Dosing Nitrate to reduce Phosphate

Moser. "Likely" AA Concentrate, Bio-Mate, Coral Vitalizer, LPS AA, etc. contain at least trace amounts of NO3s

Being that they are proprietary blends of liquid organics/elements/etc, it would not be professional courtesy, to Proprietor Thomas Pohl, to announce publically any ingredients/information obtained via pers. comm.

However, one can deduce, as I have done above in response to your question, what the individual ZEO*vit products generally contain
 
swcc said:
When bacteria process waste through ammonia and nitrite more nitrate is released than phosphate over the redfield ratio
Click to expand...

Why? Please provide some information on this. I like to read and learn, that is why i am here. I am aware of that redfeild ratios are highly dynamic, but they do provide us with some general guidance. Why is it just one way offset in our tanks? And there is no sarcasm in this, i assure you.

Also, it is my understanding that our systems are more capable of processing/exporting No3 then Po4 so end result might/can/will sometimes anyway end up as TS.

I personally, and my closest reefers, and also the general feeling i get on our swedish forums is that carbon dosing is a P export mechanism primarily.

:beer:
 
Moser said:
I think Dosing nitrate has been done before and many may be doing it without knowing......

Anybody thought about which Zeo products could contain some nitrate in order to drop the phosphate levels?. ;)

Mo
Click to expand...

Zeostart3 test positive for Nitrates. According to a post on another forum that talks about Nitrate dosing.

And i agree, many may be doing it without knowing.
 
coralreefdoc said:
Moser. "Likely" AA Concentrate, Bio-Mate, Coral Vitalizer, LPS AA, etc. contain at least trace amounts of NO3s

Being that they are proprietary blends of liquid organics/elements/etc, it would not be professional courtesy, to Proprietor Thomas Pohl, to announce publically any ingredients/information obtained via pers. comm.

However, one can deduce, as I have done above in response to your question, what the individual ZEO*vit products generally contain
Click to expand...

Bio mate is a bacterial source.
Are you saying that Thomas Pohl has divulged ingredients to you??....

Mo
 
ormet said:
Why? Please provide some information on this. I like to read and learn, that is why i am here. I am aware of that redfeild ratios are highly dynamic, but they do provide us with some general guidance. Why is it just one way offset in our tanks? And there is no sarcasm in this, i assure you.

Also, it is my understanding that our systems are more capable of processing/exporting No3 then Po4 so end result might/can/will sometimes anyway end up as TS.

I personally, and my closest reefers, and also the general feeling i get on our swedish forums is that carbon dosing is a P export mechanism primarily.

:beer:
Click to expand...
Why... the bacteria responsible for reduction of ammonia and nitrite utilize phosphate. I said this before on page 1. Add carbon dosing in for the increased nitrate reduction and the bacterial processes also utilize the phosphate... it is a balancing act.
The reason many are battling PO4 in the water is either filtration overload and/or a rushed tank cycle and setup...

rushed setup... the tank never cycles properly and the aquarist is constantly in a battle with PO4 and algae... One thing Eric Borneman did great for reefing is explaining in detail the cycling process for setting up a tank. He called those with rushed setups... folks that end up "married to GFO"...LOL

filtration overload... in a quest to make nitrate go away, PO4 is left behind as bacterial counts are so much lower in the tank... this comes from people running strong efficient skimmers, adsorption material and macro algae and chasing ever particle of detritus they can. if the water is clean of DOC there is less waste to promote bacterial growth...so.. PO4 that is not skimmable is in the water and not utilized. Heck a tank that is kept super clean can get a rise in PO4 simply from their skimmer pulling in dust particles from the air(dust is mostly skin cells and of course you have phosphate)...that is just too clean IMO.

Yes it is important to keep the tank relatively clean...it is important to keep it skimmed/filtered as well, but there is a balance that one should be trying to achieve between leaving the tank alone to do it's thing and interaction through husbandry...
One should not be looking to add nutrients to deplete other nutrients...that is chasing your tail...one should be looking at balancing the tank out so it exists with as little input from the aquarist as possible.

My favorite response from folks is when they say the best thing they ever did for their tanks is to just "leave it alone".
 
