Nitrate Dosing

[tmz]

I would love the help!!!! :beer:

I run GAC on occasion, but not often. I do run GFO because I have some macro algae that grows in my tank. It grows very slowly and is normal a gray color, which I suspect is from the nutrient deficiency. One type is Halimeda, which I know is Calcareous. The others I haven't identified.

Tank Parameters:

• Temperature - 79.9 - 80.3 (Apex Controlled - Probe calibration verified with Calibrated NIST traceable thermometer)
• pH = 7.9 - 8.2 (Calibrated with Fisher Scientific Buffer after cleaning with KCl)
• Magnesium - 1322ppm (ICP)
• Calcium - 445ppm (Red Sea Pro) / 438ppm (ICP)
• Alkalinity - 7.78 dKh (Hanna Checker)
• Nitrate - 0ppm (Red Sea Pro)
• Phosphate - 0ppm (Hanna Checker)
• Salinity - 1.025 (Calibrated Refractometer)

The only reason I'm steering away from the issue being light, is that it was happening with my T5 fixture too. I actually haven't added any coral since purchasing the fixture 12/2 because I want to get the bleaching resolved before buying more coral.

All of those parameters look good. Maybe it's not light. Rocks look very clean;any coraline?Any grazers?
Setting lighting aside ,I've seen corals look like those in your pictures after a rapid drop in PO4 to zero . I have never favored the double zero goals of the so called ulns systems. Corals need some ortho phosphate and dissolved nitrogen and look more vibrant when it's available,ime. it doesn't need to be much but a little consistently available to them makes a difference.
If it were my tank I would put the macro algae control via nutrient limitation objective in second place right now.

It's seems the type of algae you are targeting is not easily limited by low PO4 given the 0 readings . Algae species do vary in terms of the limiting effects of low PO4 with many types doing well with lower PO4 than others. Some may need less, some may cleave organic phosphate and some PO4 may leach from rock and substrate.None can live without phosphate including teh symbiotic algae in corals.
So, continuing to bang at the PO4 even though it tests zero for the water column (even given the imperfections of hobby grade tests and the presence of some algae)may be more limiting to the zooxanthellae and some of the coral's life functions than it is to the particular nuisance algae you are trying to eliminate.

Consider persistently pulling it out and/ or find something to eat it.

I'd feed the tank a bit more,perhaps use a little ammino acid and discontinue gfo for a while allowing PO4 to go to the .02 to .04ppm range.
Dosing a bit of sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate if K is low would be ok. You not going to dose enough K to make much difference in the total in the tank though since I would not dose beyond 1ppm NO3 for the tank and some K will come out with bacterial export.There is no good reason to dose more than that that I can see. In fact, dosing nitrate may not be needed at all if you get enough dissolved nitrogen from foods or aminos.

 

[tmz]

Great thread! And timely as well. I just started dosing nitrate 4 days ago. I'm using KNO3. It's too early to tell anything good or bad. Based on my calculations, I'm dosing enough to add ~3 ppm NO3 per day, spread over 2 doses - night and morning. Something is taking advantage of it, as I checked NO3 levels this morning and it was only ~ 1 ppm.

Why did you choose to dose it to 3ppm . anything over 0.2 should be more than enough. Waht do you wan't to achieve?

 

[Spyderturbo007]

All of those parameters look good. Maybe it's not light. Rocks look very clean;any coraline?Any grazers?

I have a little bit of coraline, but not much at all and it is very slow growing. Anytime I put a frag in my tank that has coraline, it fades away over time.

Just one big fat turbo snail. I used to have two, but one died, which I suspect was from lack of food. There really isn't a lot for them to eat in my tank.

If it were my tank I would put the macro algae control via nutrient limitation objective in second place right now.

So your thought is that I should pull the GFO and focus on the coral color and not the control of nuisance algae?

I'd feed the tank a bit more,perhaps use a little ammino acid and discontinue gfo for a while allowing PO4 to go to the .02 to .04ppm range.

