Dosing Nitrate to reduce Phosphate

yup....keeping a tank up for 40 years...way more advance than tanks teetering on the edge of crash and burn.
I will keep on using methods that work best.

I'm sorry, but there is nothing in that tank I want to emulate. It looks like a eutrophic mess with algae problems and very little coral growth. It is an accomplishment to keep a tank going continuously for 40 years, but I wouldn't call it advanced.
 
I'm sorry, but there is nothing in that tank I want to emulate. It looks like a eutrophic mess with algae problems and very little coral growth. It is an accomplishment to keep a tank going continuously for 40 years, but I wouldn't call it advanced.
I suggest you read up on his methodologies... his thinking is advanced through practice and doing what works to sustain the tank he wants. No one else can claim the sustainability of their tank round here over that long of a time frame... so really who is more advanced the reefer that uses the latest gadget and hot topic products and crashes his tank in five years or so.... or the one who uses his brain and works seamlessly with his aquarium and keeps it up for fourty years and still going strong. dive some reefs somday... his tank is very much in tune with a natural environment.
 
I suggest you read up on his methodologies... his thinking is advanced through practice and doing what works to sustain the tank he wants. No one else can claim the sustainability of their tank round here over that long of a time frame... so really who is more advanced the reefer that uses the latest gadget and hot topic products and crashes his tank in five years or so.... or the one who uses his brain and works seamlessly with his aquarium and keeps it up for fourty years and still going strong. dive some reefs somday... his tank is very much in tune with a natural environment.

I've been diving all over the world on *healthy* coral reefs and none of them look like that. Where are all the large 40 (or 20 or 10) year old corals? I don't see any in that tank. I see a lot of rock, and sand, some Caribbean gorgonians that are collectable size, and some frags of Caulastrea that look like they're less than a year old. A Caulastrea even just 5 years old should be the size of a volleyball in good conditions. :confused:
 
I've been diving all over the world on *healthy* coral reefs and none of them look like that. Where are all the large 40 (or 20 or 10) year old corals? I don't see any in that tank. I see a lot of rock, and sand, some Caribbean gorgonians that are collectable size, and some frags of Caulastrea that look like they're less than a year old. A Caulastrea even just 5 years old should be the size of a volleyball in good conditions. :confused:

so all over the world healthy coral reefs have no eutrophic zones..LMAO.

here is a true oligotrophic reef tank... http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=292233&highlight=jerel+reef+tank

what kind of dosing...ummm...none...

most folks run a mesotrophic tank... needing to dose/macro to reduce nutrients in the water column suggests teetering on eutrophic.
 
so all over the world healthy coral reefs have no eutrophic zones..LMAO.

Um, what? Healthy coral reefs all over the world have big healthy corals. Where are the big healthy corals in Paul's tank?


Awesome tank. But what's the point? That you can have an awesome looking reef tank without dosing organic carbon or nitrate? I don't think anybody is arguing otherwise...

what kind of dosing...ummm...none...

He says right in the thread that he doses calcium and alkalinity. He also says: "The whole point is to not keep poop as a pet", which is basically what you recommended people should do earlier. Again, what's the point? That BB and wet skimming is one method for having a kick *** reef tank? Welcome to 10 years ago...

most folks run a mesotrophic tank... needing to dose/macro to reduce nutrients in the water column suggests teetering on eutrophic.

So everyone that doses organic carbon, nitrate, amino acids, or uses GFO has a tank that is teetering on eutrophic? Okay. Can we see a picture of your tank?
 
Here is a nice 12 year old tank that uses lanthanum chloride, GFO, doses organic carbon...I guess somebody should tell Joe it's teetering on eutrophic?

