coral growth and color. I knew algae would happen, but I think that’s a fair tradeoff.

I started dosing probably 5ish months ago, and even with fish back in the tank, I still dose ~5-10 ml every couple of days. I also dose AB+ and Reef Roids to increase nutrients as well.
Click to expand...
Thank you for sharing. Did you shoot for spesific ratio or values if po4 snd no3?
Am assuming only your no3 was the problem?
What was the po4 before dosing snd did u observe any change of the po4 after dosing?
 
I don’t shoot for a specific ratio, but just the recommended ranges.

I shoot for 5-10 nitrate and .03-.08 phosphate. If I see nitrate up too high, I stop dosing for a few days and recheck. If phosphate is too high, I add a small media bag of Seachem Phosguard because it’s super easy. I retest after a few days and pull it out when it’s in the .03-.08 range.
 
bfirecat said:
I don’t shoot for a specific ratio, but just the recommended ranges.

I shoot for 5-10 nitrate and .03-.08 phosphate. If I see nitrate up too high, I stop dosing for a few days and recheck. If phosphate is too high, I add a small media bag of Seachem Phosguard because it’s super easy. I retest after a few days and pull it out when it’s in the .03-.08 range.
Click to expand...
This is awesome info. Thanks for sharing
 
ofzakaria said:
Can you expand a bit more
What product you use?
Why you started using it?
Whats your doing regime?
How do you adjust dosing?
How did you measure success?
How long you dosing?
Click to expand...
NeoNitro, but thinking of switching to food grade potassium nitrate (because it's cheaper)
I started using it since I almost zero'd out my nitrates and wanted to barely dose nitrates through out the day to keep that from happening again
I auto-dose 20ml per day (1.5ml 12x/day into my 800(ish) gal system)
I test nitrates 2-3x per week and adjust dosing as necessary (using same system as above-Red Sea test with Hanna ULR Phos checker)
Success = haven't hit zero again yet, although I have got close a few times
I've been dosing nitrates for around 6 months now, haven't noticed it affecting the Phosphate levels at all

Target Goal is 2-8 for Nitrates/.02-.08 for Phosphates. Not worried about ratio so long as it's in those parameters, although I do worry about ratio when I've been above them.
 
I do— I use sodium nitrate - 13 grams in 500ml of rodi. This yields .6ppm per 5ml, which I dose 4x per day. N03 In tank is usually .5 to 1.5 ppm

I tried to make my own phosphate but could never get it right, so I use neophos. I dose 2ml, 2x daily. this gets me to .01 up to 4 hours after dosing. I am going to try to see if another 2ml will keep a steady reading, as any test after 5 hours of last dose gives a 0 reading on Hanna.

I get a shadow of cyanno and I know my phos has bottomed out - that’s my main indication. otherwise, I have seen much better colors and with consistent N03 dosing, better encrusting
 
Too early to say for me with such a new tank, but I do believe it helped with the dinos which is what made me realize my nitrates were 0. I’m using sodium nitrate powder mixed with rodi
 
I've only been using it for a limited time but the results have been outstanding! When I rebooted a tank a couple months ago I had the weirdest initial cycle. For 3 months there was no algae (nuisance or coraline), no detectable nutrients, despite having a 4 fish in a 50 gallon aquarium and moderate feeding. Nitrates and phosphates were always bottomed out at zero and corals were looking quite pale. Within 2 weeks or dosing, color saturation drastically improved in all my lps and sps frags. This also seemed to kick start the cycle that never happened.

I purchased the raw KNO3 and KH2PO4 from here. Dirt cheap and lab grade
greenleafaquariums.com

Reef Tank Fertilizer Package (KNO3 & KH2PO4) - Bags

Shop Reef Tank Fertilizer Package (KNO3 & KH2PO4) (Bags) for fertilizing your aquarium plants. Brand: Green Leaf Aquariums (GLA). Orders ship fast worldwide and get free shipping on orders $125.
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I premixed solutions into jars then started dosing daily with a pipette according to this calculator until I hit ~3ppm nitrate and .03 phosphate
 
CAUTION...I have only been doing this for like a month, and stopped because I had a hair algae outbreak on all my frags (where the tangs couldn't get to)

What product you use?
I used Stump Remover (potassium Nitrate) per Randy Holmes Farley's recipe, except I doubled the dose because my scale was being finicky.

Why you started using it?
Very near zero nitrates constantly, and most "high end" SPS colors would fade over time and not grow too fast, or have polyp extension. I was also suffering from a high Po4, and was hoiping the nitrate dosing would reduce the Po4 a bit.

Whats your doing regime?
I dosed 1oz of my double dose every day for a few days, and got my ntirates from .02 to 2.5ppm. I then figured out that my tank would consume 1.5ppm of nitrate per day from observation and testing. I essentially try ot keep the nitrates above 1ppm now.

How do you adjust dosing?
Start small and test often. The big thing is to test 30 minutes after the dose to see how much your nitrates actually increased. Then test 24 hours later to see how much the tank consumes. Adjust your dosing this way.

How did you measure success?
I think i have much more polyp extension and more color showing in the corals. Honestly, the SPS have never looked better, but the hair algae made it impossible for me to sell frags.

How long you dosing?
Only 1 month, and I have stopped to get the algae under control. I realized that I only had like 5 snails alive in my tank. I added 30 more trochus snails to hopefully get things back under control. Once I do, I plan to dose again.

My last ICP test looked "normal" for my tank and was taken 2 weeks after nitrate dosing.
 
Looks like I might have to get on this bandwagon...

Got around to testing my nitrates yesterday (will do phosphates today) and was surprised my nitrates read 0, granted I am using the API kit...

I figured with how well my LPS and shrooms have been doing and so much growth across my SPS that I've be good. But now thinking about it, that might be the problem. I haven't change the inputs into my system despite my tank getting literally more mouths to feed. (I don't feed coral food, only fish typically).

Now thinking this is probably one other contribution to my corals browning and STN/RTN issues. Basically the system hitting the wall and trying to reestablish equilibrium... Coincidentally, i had my skimmer turned off for awhile, and twice when I either restart or clean and adjust it to skim foam, i would experience sps issues...
 
Also to add, I did get a ton more algae including the dreaded hair but that slowly went away as my tank matured and more cuc added. But hey, what's good for nuisance algae is good for coral zooxanthellae so it's a trade off. The levels have stabilized as the tank matured (only 6 months total) so I don't dose as frequent, but I do used zoanthids as a 'canary in a coal mine' to tell me when it's needed since they're the first to show color fading on their tentacles.
 
NanoCrazed said:
Now thinking this is probably one other contribution to my corals browning and STN/RTN issues. Basically the system hitting the wall and trying to reestablish equilibrium... Coincidentally, i had my skimmer turned off for awhile, and twice when I either restart or clean and adjust it to skim foam, i would experience sps issues...
Click to expand...
Do you test PH. Low PH was the issue causing my RTN/STN a while ago. Might be worth buying a cheap PH pen to just check every once in a while, really is the easiest thing to test.
 
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