I'll give that a shot this weekend when I do my weekly water changes. I just have this terrible fear that I'll wake up one morning and the tank will be covered in hair algae and I won't be able to find my fish. :lmao:

Dosing a bit of sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate if K is low would be ok. You not going to dose enough K to make much difference in the total in the tank though since I would not dose beyond 1ppm NO3 for the tank and some K will come out with bacterial export.There is no good reason to dose more than that that I can see. In fact, dosing nitrate may not be needed at all if you get enough dissolved nitrogen from foods or aminos.

It was up to ~0.6ppm last night, so I added a little more before I went to bed. I'll see how it looks tonight and try to hold it at the 1ppm mark.

Hopefully I start to see this turn around in the next 2 weeks because there is a frag swap on the 25th I'm going to attend. There are some very pretty corals on FragSwapper that I would love to reserve, but I don't want to add anymore corals until I get this figured out. :worried2:

Thanks TMZ.

 

[yeldarbj]

I'm guessing your system is nitrate limited? DSB? If so be careful as the readings lag behind. They did in my case. DSB in tank was knocking it down. Dosed solution for 1ppm rise per day. Took 3 days to see it go to .5ppm. KNO3 will put a lot of potassium in the system. Not sure if that's a good idea. You should monitor that. I think NaNO3 is a better choice.

Yes, I'm pretty sure my tank is nitrate limited. I have a small fuge with some chaeto and dragon's breath algae - both had been doing great then stopped growing. I have no nuisance algae in that tank. After a while, I had a small dino outbreak - plenty of theories for this and have had to deal with them in the past. One thing I've noticed with dinos is that you have no algae growth when they are present. I do have some phosphates, climbed to 0.12 during the dino outbreak and are now back down to less than 0.03 range.

I started up an upflow ATS to help grow green algae - which I'm already seeing on the screen after little more than a week. For now, I'm mostly dosing NO3 to help the algae take off. I do think the green algae along with the chaeto and dragon's breath algae will help keep the dinos at bay.

I have a K test kit and will keep an eye on it.

 

[yeldarbj]

Why did you choose to dose it to 3ppm . anything over 0.2 should be more than enough. Waht do you wan't to achieve?

I was shooting for something between 1 and 5, so 3 worked. I've read many threads where that range was mentioned. I'm not sure that I would even be able to see a 0.2 reading with the Salifert test kit. As I mention in the post above, I'm hoping to help green algae grow in an upflow ATS, as well as the chaeto and dragon's breath, in an effort to keep the dinos down. SPS coloring/growth will be a side benefit if it occurs.

 

[barjam]

When I was playing with nitrate dosing adding nitrates directly did nothing other than feed algae. Feeding much, much more intensified colors and such and very rapidly returned the color to my coralline (coralline will not grow well on light exposed rock surfaces within my tank and prefer plastic/shade regardless of nutrient levels).

 

[tmz]

That has also been my dxperience in terms of corlal color.

 

[Spar]

tmz, so your recommendation in the end is to just start feeding more rather than playing with nitrate dosing? i feed my fish Rod's Food. Would it be as beneficial to just feed more coral foods like Reef Chili or Coral Frenzy instead of the chunky stuff with Rod's?

I am having the exact issue of the original poster with pale coral colors and low/no coralline algae growth...

 

[tmz]

Foods contain phosphate, nitrogen and organic carbon in proportions around 116 C to 16 N to 1P on average.NSW at the surface around reefs has around .005ppm PO4 ,increasing at depth, and 0.2ppm NO3.
The OP has 0 nitrate and 0 phosphate pling corals with reasonable lighting and suspects a nitrogen deficiency ;it could be a lack of phosphate as well. So, I'd go with a little extra food and less nutrient removers first before trying sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate . I'd probably try an amino acid as a nitrogen source before trying sodium or potassium nitrate if was just nitrogen the corals needed.

In my aquariums coral colors are very good with PO4 levels around .02ppm to .04 ppm and NO3 barely detectable at around 0.2ppm ; not zeros.fwiw.

Generally, lighting is still the first thing I consider when colors pale .