301115_4390473250254_802992775_n.jpg
 
this may be a little off topic, but i removed all of my nitrate and phosphate, well most problems period, after adding a small , low flow soft coral refugium to my system , on the same light schedule as main tank. did it first time with just xenia.....incredible results, but the entire tank full of xenia melted down out of nowhere and nearly crashed my system. maybe i should have harvested it. now i have kenya trees, tons of anthelia, and yellow colonial polyps going crazy in this tank, and the best water quality ive ever had in my main tank. oddly enough this softie fuge tests drastically dirtier, across the charts. but i dont think i would ever consider dosing the things i desperately do not want in my water. it seems it would just be like a continuous fight against a differant kind of cycle to me. just my opinion, im still following this thread. i cold be dead wrong and this could be the future. but advancement has never occurred without challenge.
 
but i dont think i would ever consider dosing the things i desperately do not want in my water. it seems it would just be like a continuous fight against a differant kind of cycle to me.

One way to look at it is that you are ALWAYS dosing N and P in the form of food, tons of it every day. I'll link this article again because it is very important to understand:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/3/chemistry

The amount of N that is intentionally dosed is generally not much in comparison to how much is added via food. It is just enough to "balance the books" between the inputs and outputs of N and P in the tank. In any case, you should not have detectable nitrate if you are dosing it. If you are, stop!
 
Here is a nice 12 year old tank that uses lanthanum chloride, GFO, doses organic carbon...I guess somebody should tell Joe it's teetering on eutrophic?

301115_4390473250254_802992775_n.jpg

it is what it is. if you can grow any macro in your system it is eutrophic. If one has PO4 readable or nitrate readable it is eutrophic or mesotrophic teetering on eutrophic. Oh. none of these is necessarily bad depending on what your keeping..they are just classifications.
Paul B is on this forum...wanna know about his coral...ask him.

And I think he already knows he is teetering on eutrophic...he uses lanthium chloride, GFO, and carbon dosing. Now, what could he do to make the system actually ULN and not need the three? figure that out and you are using advanced concepts.
 
Last edited:
Gentleman, please take it down a notch or two, this should be a discussion, not a mudslinging contest. There are no right or wrong answers, just different approaches. Respect the differences in each of our methods.


I suggest some of you take this advice and step away from this thread.
 
Awesome tank. But what's the point? That you can have an awesome looking reef tank without dosing organic carbon or nitrate? I don't think anybody is arguing otherwise...



He says right in the thread that he doses calcium and alkalinity. He also says: "The whole point is to not keep poop as a pet", which is basically what you recommended people should do earlier. Again, what's the point? That BB and wet skimming is one method for having a kick *** reef tank? Welcome to 10 years ago...



So everyone that doses organic carbon, nitrate, amino acids, or uses GFO has a tank that is teetering on eutrophic? Okay. Can we see a picture of your tank?

The point has been all along..why would you add N to attempt to reduce P? Especially when the N you add is already there.. It is a point of simply adjusting husbandry/filtration to get the effect you wish to achieve. That has been my point all along... just make adjustments to what your currently doing vs dumping in extra N.
 
There are a lot of ways to manage a reef tank.

Unless I have missed something in skimming this thread all the things you have suggested would lead to increased nitrate AND phosphate. (more food, more fish, dirty filter socks).

The whole point of this thread is in the context of systems employing organic carbon dosing to drive bacterial growth (not just nitrifying bacteria BTW) and thereby reducing phoshate and nitrate which are taken up as the bacteria grows. Commonly, such systems become nitrate limited, hence this thread.

It's certainly OK to prefer different approaches, but prefering other approaches does not completely invalidate the thinking behind this one.....
 
There are a lot of ways to manage a reef tank.

Unless I have missed something in skimming this thread all the things you have suggested would lead to increased nitrate AND phosphate. (more food, more fish, dirty filter socks).

The whole point of this thread is in the context of systems employing organic carbon dosing to drive bacterial growth (not just nitrifying bacteria BTW) and thereby reducing phoshate and nitrate which are taken up as the bacteria grows. Commonly, such systems become nitrate limited, hence this thread.