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Tested my phosphates about a week ago. They have been around .08 normally, tough for me to bring down (hanna checker). My nitrates have never been detectable and I always felt this was a problem. I epoxied a bunch of frags, my skimmer freaked out so I had to leave it off for a few days.

After this incident, my nitrates tested 1ppm since the skimmer was not operational. More interesting though, my phosphates tested 0.00. Tested again, 0.00. I had not gotten around to changing my GFO since the previous test of .08. So I do believe that raising nitrate will help lower phosphate in a nitrate deprived system. I run a refugium and the chaeto hasn't been growing, but now it is bright green and has grown due to this happening. At least my take on it! I definately feel that nitrate is needed in small amounts.
 
swcc, i thank you for the discussion but i think we will have to agree to disagree. Borneman and cycling voodoo will only get my blood pressure to rise.

i will leave this thread with a qoute from some one that is far better then me to explain the only thing i really wanted to tro to share:

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Bear in mind that carbon dosing can use a lot more N than P, even by Redfield sorts of ratios, because of nitrate potentially being converted into N2 in low O2 areas like sand beds or in live rock. That process is driven by metabolism of organic matter in low O2 areas, so is potentially greatly enhanced by organic carbon dosing..

By that means, one can essentially eliminate nitrate will still having substantial P, and that, IMO, is why many folks find it desirable to use other methods at the same time, like GFO or growing macroalgae.

Alternatively, some folks find it desirable to dose nitrate under the scenario, along for more bacterial growth than the carbon dosing alone promotes, and that allows P to also be consumed. :)
Click to expand...

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=19662867
 
Ormet. For reasons unbeknownst to me, you seem to be stuck on rationalizing the validity of NO3 dosing ... I for one never contested that ... In fact, if you recall, it was KNO3 which was recommended/preferred by myself for that specific purpose.

Blindly suggesting that someone who is carbon dosing should be dosing NO3/NaNO3/KNO3 is where I adamantly disagree(d) with you, for all the aforementioned reasons among others, just to be perfectly clear ...

As for the parrot comment, you brought that upon yourself. Hope you fully understand why and will prove me wrong in stating that at some point during the proceedings ...
 
ormet said:
swcc, i thank you for the discussion but i think we will have to agree to disagree. Borneman and cycling voodoo will only get my blood pressure to rise.

i will leave this thread with a qoute from some one that is far better then me to explain the only thing i really wanted to tro to share:



http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=19662867
Click to expand...

No voodoo.. specific to borneman(and only this element is what I agree with really) is he thinks correctly about live rock...in that even though ammonia and nitrite are reading zero that does not mean the rock is clean and not bound with nutrients or loaded with dieoff still...just like an established tank that is not producing ammonia and nitrate with detritus in it...so, high detritus in the rock and the increased bioload you have much more bacterial activity than what is needed and through these processes the bacteria are utilizing bound up phosphate in the rock and releasing vs needing what is introduced via feeding ones fish and coral...so this is what leads to the Po4 accumulation in the water column. This is in fact the main problem with most everyone that runs a tank.. too much poop for a pet(be it substrate or rock or both) and they overdo the nitrate reduction and leave Phosphate behind.


Also...note in Randy's quote low oxygen areas of live rock and sand bed...my recommendation of leaving a sock in your tank a little longer as well as possibly not removing as much detritus from the surface of live rock or in any settling areas is also a easy way to combat that effect...as the bacteria are functioning in an area of high oxygen and bacteria form their own conditions.

That link says what I was saying...redfield ratio cannot be applied to the nutrients in the water column.
 
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It is threads like this that keep me coming back to reef central. Extremely informative and very interesting.
Also, the.. um, relative civility of the mud slinging in this thread was not lost on me!
I'm assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that most people who have achieved undectable N in their systems are using a carbon additive, whether its pellets or vodka or vinegar etc.
Couldn't one simply reduce the input of the carbon source to the point that N becomes detectable, use a good dose of gfo to pull down P, thus creating a new balance between N and P and then allow the bacteria to do the rest?
Im somewhat embarrased to say the concept of having the proper balance between n and p is new to me, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.. Or if this is painfully obvious..
 
reefmutt said:
It is threads like this that keep me coming back to reef central. Extremely informative and very interesting.
Also, the.. um, relative civility of the mud slinging in this thread was not lost on me!
I'm assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that most people who have achieved undectable N in their systems are using a carbon additive, whether its pellets or vodka or vinegar etc.
Couldn't one simply reduce the input of the carbon source to the point that N becomes detectable, use a good dose of gfo to pull down P, thus creating a new balance between N and P and then allow the bacteria to do the rest?
Im somewhat embarrased to say the concept of having the proper balance between n and p is new to me, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.. Or if this is painfully obvious..
Click to expand...

