You were right, now I just feed a little bit my fishes and did a phosphate / nitrate test, nitrates still ~0, phosphates skyrocketed to 0.35 :sad2: so I'll check phosphates at 5 PM when the lights turns off to see what's the amount of phosphates that my chaeto chamber was able to consume.
How do I increase nitrates?
- Thread starter enb141
- Start date
You were right, now I just feed a little bit my fishes and did a phosphate / nitrate test, nitrates still ~0, phosphates skyrocketed to 0.35 :sad2: so I'll check phosphates at 5 PM when the lights turns off to see what's the amount of phosphates that my chaeto chamber was able to consume.
BryanS4
New member
Same for me. I found a food grade NaNo3 on Amazon that works really well.
Something about the thought of dumping stump remover into a tank doesn't sit well with me.
hbrochs
New member
tweak it
tweak it
you could keep the cheato, and just harvest some.
Then try feeding a little more.
I keep some KNO3 that I got off of Amazon, and I will dose a little if it gets too low. Also have heard of dosing skimmate, or just run the skimmer part time for a bit.
I would, retest first.
Harvest some cheato and feed some more.
Re test
If still not where you want it cut back few hours a day on the skimmer if you have controller. If no controller, I wouldn't cut back on the skimmer cause you'll forget to turn it back on.
Lastly dose KNO3
tweak it
you could keep the cheato, and just harvest some.
Then try feeding a little more.
I keep some KNO3 that I got off of Amazon, and I will dose a little if it gets too low. Also have heard of dosing skimmate, or just run the skimmer part time for a bit.
I would, retest first.
Harvest some cheato and feed some more.
Re test
If still not where you want it cut back few hours a day on the skimmer if you have controller. If no controller, I wouldn't cut back on the skimmer cause you'll forget to turn it back on.
Lastly dose KNO3
toothybugs
New member
Real-world applications for many of our chemicals are far from flattering - de-icer, pickling agent (2 of them), dust collection, coffee sweetener, toxin absorbent, rust, protein precursors, etc
Something weird happened, at mid day (1 PM) I checked my phosphates and they were at 0.35 and they I checked at 6 PM and guess what? my chaeto eated all of them to 0.00 so in other words I think I need to feed more times a day but less food in each time.
Have you ever experienced something like this?
Have you ever experienced something like this?
codydemmel4
Active member
I am interested in this too. I have gotten pretty widely different phosphate levels depending on the day sometimes a couple weeks ago
I've been testing a lot about suddenly appearing phosphates and it was due to the live rock / live sand leaching phosphates, so it seems that my rock/sand was accumulating phosphates long time ago but after a few months with 0 phosphates using cheato as phosphate export now I the rock / sand is not leaching phosphates anymore.
So if you are having this issue try to put your cheto with lots of light so them can swallow all the phosphates and after a few months you won't see any phosphates anymore, currently I'm feeding a lot and 0 phosphates are leaching.
Now back to the topic I found that the reason why I can't have nitrates is because I have dinoflagellates in my tank so after trying to add nitrates with feeding a lot method and failing I decided to add nitrates with my planted tank water instead of RODI for replacing the evaporated water (obviously I just used a tiny part).
With my tank evaporating about 1 liter daily, I used about 20% of my Planted Tank + 80% RODI water, and the next day I was able to see my tank infested with dinos, they appeared because of nitrates + phosphates that appeared in a very short period of time so now I'm going to add just nitrates with an agriculture fertilizer that has KNO3 so I won't be adding phosphates just nitrates and it seems that keeping KNO3 at 2 ppm is the way to get rid of dinos.
+1!!!! What astounds me is how this mindset that PO4 has to be under .03 mg/l ever got started. Research going back to at least 1999 shows the diffusion on PO4 in the ocean ranges from 2 mg/l below 1000' to .4 mg/l (+/- .2 mg/l) away from reefs to an average on .13 mg/l across all reefs clearly shows to me the reason corals are in low nutrients is because they're sucking it up faster than it gets to them (only a tiny fraction of reefs have PO4 levels below .05 mg/l). To quote Charles Delbeek "Our crystal clear aquaria do not come anywhere close to the nutrient load that swirls around natural reefs".