It's certainly OK to prefer different approaches, but prefering other approaches does not completely invalidate the thinking behind this one.....
The point is the logic and repercussions behind said approach...
you perhaps missed the part of balancing the system so zero phosphate and nitrate show in the water column... you missed the part where testing for nitrate and Po4 concludes that in systems with increased nitrate via detritus and bacterial processes phosphate is reduced...thereby showing that concentrating on nitrate removal can be overdone and as such leave PO4 behind. No this thread is about adding nitrate to reduce phosphate..no carbon dosing was mentioned in the OP's first post. And where does it end...add nitrate..add carbon..add whatever...or design a system so these things are not a problem to begin with.. I vote the latter vs dosing nutrient after nutrient in order to mask shortcomings of a system and it's filtration and husbandry. Nitrate and phosphate problems were solved ages ago( and no dosing of carbon or running macro algae/gfo/carbon are required)...why all the resistance to follow the solutions and simply not have a problem with either?
 
Last edited:
If one has scientific proof that adding pollution to an aquarium is better I'd love to read it... till then it is simply a dog chasing tail approach to managing one's system.
 
The point has been all along..why would you add N to attempt to reduce P? Especially when the N you add is already there..

The point of the thread is that the N you need IS NOT already there. Hence, you add it.

Same thing as carbon dosing, really. We can easily export nutrients by exporting bactiera, plankton, or algae growth. (skimmers, turf scrubbers, macro algae in a refugum, etc). If the ratio of nutrients in our system is not the same as the ratio exported, AND we wish for any of the non-limiting nutrients to be reduced to zero, then we MUST add more of the limiting nutrient, or make a change the the other inputs or exports to/from the system (i.e. food) such tht the limiting nutrient is added in a higher ratio compared to the nutrient we want to reduce further. You are essentially proposing the latter, whcih is fine, though it strikes me as indirect, since you likely will have no hard data to support a specific adjustment (i.e. if you are limited by N being zero and want to reduce P by .05, how much more of a given kind of food do you need to add? Are there even foods that contain an N:P ratio that will allow you to make this adjustment?)

The alternative, proposed in this thread, is to simply add the exact amount of the exact nutrient you need. This strikes me as easier, since you can mathematically calculate the amount of a given nutrient you need and figure out excactly how much of a given chemical to dose; and further, there won't be any unintended changes in other nutrients as you WILL get when trying to adjust a single nutrient by adding or removing something that contains ALL nutrients (i.e. food). But, to each his own.

It has now become fairly common for people to add carbon since it limits bacterial growth, which can be easily exported via a skimmer. Adding carbon lets you reduce other nutrients by exporting more bacteria. I would not be surprised if it was soon fairly common to add other nutrients. For example, some people using turf scrubbers for export are finding the scrubber is limited by iron or potassium. These people are directly dosing these specific nutrients in order to remove the limitation and allow the scrubber to remove more N or P. Or, as suggested in this thread, people already dosing carbon may find bacterial growth limited by N. If they're already dosing carbon, dosing N too isn't really a quantum leap.

It seems that part of your objection is your view that nitrogen is a "pollutant" in our tanks. While it certainly can be, that is a narrow view compared to it's larger role. Granted, it is a view that the hobby has about many nutrients - but sometimes advancements in a hobby require a change or broadening of the point of view. Take planted freshwater aquariums as an example. It is fairly common in that niche hobby to dose a wide range of nutrients (nitrogen, potassium, carbon, phosphate). Sure, these things may all technically be "pollutants" in the sense that they CAN contribute to poor health in the livestock, but dosing them in an intelligent manner can clearly lead to improvements in the overall environment in the aquarium. If the planted freshwater community refused to see them as anything except "pollutants" then the hobby would never have reached the point it is at today.
 
The point of the thread is that the N you need IS NOT already there. Hence, you add it.

Same thing as carbon dosing, really. We can easily export nutrients by exporting bactiera, plankton, or algae growth. (skimmers, turf scrubbers, macro algae in a refugum, etc). If the ratio of nutrients in our system is not the same as the ratio exported, AND we wish for any of the non-limiting nutrients to be reduced to zero, then we MUST add more of the limiting nutrient, or make a change the the other inputs or exports to/from the system (i.e. food) such tht the limiting nutrient is added in a higher ratio compared to the nutrient we want to reduce further. You are essentially proposing the latter, whcih is fine, though it strikes me as indirect, since you likely will have no hard data to support a specific adjustment (i.e. if you are limited by N being zero and want to reduce P by .05, how much more of a given kind of food do you need to add? Are there even foods that contain an N:P ratio that will allow you to make this adjustment?)

