im nitrate limited

[brob22]

sorry to hear u guys are in the same boat that im in, but i find atleast alittle bit of comfort that im not alone in this situation.

danil// i tried oyster feast and that didnt help at all on my sps but i got great color on my frogspawn. when i stopped feeding the frogspawn quickly bleached again. i also heard that oyster feast is mainly for sps growth and not color. not sure if this is true or not but all i know is that it didnt help my situation.

i think my next steps are going to be raising my t5s 6 inches, dosing some kz products designed specifically for color, and cutting back on the vodka.

ill keep anyone updated who is interested

 

[DBSAM]

brob22, any updates?

 

[brob22]

yea raising the t5 and dosing less vodka and adding kz products improved my color and growth of my sps to exeptable levels. it seems the less light demanding corals such as some lps, monti caps, birdsnest are still strugling, but other sps such as torts, tables, staghorns are doing well witha pastel color.

stopping the water changes for awhile killed off all my dinos also. i believe the dinos were fueled by trace elements or something similiar. my cyno is almost completely gone and the few i have is probly cuz i stopped adding bacteria to the tank.

if ihad to do it over i would make my 75 gallon sump as my main tank, use a regular sized sump, stock heavy and add a bubble king mini 180gen2

having the oversized sump seems to be overkill for my system but adding all the extra food sources such as sponge power, amino acid, voral vit., and phols extra special can keep sps growing and looking alittle pale but decent

 

[Aqualund]

Wow so many off-the-wall and baseless rumors in this thread, but by far the winner goes to "having to low of nitrates can cause cyano and dynoflagellates. im already starting to get the dynos."

This is just plain baseless and untrue. There is no proven correlation between <2ppm nitrates causing cyano or dyno.

If you have 0 nitrates and you want higher...stop feeding the bacteria that eat nitrates...i.e. reduce your carbon dosing. Which you have done.

It is important to avoid continued carbon dosing at high rates once you are sub .5ppm so that you do not crash the bacterial population by overpopulating them, so its good that you scaled back your dosing.

 

[RealFish]

Not an expert by any means, but when I had a planted tank we used potasium nitrate to add nitrate. KNO3

 

[brob22]

Wow so many off-the-wall and baseless rumors in this thread, but by far the winner goes to "having to low of nitrates can cause cyano and dynoflagellates. im already starting to get the dynos."

This is just plain baseless and untrue. There is no proven correlation between <2ppm nitrates causing cyano or dyno.

If you have 0 nitrates and you want higher...stop feeding the bacteria that eat nitrates...i.e. reduce your carbon dosing. Which you have done.

It is important to avoid continued carbon dosing at high rates once you are sub .5ppm so that you do not crash the bacterial population by overpopulating them, so its good that you scaled back your dosing.

its not of the wall
its a theory on the kz zeovit site that the wrong ratio of zero nitrate to phosphate can cause cyano. it may not be the case but its not off the wall
its called "red fields ratio"

 

[brob22]

i tried adding potassium nitrate, but found it more beneficial just adding stuff designed specifically for corals

 

[Aqualund]

its not of the wall
its a theory on the kz zeovit site that the wrong ratio of zero nitrate to phosphate can cause cyano. it may not be the case but its not off the wall
its called "red fields ratio"

Yeah I understand where you're coming from in showing that it has been discussed before, but quite honestly, that is the problem with a lot of these "theories" is that it can put new reefers down such a wrong path...like in this instance...guy sees "zero" nitrates and beginnings of cyano all while dosing vodka...so he doses potassium nitrate to raise his nitrates.

And then joe blow reading the forums says "oh that is what I should do" and then tanks crash, organisms die, and the hobby suffers imho.

Cyano can live in pretty much any environment, all the time. There are a zillion things that can cause a bloom, and maybe this red fields ratio thing is one of them...but I guarantee that 80% of the people that claim this red fields ratio is the cause of their cyano outbreak fail to take into consideration every single other factor that may be causing it (dosing carbon?)...and the truth is, well there is just no data to support the "theory." But it is more of a hypothesis really...and one that can not be proven.