Bacterial bloom after dosing nitrates?

[eutimio]

Happened on 2 occasions, last night and tonight as well.
Last night I dosed 5ml Seachem flourish nitrogen and after about 20 min cloudy water all of a sudden.
Tonight mixed up a DIY solution of reagent grade sodium nitrate.
Increased NO3 by 4ppm. Same bloom like last night that clears up in 15-20 min.
I want to know if this is normal?

 

[eutimio]

I should mention I do have dinoflagellates that started a week ago for the second time because of 0 nitrate and phosphate....Dinos seem to have stopped growing since nitrate dosing. Nitrates used to be at 0.
Possible the bloom to be related to the dinoflagellates?

 

[bertoni]

That seems a bit odd to me. In theory, bacteria can take up nitrate, but that seems fairly sudden. Maybe there's a chemical reaction involved. I'd have to think about that.

 

[eutimio]

Thank you Jonathan, I read about blooms with vodka dosing but nothing about them when dosing NO3.
Weird indeed. If it adds anything, the bloom happened about the same time my refugium light came on. I don’t see how that can be related but that was just my observation...

 

[Daddi0]

I would say it happened too rapidly to be a bacterial bloom. I dose vinegar and have had a lot of bacteria at times but not really fast and to the point they clouded the water.
Cheers! Mark

 

[Daddi0]

Out of curiosity, have you checked your phosphates?

 

[eutimio]

Hey Mark, could be a chemical reaction then like Jonathan mentioned.
My phosphates are 0 as of right now with the low resolution professional ELOS test.
I can barely get it detectable at 0.0018 by dosing half a ml/day but then the crazy amount of hair algae in my sump as well as big chaeto ball sucks it right up. I can’t think of anything else .
Maybe I should dose more phosphate? I want to get it to at least 0.03. I’ll probably try dosing more...

 

[Daddi0]

It seems if you google the issue that you are having, others have experienced the same cloudiness after dosing that product.

 

[eutimio]

Hey Mark, which product? I have used both, the Seachem flourish nitrogen derived from potassium nitrate and urea and a DIY pure sodium nitrate mix , both resulting in cloudiness; not right away...but showing itself after 20 min after dosing and disappearing again pretty fast in about 20-30 minutes.
I honestly can’t find similar experiences by googling it...

 

[Daddi0]

https://www.google.com/search?clien...ter+adding+sea+chem+florish&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

 

[eutimio]

Thanks but that is not the same product. Flourish has different ingredients in it.
I was dosing flourish nitrogen.
The fact that the cloudiness is reproducible with the sodium nitrate mix worries me.

 

[bertoni]

I am not sure what is happening, but maybe someone who is having the problem has a microscope?

 

[eutimio]

Jonathan, I think I figured out what triggers the cloudiness.
Today I dosed nitrates during the day to see if I’m getting water cloudiness and I didn’t.
However, when refugium light turned on , after about 15 min, the bloom appeared.
This matches the previous 2 times when I got the water cloudiness because I dosed nitrates about the time when my refugium light came on.
Is this a dinoflagellate bloom of some sort? I have dinos in my sump.
I’m going to try to scrape the sump clean, throw the chaeto out and do a water change along with a 3-4 day blackout.

 

[bertoni]

Dinoflagellates are one possibility. I guess it's some sort of photosynthetic microbe, then. I am surprised that the cloud can show up so quickly. Maybe the opacity of the organisms is changing rapidly, or some similar effect is the cause.