Dosing No3- Sps need better color

[BryanS4]

My SPS have been growing good and have ok colors, but not where they should be, on the pale side. (A certain CornNut confirmed this today as well). I've done a lot of reading over the past few weeks and decided to buy a test kit to see if that was a possible problem. Ordered RedSea Pro kit and as I expected zero, no hint of color at all.

After speaking with several well known SPS venders I wanted to give it a go.

I started dosing last week and was trying to maintain around 1ppm. After reading some more tonight I'm going to shoot to stay between 3 and 4ppm.

I'm interested to see if anyone local has has success dosing no3. Please share your experience and thoughts. I'll add updates myself each week for a while for those interested to see if it helps the colors.

My params as of tonight:

Alk- 8.1
Ca- 400
Po4- .03
No3- between 3 and 4
Light- ATI Sunpower 6x80

A really light Shades of Fall

BC The Durban

 

[Reefpilot11]

Sam (bmulkin) should chime in soon

 

[janes_mw]

In the past, I have had good luck dosing potassium (please test for levels) for reds and watched my levels of iodide (potassium iodine) and strontium for colors. But if you dose these, please test for them as they can go haywire fairly quickly. Anyway you look at it, it's a crap shoot with these "grief tanks" .

mike

 

[robthorn]

I tried kno3 and dose a slight amount here and there. Normally according to my eyes. Not that I see a difference after I just look at the tank and say oh those acros are a little light today. I do not do enough to register on a test kit nor do I do it often. I did add my mix to my tank around 5ml at once a few days in a row and ended up with a little red slime. I stopped right away and the slime went away in a few days and has not returned. I never dose more than 1ml since. Good luck.
See you at the fish geek meeting tomorrow MIke.

 

[bmullikin1]

I do dose kno3, running bb, my tank runs low nutrient and thus my sps were always pale, aminos helped some , but dosing 2ml daily definately helped colors , darkened them , also seems to help w phosphtes, if your phosphates are high but nitrates are low to none, just test daily till you get them were you want them and then you can test wkly or monthly if you keep things consistant.

 

[callmesaul8889]

I don't have experience dosing straight NO3, but when I doubled my bioload and feeding schedule, it deepened every single one of my SPS frags I had at the time. I also had a bare bottom low nutrient system.

 

[BryanS4]

Thanks all for chiming in. I'm hoping a few weeks from now I'll see some improvement in certain pieces.

I'm adding this pic for reference as well, as this is one I really want to get a deeper color body.