Balance export to import and nitrate and PO4 will be undetectable in the water column without any adding of carbon source/gfo/ macro algae. People do all sorts of things to balance their tank. Purest form is to export via skimmer and keep detritus under control with flow and a siphon... If the poop ain't there it cannot drive bacterial processes to release nitrate and Po4 into the water. There are probably lots of folks dosing running pellets etc and really all they may need to do is run less flow through their sump to give their skimmer more dwell time...or run a larger skimmer...or suck out more detritus. What your saying may work for someone on some level.
 
Done it before with NaNO3 added at 1 ppm per day along with ethanol dosing in an NPS tank. It is quite effective to lower PO4 concentration to undetectable.

Maybe it's just me, but setting up a bioball tower or rinsing out filter socks seems far less easy than just adding a couple drops of nitrate every day. GFO is nice of course but dosing nitrate can enhance PO4 removal.
 
jazzman7838 said:
Done it before with NaNO3 added at 1 ppm per day along with ethanol dosing in an NPS tank. It is quite effective to lower PO4 concentration to undetectable.

Maybe it's just me, but setting up a bioball tower or rinsing out filter socks seems far less easy than just adding a couple drops of nitrate every day. GFO is nice of course but dosing nitrate can enhance PO4 removal.
Click to expand...

Again, nobody is arguing the validity of NO3/NaNo3/KNO3 dosing in order to more efficiently reduce PO4 concentrations in a bacterioplankton system ... There are simply less aggressive forms of producing similar results, with undoubtedly less risk to the organisms fostered by the average ReefKeeper!

Note, that "argument" was originally brought up before knowledge/awareness of this topic being located in the Advanced Topics forum, theres no need for it to be continued ...
 
coralreefdoc said:
Again, nobody is arguing the validity of NO3/NaNo3/KNO3 dosing in order to more efficiently reduce PO4 concentrations in a bacterioplankton system ... There are simply less aggressive forms of producing similar results, with undoubtedly less risk to the organisms fostered by the average ReefKeeper!
Click to expand...

Aggressive? That makes it sound scary when it really isn't.

I disagree that there is much risk for an above average reef keeper (hopefully, the readers of this forum) in adding a small amount of nitrate daily and carefully monitoring the concentration. This isn't rocket science--you add, you test. Kalkwasser can be risky in the wrong hands, too. It is certainly not more of a risk than your initial suggestion to add more fish and feed more!
 
You are correct in your viewpoint of this being the Advanced Topics, however, I noticed you are a new(er) member here ... You'd be surprised at the amount/frequency of those same ReefKeepers starting threads with a general topic along the lines of "Help! I started a 2part supplement dosing and now my salinity is 1.030!" or "Why are my corals dying, I only added 25ml of Vodka one time, everyone else is dosing about that for their systems daily ?!?"

We should be cognizant of the fact that many ReefKeepers believe they are at a higher level of experience/understanding than they actually are ... Even though this is the Advanced Topics forum, there are still ReefKeepers who frequent this forum who arguably should not be implementing some of the strategies/techniques etc found here !

Unfortunately, the negative consequences of those actions befall directly upon the organisms kept by that person ... As the presenters of this information WE ALL need to hold ourselves more accountable/take some responsibility for the possible negative consequences/reactions of said information/techniques/strategies/chemical compounds/ etc ! We can do this in many ways, from including/initially suggesting less aggressive alternatives to presenting as much detailed information on the correct implementation/negative reactions as possible, in order to help insure our fellow members/ReefKeepers are providing the best environment possible for these organisms !

If you still disagree with that than I seriously question your motive(s) for being a ReefKeeper/fellow member ...
 
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