blasterman789
New member
I can now firmly say with total conviction that elevated nitrate (in my case via ammonia dosing) cranks up Zoa growth in a very short time, although this might be preaching to the choir. Previously I'd been running my softie tank at low nutrients to try and coax better growth on some stubborn acro frags, but gave up a couple weeks ago. Tossed the acros in another tank.......just too small a tank with bouncy parameters.
This is the tank I've been adding some ammonia to, and hence this has caused nitrate to go from zero to 20ppm in a very short time. Since I don't have any fish in this tank it's easy to control this way. There is no question that the zoos and palys in this tank are far happier than my main low nutrient tank, or just a couple weeks ago when nitrate was ziltch. I mean, it's not even a constest. Not only has growth accelerated, but polyps are more vivid and fatter, and the difference occured in a week. Acans have increased in polyp size as well and colored up.
Oddly, when I experimented with adding nitrate rich water from my fresh water tank for top offs I did not get the same result. So, there's more to this ammonia / nitrate thing than just fertilizer.
Obviously though there's a potential down side to this. As per a couple comments above, you need to be careful about running high nutrients because of all the potential bad things, like nuisance algaes. Hair algae will kill zoo colonies if it gets embedded between polyp clusters; been there done that. However, knock on wood, I'm not seeing any of this. Will be interesting to see what happens to growth as nitrate levels recede.
This is the tank I've been adding some ammonia to, and hence this has caused nitrate to go from zero to 20ppm in a very short time. Since I don't have any fish in this tank it's easy to control this way. There is no question that the zoos and palys in this tank are far happier than my main low nutrient tank, or just a couple weeks ago when nitrate was ziltch. I mean, it's not even a constest. Not only has growth accelerated, but polyps are more vivid and fatter, and the difference occured in a week. Acans have increased in polyp size as well and colored up.
Oddly, when I experimented with adding nitrate rich water from my fresh water tank for top offs I did not get the same result. So, there's more to this ammonia / nitrate thing than just fertilizer.
Obviously though there's a potential down side to this. As per a couple comments above, you need to be careful about running high nutrients because of all the potential bad things, like nuisance algaes. Hair algae will kill zoo colonies if it gets embedded between polyp clusters; been there done that. However, knock on wood, I'm not seeing any of this. Will be interesting to see what happens to growth as nitrate levels recede.
