I DOSED nitrate, and all can say is WOW!

[Marklu]

I have a year and half old 75 gallon sps tank and my corals have always grown slow. They were pale and apparently starved. I couldn't even get caps to grow much. No coraline growth. Zoas and other softies barely budged as well. I started feeding TONS of food, which just boosted Po4, and added more fish with no luck. I've never had any nitrate readings on API or Salifert kits. I knew everything else was in check, so i was stumped, but I had read once that somebody had actually DOSED nitrate to increase growth and color, so I decided what the hell, maybe they really need some available nitrogen. I bought some potassium nitrate sold as stump remover and dosed it (kinda of a shot in the dark dose) Within two days, the colors on my sps EXPLODED and growth tips started forming EVERYWHERE. MY cap probably added 1/2" of growth in a week. After 3 weeks everybody is growing and thriving. I'm ecstatic.

As it turns out, i dosed a little too much and my nitrate went up to 15 ppm. Its kinda tricky to dose becasue it's in pellet form. My original goal was between 3 and 5. They've been coming down though and they are currently somewhere between 5-10. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures, as i am a poor college student and i already have a reef tank, so buying a good camera is really just not in the budget. So hopefully my words worked well enough to portray they effects i've achieved.

So anyways i started this thread just share with you my experience and maybe spur some interesting conversation on the topic. Cheers.

 

[t4zalews]

Is there truth to this? I'd be interested to hear more if someone knows a lot about coral chemistry with nutrients in the water

 

[Marklu]

I believe the key is having enough nutrients available for coral because they can benefit from them, but not enough to enough to allow zoox. populations to increase. In my case, I seemingly had zero nitrogen available to the corals and dosing gave my system the boost it needed. I'm going to try and maintain numbers around 1 or 2 ppm.

But please, by all means, somebody with some real knowledge please jump in! I'm hoping i get can get some in depth info about this.

 

[JustinReef]

Man...I could have just sent you some of my fish, they are super good at creating nitrate

 

[adambirk]

i ahve a 90 gallon mixed reef and have also noticed that my system grows better and just looks healthier if i have jsut a little mesureable nitrate. just what i have seen with my system allthough my yellow acro hates nitrate and will start to brown if nitrates get above3 to 4ppm

 

[Marklu]

Well, i also felt like i had a decent amount of fish and i knew that if i added more I would surely end up with some nitrate, but dosing seemed safer. If i added fish to get nitrate then it is also possible that i wouldn't be able to control it, or it would get out of control. With dosing I can control exactly how much I want.

 

[29reef]

I'd try dosing a iron suppliment rather than adding no2 + no3. Algae is the basis of all marine life. If your having problems with life; start at the begining and move upwards. Algae needs light to grow and oviously that isn't your issue. Id suggest you also start dosing an amino acid suppliment as well to help with coral growth as well. I'd bet you see similar results. But the above is just a guess from reading your post.

 

[Marklu]

I don't believe iron is limited because I have chaeto that stays green and grows at a decent rate. I also have film algae that appears after 4 or 5 days on the glass. The fuge also has some other microalgae that grows slowly. I kinda think that the problem was not having the ingredients for growth, but making them available to the sps. I have a rock completely covered in xenia that grows like mad, it was the only thing that grew in my tank for a while (should have mentioned this in my post), so between that and the chaeto I believe that maybe the sps were competing for the available nutrients and losing. Does that sound feasible?

 

[Snailpowered]

You should try dosing amino acids, i did and my corals have really started to take off in the past 2 weeks. Just a little .02

 

[Marklu]

well, the stuff i dosed cost like 4 bucks for a huge amount, so as long its working, i'll save some money and skip the AA's!

 

[Snailpowered]

True but AA are alot safer for your tank then Nitrates dont you think...

 

[aurora]

Amino Acids are converted to nitrite then nitrate. So I guess dosing AA will in the end raise your nitrate. Nitrates are the end products of proteins..

 

[Marklu]

Perhaps, but everything we dose has the potential to be dangerous to our inhabitants. From what i've read, AA's are kinda of like a glorified nitrogen food source without any po4 and an overdose of AA's will result in nitrate anyways. I may purchase some AA's too, as a lot of people recommend them. Are salifert's AA's any good?

 

[Genetics]

What was your potassium level before and afterwards?

 

[Marklu]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15219666#post15219666 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Genetics
What was your potassium level before and afterwards?

I don't have a test kit, so i'm not sure. But i assume you are concerned about elevated potassium. This is probably a valid concern. I assume potassium is present in a higher concentration than nitrate in Kno3, but with regular water changes it may not be a problem. I'm still not even sure on a dosing regiment or how to convert pellets into a ppm or ml equivalent, i still have a lot to figure out!

 

[acrylic_300]

Maybe the potassium started the new growth?

 

[Peter Eichler]

I've always thought that the people that dose amino acids in an effort todarken corals in a low nutrient tank were doing little more than adding basic nutrients such as nitrates. Amino acid supplements are just one of the more recent fads in the hobby and scientifically there's very little to support their use.

That said, it's hard to say if the nitrates really did trigger your growth spurt or if it was something else.

 

[bk_market]

which amino acid brand in specific are you guys dosing? and where get from? I have been starting to dose vodka for last couple days and I read that I should dose AA along with it. Please advise.

 

[Emster]

There might be some truth to this. I do believe you do need some nitrate but anything over 15 can be death to some acro's. I know I have seen it in my tank. At 15 some of the lps's actually liked it(some I say). My tank right now is less than .5 ppm and everyone seems happy.

 

[mcliffy2]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15220476#post15220476 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Peter Eichler
I've always thought that the people that dose amino acids in an effort todarken corals in a low nutrient tank were doing little more than adding basic nutrients such as nitrates. Amino acid supplements are just one of the more recent fads in the hobby and scientifically there's very little to support their use.

That said, it's hard to say if the nitrates really did trigger your growth spurt or if it was something else.

To some extent this is correct, but there has been some scientific study (you can get to the science if you follow links starting here: http://glassbox-design.com/2008/amino-acids-do-they-work/) to back it up. I think it is generally accepted that amino acids are part of the food for some corals in the wild.