If it's sps a small micron food that the polyps can get in their mouth is more useful than larger foods the can't directly consume.

I have a lot of fish and feed heavily via broadcast feeding twice per day: a mix of mysis, brine , bloodworm, cyclopeeze with nori, spirulina flake , prime reef flake and some krill added in every other day. Coral frenzy is target fed to zoanthus every 10days or so. Since I don't keep socks on drains there are almost always tidbits bouncing around in the relatively strong flow for the variety of corals to grab. There is also plenty of bacteria since I've been dosing organic carbon for over 5 years.

I think it's a matter of balances: food, organics, algae nutrients etc. . I consider a little algae and diatom growth desirable with PO4 levels and NO3 levels near nsw levels a plus. Nuisance algae is virtually non existent my tanks but there is some . What little there is can be controlled to a degree by herbivores and a little cleaning from time to time . Using nutrint limitation to wipe out algae of various types can lead to hardship for symbiotic algae too resulting in a dearth of zooxanthellae . A lack of P may make it hard for the coral to manage calcium transport or other functions,too.

 

[Bilk]

Coralline growth, abundant or lack thereof, has little to do with the nutrients PO4 and NO3 and more to do with lighting - intensity and spectrum. PO4 and NO3 are not limiting factors for coralline. Mineral concentrations, alkalinity and lighting are what drive it's growth. Different light sources, intensities and spectrum will influence what type and how much your system will support. There are plenty of tanks and sumps with detrital buildup that have abundant growth of coralline. Similarly there are ULNS systems that also have abundant growth. That's my opinion, but you can research it on your own.

 

[bertoni]

I'd have to agree that most of our systems probably have plenty of nutrients to grow a reasonable amount of coralline. I've changed the lighting on tanks and seen the coralline all die back, which seems to be a fairly common experience.

 

[Bilk]

I'd have to agree that most of our systems probably have plenty of nutrients to grow a reasonable amount of coralline. I've changed the lighting on tanks and seen the coralline all die back, which seems to be a fairly common experience.

For a reasonably maintained system, I believe lighting is the single biggest issue for people. I know it is in my case. If I were using MH, MH supplemented with T5 or T5 alone it would be easy. Basically MH is out of the question for me. I don't want to deal with the heat issues. If it were a simple case of utilizing a chiller, that wouldn't be a problem. However the tank is in a 7x10 fish room with no natural ventilation, i.e. a window to exhaust heat and humidity. So I'm using LED. I've ordered a meter to somewhat get a handle on what's happening in the tank. The other two means of illumination are certainly easier to judge by appearance. I'm not finding that with LED. I think they work and my corals are growing, but I'm pretty certain not at the right spectrum for color and viewing. Possibly not at the correct intensity either, but the corals are growing pretty well.

As for coralline, you see it growing plentifully in even severely neglected tanks. :hmm6:

 

[Spyderturbo007]

Unfortunately, things aren't going as I had hoped and I'm running out of ideas and getting very frustrated. Everything is still bleached and not coloring up. The Nitrate has been running between 0.75 - 1.0ppm for the last 2 weeks and I discontinued my GFO usage. I've also been adding the KZ Coral Vitalizer and Sponge Power.

The only change is that my Purple Stylophora coral is all but dead. The flesh is falling off. Oh, and my Rainbow Montipora has died as well. It wasn't doing very good to begin with, so I think it was going to die anyway.

I just don't understand why I can't get any color. I do everything by the book and my parameters are perfect, but my corals are all pale and grow very slowly.

I'm at the point where I would almost rather tear down the tank than look at something so drab. If it weren't for the "fish kids" as my wife calls them, I would drag the entire thing out for the trash. So much wasted money....

Every time I walk by it, I get angry. It's sad, but I don't even enjoy working on it anymore. It's become a chore now that I'm know I'm fighting a losing battle. The things I could have done with the $6,000 I invested in this tank.....

/rant

 

[dkeller_nc]

Today is the 24th; from reading through this thread, it appears you were running GFO through at least the 15th, and from looking at your pictures, the corals definitely look like they're starving out. What I'd note is that the bleaching your seeing looks very, very similar to pictures in other threads where members have way too much GFO running and have stripped the water of most nutrients.