The alternative, proposed in this thread, is to simply add the exact amount of the exact nutrient you need. This strikes me as easier, since you can mathematically calculate the amount of a given nutrient you need and figure out excactly how much of a given chemical to dose; and further, there won't be any unintended changes in other nutrients as you WILL get when trying to adjust a single nutrient by adding or removing something that contains ALL nutrients (i.e. food). But, to each his own.

It has now become fairly common for people to add carbon since it limits bacterial growth, which can be easily exported via a skimmer. Adding carbon lets you reduce other nutrients by exporting more bacteria. I would not be surprised if it was soon fairly common to add other nutrients. For example, some people using turf scrubbers for export are finding the scrubber is limited by iron or potassium. These people are directly dosing these specific nutrients in order to remove the limitation and allow the scrubber to remove more N or P. Or, as suggested in this thread, people already dosing carbon may find bacterial growth limited by N. If they're already dosing carbon, dosing N too isn't really a quantum leap.

It seems that part of your objection is your view that nitrogen is a "pollutant" in our tanks. While it certainly can be, that is a narrow view compared to it's larger role. Granted, it is a view that the hobby has about many nutrients - but sometimes advancements in a hobby require a change or broadening of the point of view. Take planted freshwater aquariums as an example. It is fairly common in that niche hobby to dose a wide range of nutrients (nitrogen, potassium, carbon, phosphate). Sure, these things may all technically be "pollutants" in the sense that they CAN contribute to poor health in the livestock, but dosing them in an intelligent manner can clearly lead to improvements in the overall environment in the aquarium. If the planted freshwater community refused to see them as anything except "pollutants" then the hobby would never have reached the point it is at today.

Well said.
 
The point is the logic and repercussions behind said approach...
you perhaps missed the part of balancing the system so zero phosphate and nitrate show in the water column... you missed the part where testing for nitrate and Po4 concludes that in systems with increased nitrate via detritus and bacterial processes phosphate is reduced...thereby showing that concentrating on nitrate removal can be overdone and as such leave PO4 behind. No this thread is about adding nitrate to reduce phosphate..no carbon dosing was mentioned in the OP's first post. And where does it end...add nitrate..add carbon..add whatever...or design a system so these things are not a problem to begin with.. I vote the latter vs dosing nutrient after nutrient in order to mask shortcomings of a system and it's filtration and husbandry. Nitrate and phosphate problems were solved ages ago( and no dosing of carbon or running macro algae/gfo/carbon are required)...why all the resistance to follow the solutions and simply not have a problem with either?

I have seen you state the same thoughts over and over, but it appears that you continue to misunderstand what everyone else is saying, not the other way around. (Quite simply, IMO/IME accumulated detritis is a ripe source for both Nitrate and phosphate.)

The OP may have not specifically stated that this was in the context of organic carbon dosing, but I can't imagine any other scenerio where dosing nitrate would make any sense or in any way help to reduce phosphate. Maybe in that respect we agree?
 
The OP may have not specifically stated that this was in the context of organic carbon dosing, but I can't imagine any other scenerio where dosing nitrate would make any sense or in any way help to reduce phosphate. Maybe in that respect we agree?

To be explicitly specific, dosing N to reduce P would be a viable option in any context where N was limiting your method of exporting P. This could easily happen with any export method that links the two in a fixed ratio that is higher than the ratio they're being added (via food).

A heavily skimmed aquarium with carbon dosing is definitely an obvious case. Many people solve this via GFO or other methods but clearly that doesn't invalidate this method. I could imagine this happening with a turf scrubber as well (basically, if the N:P ratio is higher in the algae you harvest than in your food) but I don't know of any cases where that has actually happened and dosing N was the solution chosen.
 
Back
Top