Correction PO4 levels below 1000' is ~.3 mg/l Average on reefs is .013 (Kleypas et al, 1999) Upwelling exposes corals to .3 mg/l
Referring back to the OP, corals are grabbing any form of nitrogen they can, whether it be the inorganic forms ammonia and nitrate (most ammonia is excreted from fishes gills, note corals by removing ammonia are by passing the traditional nitrogen cycle often discussed) or the organic forms urea and amino acids. If you want to increase the amount of nitrogen available first I would simply increase how much you feed them. And be patient! It takes weeks to months for corals to adjust their coloring proteins.
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I buy lab grade sodium nitrate to keep nitrate levels around 1ppm. I dose it, but as the corals are using it I prefer to think that I am feeding the corals (including the zooxanthellae), not just “dosing” the tank with something. I also view carbon addition via vodka as the same way – feeding bacteria and microorganisms. For some reason we think of coral food as needing to be complex stuff. I see nitrate as coral food, if it drops too low I can sure tell when the SPS lose color.
Horace
New member
100 agree, though I don't think adding chems are needed. Adding good food and higher bioload achieves the same thing, though arguably harder to tune....
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
Yep, I remember when Santamonica was getting harassed and mocked for talking about algae turf scrubbers. Now people seem to be using them quite a bit.
The problem I'm having with feeding more and adding aminoacids is that the dinoflagelates are not leting me dose aminos, if I do the corals bleach and instead of the dinos are consuming it so that's why adding adminos was not a good idea to add nitrates to my tank.
Another issue I'm having is that I need a huge chaeto because of my mandarin fish needs lots of copepods, and also my Skimmer seems to be extremely powerfull so I think I'm gonna try to add a hose to the skimmed chamber and make the skimmed water to return to my tank to see if that helps to increase nitrates.
I'll try using KNO3 for now and I'll continue posting. I hope I can get rid of dinos pest.
Another issue I'm having is that I need a huge chaeto because of my mandarin fish needs lots of copepods, and also my Skimmer seems to be extremely powerfull so I think I'm gonna try to add a hose to the skimmed chamber and make the skimmed water to return to my tank to see if that helps to increase nitrates.
I'll try using KNO3 for now and I'll continue posting. I hope I can get rid of dinos pest.
scar79
Member
I dosed KNO3 just a few days ago when my phosphates started to climb and my nitrates remained undetectable. My pale SPS are very noticeably showing improved coloration, like within 24 hours. That said, I had dosed KNO3 a few months ago for the same reason - to drive down PO4 and improve colors. While I succeeded in lowering PO4, I noticed little change in coloration. I suppose that now the tank is a bit more mature, params are more stable, and the nitrate reading truly was the limiting factor, whereas in the past perhaps there were a few other issues preventing the colors from coming through. I will be continuing my KNO3 dosing with regularity going forward. It is also worth noting that I feed a lot so I feel this is the only way to get my nitrates up reliably.
Yeah in most cases feeding and adding fishes will be fine to add nitrates but in some rare cases (mine one of those) can't add nitrates so easily so we had to add nitrates externally, I hope the increase of nitrates can get rid of the dinoflagelates I currently have, after adding KNO3 now I was finally able to get 2.3 ppm of nitrates measured with salifert nitrate test kit.
I've got some extra nitrates that I can spare, if you want to pick them up in Southern California
I think we live a little bit far away from your site. I live in Guatemala City. about 6 hours by plane from your place.
After lots of headaches I finally was able to rise nitrates of my tank.
The problem was my skimmer, it is way to powerful for my tank so it was so efficient that I always had 0.00 nitrates no matter the amount of food or the amount of fish I had.
So I turned it off and now I only run it for a few hours a week instead of 24/7.
The problem was my skimmer, it is way to powerful for my tank so it was so efficient that I always had 0.00 nitrates no matter the amount of food or the amount of fish I had.
So I turned it off and now I only run it for a few hours a week instead of 24/7.