Recovery of a bleached coral in such a situation is very slow - it may take several months, presuming the coral survives. I've personally experienced this - I had a few acropora colonies bleach that did live, but it took around 3 months of heavy feeding for them to regain their color.

Some basic advice: stop dosing ZeoVit products, or anything else that you don't precisely know what the composition is. Feed your corals, preferably with a food that's highly concentrated in fatty acids like Oyster Feast. Do it often (nightly) according to directions, and monitor your water quality closely. I can virtually guarantee that you won't have 0ppm nitrates and phosphates for long if you're feeding coral foods nightly. The trick is finding balance - you could easily swing the tank the other way, which you wish to avoid.

Don't get discouraged - there are very, very few of us that haven't lost an occasional coral, invert or fish. It's a bit like gardening - reading all the books in the world is still insufficient to acquire a "green thumb".

 

[Spyderturbo007]

So you're saying that I shouldn't drag everything out for the trash quite yet?

I'll stop with the ZeoVit products. I started using them because everyone was advocating the addition of Amino Acids. Is there a different recommended product you would suggest?

Thanks again everyone for their help. I really want these corals to color up. At this point I don't even care if they grow.

 

[dkeller_nc]

So you're saying that I shouldn't drag everything out for the trash quite yet?

Yeah, not quite.

Just my opinion: There's nothing wrong with dosing amino acids, because they're not likely to be toxic unless hugely overdosed. But I see them as an addition rather than a substitute for coral food. But what your post said is that your were dosing Coral Vitalizer and Sponge Power. I don't personally know what these products contain, but it does appear that Korallen-Zucht makes an AA supplement that is labeled as such. Since their marketing literature states that Coral Vitalizer will not increase either Nitrate or Phosphate, I'm really wondering what it could actually be, since all food, even amino acids, will break down to nitrate.

This is one reason why I use very little in the way of "branded" products, because I want to know what the stuff actually is before I put it in the tank.

At any rate, Oyster Feast, Phyto Feast and other Reef Nutrition products are labeled with exactly what they are, and there are other brands that similarly list what they contain. I will tell you that I'm also suspicious of "dried" coral food, because I speculate that they don't rehydrate fast enough to be captured by SPS, and their nutritional profile is damaged by the drying process. But this is just me - many other folks use them regularly.

 

[Spyderturbo007]

Would you recommend that I feed both Oyster Feast and Phyto Feast, or just one of them?

I've been feeding my fish more, but with only 4 of the little guys, they can only eat so much. They are starting to get a little chubby.

 

[bertoni]

I tend to agree with ditching the supplements and going instead to more normal food items. I think that both the Oyster Feast and Phyto Feast are fine. I've used both. The goal is variety without overloading the tank with nutrients.

A good-quality frozen fish food should help, too. I'm unclear as to what's going into the tank.

 

[Spyderturbo007]

I tend to agree with ditching the supplements and going instead to more normal food items. I think that both the Oyster Feast and Phyto Feast are fine. I've used both. The goal is variety without overloading the tank with nutrients.

A good-quality frozen fish food should help, too. I'm unclear as to what's going into the tank.

Currently I feed the fish a mixture of Larry's Reef Frenzy, Rogger's Reef Food, PE Mysis, Brine Shrimp and Cyclop-Eeze. I rinse the Brine Shrimp and Mysis with RO/DI, mix everything up and refreeze after portioning out into individual servings. Recently, I've been thawing the food, adding 0.5ml of Selcon and then feeding after letting the food sit for awhile.

I also add 3 drops of KZ Coral Vitalizer and 3 drops of Sponge Power every other day directly to the tank. Sometimes I'll feed with Reef Chili too, but I'm not on a set schedule.

I also feed the LPS some cut up shrimp every once in awhile.

Would I want to feed both the Oyster and Phyto everyday, or alternate?

 

[bertoni]

I fed phytoplankton daily. Given that array of foods, I think the only issue will be managing the quantity.