Nitrate dosing long term log

[Toby_Kourtney]

I checked my levels today and they are as followed
No3-2 ppm
Po4-0.00 ppm
Alk-9.9
Calcium-400 ppm
I'm raising my alk and calcium dosing up 1 ml a day since they are dropping very slowly. I'm also going to raise my po4 dosing to .12 daily and no3 to 2 ppm daily.

 

[Grimreaperz]

Following! Great thread so far

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

I got a couple of new acro frags that are known to be more sensitive then the easy sps I have. I got a BC spainbow and red planet from a local reefer last week. The red planet was brown when I got it but the entrusting base is starting to show red and the spainbow is getting it purple tips back

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

Here's a month of progress of my pink birdnest.

 

[bertoni]

Those links appear to be dead.

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

Here's the red planet and spainbow sorry I moved the pics to a different folder.

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

And the birdsnest's 1 month progress.

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

Unknown coral which has become one of my favorites. Here it is right before I started dosing nitrates and phosphates on Jan 1 and today.

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

I'm mixing a new ratio of nitrate and phosphate solution to dose. My current solution was 16:1 ratio of nitratehosphate and my nitrates have slowly climbed to 10 ppm the last month and phosphates have been slowly lowering to 0.00. The new solution will be a 9:1 ratio. I'm going to stop dosing nitrates and just dose phosphates and let my nitrates come down naturally.

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

So what I've discovered in the last few months is that phosphate levels didn't matter as much as I was led to believe. I'm running po4 at .3 now with zero issues. As soon as nitrates hit zero or above 5 I tend to have issues though. At zero I start to get more gha and anything above 5 coral growth slows significantly.

 

[Mr. Manty]

ok wait a second... Why would someone like me struggle with high nitrates when you have to dose them?

Sorry im still learning

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

ok wait a second... Why would someone like me struggle with high nitrates when you have to dose them?

Sorry im still learning

Could be your fish load, your type if filtration,how much you feed or a number of other things every tank is diiferent.

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

So today I accidentally dosed 1.26 ppm phosphates. My nitrates and phosphate containers look exactly the same so instead of dosing .1 phosphates and and 1 ppm nitrate I did the opposite. I think instead of trying to remedy the situation I'm going to let it ride. I figure the whole point of this thread was to see phosphates and nitrates effects on coral so ill update and tell everyone what happens.

 

[bertoni]

Well, I hope the tank pulls through. I suspect it'll be fine.

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

Well, I hope the tank pulls through. I suspect it'll be fine.

At this point if you didn't know any better you would think my perimeter were great. Sps, Lps, and zoanthids all look great. Right now my phosphates are 1 ppm and nitrates are 20. I think I may leave it like this for a while and see what happens.

 

[bertoni]

We don't actually know that high phosphate levels do much except likely slow down calcification a bit. Tanks with high mineralized nutrients like nitrate and phosphate often seem to have problems, but it could be due to factors correlated to nutrients, like organics in the water column. I would be cautious with dosing mineralized nutrients, but there's not much evidence of harm for a fairly wide range of dosing levels.

 

[Toby_Kourtney]

We don't actually know that high phosphate levels do much except likely slow down calcification a bit. Tanks with high mineralized nutrients like nitrate and phosphate often seem to have problems, but it could be due to factors correlated to nutrients, like organics in the water column. I would be cautious with dosing mineralized nutrients, but there's not much evidence of harm for a fairly wide range of dosing levels.

From what I've read their are several studies that contradict each other. Most studies say it affects the density of the coral. Richard Ross theory is the reason it affects density is not because it is slow calcification but the opposite. He theorized that the reason the coral is less dense is because the coral is growing much faster and this causes the coral to be less dense. I just got back from world wide coral last week and the manager showed me his charts on their biggest sps tank and the phosphates hovered around .2 ppm and nitrates were at 15 ppm. I can honestly say that world wide corals 500 gallon sps is the nicest tank I've seen. My plan was to keep phosphates around .5 and nitrates at 20 ppm before the mix up 3 days ago. My plan is to maintain elevated levels for a year since I figure that's a long enough period to prove or disprove this theory.

 

[bertoni]

That's another interesting data point and line of thought. If testing the organics in a water sample were straightforward, we might be able to get more information on the issue in a reasonable fashion, but I don't know of any technology in sight that would help.

 

[Dan_P]

My plan is to maintain elevated levels for a year since I figure that's a long enough period to prove or disprove this theory.

Looking forwards to year end results.

One experiment that is not well controlled for the many variables in an aquarium may not prove anything. Also, in science, a theory isn't proven, it just fails to be disproven up to the current moment. I don't mean to be discouraging, just wanted to point out to other citizen scientists that studying biological systems is notoriously difficult. Sometimes doing nothing and just waiting obtains the same results as the experimental conditions or latest additive on the market. You probably learned a lot, and certainly enjoyed the study, but it would probably take you years of experimenting to understand the relationship of elevated nitrate and phosphates on coral growth.

 

[Dan_P]

That's another interesting data point and line of thought. If testing the organics in a water sample were straightforward, we might be able to get more information on the issue in a reasonable fashion, but I don't know of any technology in sight that would help.

The trouble with total organic compound concentration is that you have no idea what the compounds are. You would need to know at least something about their structure to learn anything. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that some aquarist do well with high TOC levels while others spend money and time getting them down. Ken Feldman has published on this topic in Advance Aquarist. Maybe it will take a complete cataloging of all species through DNA analysis to really understand an aquarium's potential to cultivate coral.