Cali Kid Corals

Nitrate and Phosphate

I’m pretty much always on board with adding more bacteria but I don’t know if it makes sense the way you’re describing it. The vast majority of nitrifying bacteria is not floating in the water column. They’re on the hard surfaces. If the amount of bacteria you’re adding from the botttle is enough to do more than what you have built up in your tank then you’ve probably got bigger problems.

I would like to admit that you’ve got arguably one of the best tanks in the club though so whatever you’re doing is working.


Not No2, N2. Nitrogen gas. I’ve read this too but iirc it takes place very slowly and in places where you have anaerobic bacteria growing

Have you guys seen this thread on reef2reef? https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/poor-man-nutrients-control-donovans-nitrate-destroyer.302685/

It’s where they built a place for anaerobic bacteria to thrive by dosing vodka.


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Update.

Nitrates have been consistently at or near 25 ppm for over 7 weeks. I upgraded to an AI Prime Fuge 2 weeks ago and also added Chateo.

Still have Diatoms, but no other signs of algae. Rocks are mostly brown.
 
There has been some good advice on this thread, but it has gotten pretty confused with people talking about different things without making it clear that they were different.

You mentioned NO3 around 25 ppm stably. That number is maybe still high, but hard to interpret without the phosphate readings, have you been measuring PO4 as well?

Reducing NO3 and PO4 together biologically will reduce in approximately the Redfield ratio. After accounting for the differential molecular weights of the 2, the reduction is approximately 10:1 NO3 : PO4. So if your NO3 is 25 ppm and PO4 is 0.1 ppm, and you are using biological export (like chaeto or bacteria/carbon dosing), then using up all of your existing PO4 will only reduce your NO3 by about 1, to 24 ppm. If your PO4 is 1 ppm and you used it all up, it would get your NO3 down to about 15 ppm. Of course these nutrients are always being produced and consumed continuously by many processes, I‘m just giving a simple example to try to demonstrate the point that they are linked.

Anaerobic bacterial denitrification (NO3 → N2) is a completely different process, has nothing to do with nitrifying bacteria that we need to break down ammonia and nitrite, and it requires anaerobic zones which most people don’t intentionally do anymore. It was popular years ago with deep sand beds, mud refugium, and intentional zero-flow zones like deep in MarinePure blocks. There are serious downsides to this approach, including the potential to poison your tank and knock NO3/PO4 out of balance, by getting rid of NO3 but not PO4.

Almost all reef aquaria are organic carbon-limited. That’s why adding carbon by carbon dosing causes a bacterial population to grow quickly, using up the carbon you are adding plus the NO3 and PO4 (organic carbon is the third and largest part of the Redfield ratio). The bacteria are then skimmed out, in additional to being eaten by coral and microfauna. In general it’s safe because the bacteria that grow quickly and use up the nutrients are generally benign in an established system. However, in a system that is new/unstable, or in the middle of an outbreak of something that can grow quickly like cyano, it can cause a nuisance population to grow faster with bad consequences. This is the main reason why you hear a lot of reefers say it works great, and a vocal unhappy minority say it was the worst thing they ever did.

I use chaeto with a strong light (H380) and large refugium, oversized skimmer, and occasional short term use of NOPOX only as needed. My target levels are approx NO3 1 ppm and PO4 0.1 ppm, but I don’t get too crazy about it, and I don’t check very often. This works well for me, and I absolutely would endorse occasional use of NOPOX following the conservative instructions (not overdosing) once your tank is stable. Like everyone has said (including you lol), rapid changes even in the right direction are worse than slow changes.
 
Thanks for the thorough explanation. Phosphate has been 0.1 for the same period of time.

I’d like to bring both of them down a bit using NOPOX temporarily (and very carefully) to see whether they stay there after that reduction. That was the gist of my original post.

I’ve also been cleaning filter socks and other nitrate traps more frequently. And I’ve been feeding a tiny bit less.
 
Thanks for the thorough explanation. Phosphate has been 0.1 for the same period of time.

I’d like to bring both of them down a bit using NOPOX temporarily (and very carefully) to see whether they stay there after that reduction. That was the gist of my original post.

I’ve also been cleaning filter socks and other nitrate traps more frequently. And I’ve been feeding a tiny bit less.
Allow me make a prediction for you.
When you use nopox, you will start fighting with cyano.
 
Not OP, but why is this your prediction?
Just a prediction. I seen reefers (myself included in the past) using products like nopox or vodka to quickly reduce nutrients only to fight cyano later. As john said, if done correctly, slowly and mindfully(test no3 and po4 often when dosing) it can be done, thu I still think this is a bandaid method.
I hope it will not be the case here and he will be able to achieve the balance he is looking for.
 
Since everything in the tank seems to be thriving (aside from Duncans that won’t open) I’m going to leave things alone. Chaeto is growing well and I don’t have any algae issues.
 
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