Nitrate Reduction 101 with sugar!!!

[boxfishpooalot]

Anyone seen a bloom in a BB tank?

Yes i made my tank bloom in bacterial fog with bb tank. Ammoniafication takes the carbon from ammonia, a different bacteria of some sort use the carbon from sugar to grow.



I will be adding mine to the tank with my kalk dosing (top-off)

This may be fine, but you run the risk of lowering the ph further with kalk. I dont know how much kalk you add but it may cause an unbalanced addtion of cal and alk from kalk due to bacterial acidification.

Fwiw I think its safer to add it as a one time dose. If you add it via float valve top off evaporation varies and can lead to overdose. If you add it all at once there is no chance of guessing how much goes in at one particular time. Plus you dont know how much is left in the top off next time you add some more sugar.



Is this fact or just speculation?

It is not sugar water its an enzyme that causes bacteria to take up more protein IIRC.



How much would i start with on this tank? And i am waiting for a new skimmer so all i have is the remora pro is that enough to oxygenate with my sump

I would start with 1/2 tsp daily as posted above. The remora will do fine removing the bacteria. Oxygen conc depends on your bioload more than if you have a skimmer or not.

 

[Airman]

After reading this thread I started to add sugar to my tank. I am having good results. The only change that I notice is the foam tube on my protein skimmer collects a slim coating and must be cleaned more often. If this is the bloom that everyone is talking about then I have a nice export for my system.

 

[hansonfam]

Okay so what would happen if i put this in a tank that still has some nitrites? Would it eat that up as we'll? I have a new tank almost done cycling and has some pretty brutle nitrates.

Thanks
Lisa

 

[jacmyoung]

Since you don't have livestock in the new tank yet, I don't see any downside of trying.

As far as the concern that some bad bacteria may bloom with the nitrate eating "good" ones, since we have not seen any report of ill effect among livestock, I am comfortable to say that concern has no basis. Ich most likely does not rely on carbon as a food source so sugar addition should not increase its number. Of course I am only speculating.

 

[thriceanangel]

I think you're right. The biggest concern would be the loss of o2, but I have had as big a bloom as you could have (triple overdose) and I didn't lose anything. I wouldn't recommend it, but it wasn't a crash causing incident.

 

[Aqua Keepers]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=8854965#post8854965

You guys see this link? Most of these guys use sugar long term. They use it in the coral food mix.

 

[klasiksb]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8847430#post8847430 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by boxfishpooalot

Is this fact or just speculation?

It is not sugar water its an enzyme that causes bacteria to take up more protein IIRC.

Is there reason to believe that this (AZ-NO3) will work differently than sugar? Or any better or worse?

 

[rockdiver]

OK I want to try this sugar thing so on a 125 with a 75 g sump what would I dose?
I have a ASM skimmer
told the other guy a 1/2 teaspoon with a ok skimmer
so with a great skimmer what would I start with?
thanks
rockdiver

 

[fishykid9212]

I would start off with 3/4 of a teaspoon every other day. You don't want to start off with too much because if you overdose by mistake there is no way you can turn the process around. Do that for a while and you can increase the rate slowely if you need to. Good luck

 

[boxfishpooalot]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8857207#post8857207 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by klasiksb
Is there reason to believe that this (AZ-NO3) will work differently than sugar? Or any better or worse?

I dont know. Possibly they may work the same. One may bloom another type of bacteria than the other. Regardless they both grow bacteria.

 

[Randy1]

I dose 2cc of vodka daily to help control nutrients it really clears the water almost like ozone and causes great polp extensions probably because of the temporary food source. It lowers the nitrates and PH4 by boosting the bacterial populations that will consume the nutrients as food and causes them to grow which allows them to be skimmed off.

 

[mmd]

was this thread started by mary poppins ?

 

[fishykid9212]

I started the thread for people who need to lower nitrates like myself.
Randy1 how good is it in lowering phosphates, I can get my nitrates down no problem but the phosphates won't budge. Do you think I have to wait until the nitrates are at 0 then when there is nothing left in the water, keep dosing and the bacteria will have to eat the phosphates?

 

[Jimbo69]

I've been dosing several weeks now and have noticed that phosphates have dropped some but the nitrates have remain stable. I've been keeping the data in an excel spreadsheet, but would like to give it a few more weeks. before posting it.

Theoretically you might have to add nitrates to lower phosphates, either directly or indirectly through food (that are low in phosphates hopefully). At the moment my phosphates are almost unreadable, but nitrates stay at 10. I've dosed 1g (1/4tsp) of sugar a day in a 40g tank.

 

[boxfishpooalot]

why would you have to add nitrates to lower phosphates if nitrates are higher than P?

 

[Jimbo69]

why would you have to add nitrates to lower phosphates if nitrates are higher than P?

You wouldn't unless your N is low and P is high, I was refering to fishykids post. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[boxfishpooalot]

Ah, I see. Did you experience any loss in corals or tissue loss? Because apparently sugars from sewage cause the natural bacterial numbers on corals slime coat to attack too much tissue on the natural coral reef. Was a recent article i read.

 

[thriceanangel]

Nope, I never have, and I haven't heard of anyone either. Mine open up and take a big bite of all the free floating particles (bacteria). Especially my gorg.

 

[fishykid9212]

Well the thing that happens is that I add sugar and the nitrates eventually hit 0 but the phosphates are still high, at this point I don't know what to do.

 

[DaveBrader]

At that point there is only one thing to do, and that is to get a Phosphate Reactor, to fluidize a ROWAPhos or similar type of Phosphate Sponge. I had tried ROWAPhos a couple of times, and it did lower phosphates, but not like they said they would, until I put the media in a fluidized reactor.... Now I believe 150 mg of ROWAPhos will keep my Phosphates at zero also.

Since doing this, I went from cleaning the glass for algae daily to once a week.. Thank goodness, because control of Phosphates was my last battle. The Phosphates in tap water here in ST George are so bad, that I have even been thinking about adding another cartridge to my RODI system so that the water coming out of it, runs through a Phosphate Sponge before it gets to the storage tank...

Dave