Amino acids

[nathanemmerich]

I have a four month old tank running low nutrients, 180gallon, 6bulb t5, only water quality of note is 0.02ppm phosphate. I have had large success with lps and issues with softies. I started feeding reef roids and saw a little success with improving the softies but the were still small and some bleached. A local reefer recommended amino acids and wow! I mix that with reef roids and the feeding response and improvement in polyp size and color is noticeable in three days. If your softies with struggling I would not pass over amino acids as snake oil. I had some zoas that were doing well and some struggling, now they all look good. The bleached palys are coloring back up.

 

[Timfish]

Yeah, amino acids are a great source of organic nitrogen especially if the fish load is low and there's not enough urea and ammonia produced by the fish to feed the corals. Depending how pure they are you may also be dosing phosphates as well (FYI average PO4 on reefs is .13 mg/l). Keep in mind the ratio of nitrogen to phosphate is very important and not having enough phosphate can also lead to bleaching. Here's a couple links to get a better idea on the role of PO4 in corals:
http://jeb.biologists.org/content/214/16/2749.full
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/407927/

 

[Tripod1404]

Keep in mind amino acid dosing can actually lower nitrate by acting like a type of carbon dosing.

 

[mikenh77]

Keep in mind amino acid dosing can actually lower nitrate by acting like a type of carbon dosing.

I had no idea, so with my nitrates and phosphates consistently at 0, I should not use aminos?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

[Tripod1404]

I had no idea, so with my nitrates and phosphates consistently at 0, I should not use aminos?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

You can use aminos, just keep in mind it will not raise nitrates that much. Using nitrate additives might be a better option. But if you have 0 phosphates, do it carefully. Undetectable PO4 combined with higher NO3 can cause bleaching. I would first raise P04 to detectable levels.

 

[jda]

You can feed the fish more and do the same thing, IMO. The benefit that you are seeing is most likely from the back-end of the N cycle.

Unless you are driving N and P low with GFO, Organic Carbon or the like, there is no issue with N and P being at those levels. Mine run about .005-.01P and .1N and everything thrives and thrives.

 

[nathanemmerich]

Sure feeding more might help in the long run. My point was that I have been struggling with softies for four months now. I tried reef roids and excess fish feeding but saw an immediate improvement with amino acids. Since my tank has been cycled I have never seen nitrates and always has 0.02-0.03ppm phosphate.