Anyone carbon dosing with low nitrates and stubborn po4?
- Thread starter robthorn
- Start date
My tank is still pretty new and my phosphates were stuck at about .05. I have been dosing a mix of biofuel and Zeostart since the beginning. It is automatic at 1ml per day. I had upped it to 2ml per day without any change in po4. I had seen some people dosing nitrate to try and get color back. I was talking to Sam / bmullikin And he said he was using potassium nitrate so trusting him I ordered it. Sam is a good guy and I know he does well with his tank.
I mixed 1gram per 10ml of ro/di and added 5ml of this sulution 2 days in a row. Took a day off and dosed 5 ml more and stopped. Waited a couple days and then tested. It went from .05 to .00 on my hanna checker in 1 week. I Tested twice back to back to make sure I didn't screw up the test. I tested again yesterday and still .00.
I mixed 1gram per 10ml of ro/di and added 5ml of this sulution 2 days in a row. Took a day off and dosed 5 ml more and stopped. Waited a couple days and then tested. It went from .05 to .00 on my hanna checker in 1 week. I Tested twice back to back to make sure I didn't screw up the test. I tested again yesterday and still .00.
BlueCoast
New member
On a similar mission my self. I recently purchased some KNO3 and have seen good results so far. I have always had a problem with 0 nitrates, despite dropping food in the tank like it was going out of style. I think the water was a little too clean, all corals slowly lost color, lps wasn't growing very quickly.
I have been bolus dosing .6 grams of KNO3 dissolved in tank water in about 70 gal of system volume daily and after a 10 days my nitrates are still undetectable, but corals that have had no color for months have tips that are glowing now. I have not tested potassium which I've read can anecdotally be associated with coloration. So far I believe the nitrate is more important and have seen good results with no apparent downside yet.
I read to start slow and ramp up as it can take a few days for the tank to start registering Nitrates.
On a very strange side note, since dosing nitrate, it looks like some of my algae is receding.... I'm stumped on that one, but will take the results any day.
I have been bolus dosing .6 grams of KNO3 dissolved in tank water in about 70 gal of system volume daily and after a 10 days my nitrates are still undetectable, but corals that have had no color for months have tips that are glowing now. I have not tested potassium which I've read can anecdotally be associated with coloration. So far I believe the nitrate is more important and have seen good results with no apparent downside yet.
I read to start slow and ramp up as it can take a few days for the tank to start registering Nitrates.
On a very strange side note, since dosing nitrate, it looks like some of my algae is receding.... I'm stumped on that one, but will take the results any day.
