NoPoX = Best. Product. Ever.

brett559

New member
Okay, I do not work for Red Sea. I'm not a Red Sea fanboy (no RS tank, don't use RS salt or test kits). But I freaking LOVE NoPoX. I mean, it's literally been the best thing I've ever done for my tank.

I battled cyano for a year. Literally a year. Tried everything - lights out, more flow, vacuum sand, leaving sand alone, ChemiClean. Everything. It would always come back. Even with 30% water changes every two weeks, I couldn't keep my nitrates low enough (I only feed 1x day) to keep it away for longer than a week or so.

My brother told me to try NoPoX, and I was hesitant to try it. It sounded complicated. But I will say this - my tank has NEVER been better. My skimmer works so much better than it ever has before. When I test nitrates, they are all but undetectable. And the cyano is gone, and has stayed gone.

3ml a day saved my tank.

And yes, I know it's just vodka and vinegar and I could probably make my own solution for a little less. But it's easy and foolproof and it just works.

Just thought I'd share. NoPoX is the best.
 
Yes it does work great especially if you have area for denitrifying bacteria to grow


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I completely agree. I have ceramic media bricks in my sump which help with this. I've been able to stop my GFO and biopellet reactor. Nopox is much easier IME.


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Nice! I also used it for a few years and liked it. Used to dose twice a day automatically.

Later I added a MarinePure block to the sump and Nitrates went to undetectable and stayed there. I think its a good system. Nopox was not available where I live for some time, so I used tmz's recipe and that worked well too - probably I would have stuck with nopox had it been available.

If I had any criticism of the technique, it would be this: the nutrient export did not seem to be balanced with nutrient import. In my experience, nitrates were exported more quickly than phosphate. I addressed the imbalance with a little GFO, which worked.

Others (like the poster above) were able to stop GFO completely. Perhaps it depends what you feed. Others resorted to nitrate dosing in order to get sufficient phosphate export. That works too.

I shut down my tank when we moved house in the summer, and have just started a new build. This time I'm going to try a ATS rather than carbon dosing, my reasoning being the nutrient export should be more balanced. Time will tell I suppose...

I'm not much of a DIY person, which I why I never tried ATS before, but BRS sell an all-in-one device from a manufacturer called ClearWaterScrubbers. I'm going to give it a try and see what happens.

-droog
 
I recently set up Innovative Marine nano at home without a skimmer. Which means I can't use nopox on that tank. Was thinking about buying some Marine Pure balls for one of the chambers to help with nitrates. Good idea? Bad idea?
 
Yup completely satisfied with RS NoPox. Rarely does some of the available additives do what they say.....but this one works great....takes a bit of time....but is great
 
Nopox

Nopox

Hi, I have been thinking about this product a lot lately and going to try it in my new 400 gallon I've been working on and collecting stuff for 3 years lol. Hope to finally have it cycling by February.

I read that carbon dosing, like biopellets remove a 16/1 nitrate to phosphate ratio. So 16/1 is quite off balance, removing nitrate but not much phosphate. So that explains why people run GFO too to get phosphates down. I was looking at this Nopox and reading up on it so I added an important link below.

You might find this interesting. Today a 1000 ml bottle costs about $25. You can get 500ml for $13 right now at BRS. Or buy a larger container than those. In some cases, vodka costs more than that for a half pint and you can sip a little while your maintaining your tank, joke. But if you had to do 2ml per day of Nopox per 25 gallon that's not much work or expense for a product that removes nitrate and phosphate, and equally (Link below gives more info on how Napox works and removes both nitrate/phos).

Anyway, regarding cost, let's say you have a 200 gallon saltwater aquarium and you dosed 2ml a day per 25 gallons (According to the dosing instructions for a mixed reef) that is 8ml total to dose that 200 gallon system each day, and it should have the aquarium's nitrate and phosphates down between 2.5 ppm and 10 ppm, then you test and adjust the dose from there to get it where you want depending on if you're into SPS or what type of aquarium you run...

A 1000ml bottle divided by 8 ml = 125 (This means you have 125 doses in a bottle, so it will last about 4 months and a couple of days. The cost is 0.2 cents a day (not 2 cents but 0.2) = $25 for 125 days is really not expensive. But the bigger container you buy, the less it costs over time. I haven't tried Nopox yet but going to before I spend money on reactors and such. Yes sugar would be cheaper, but consider that this NoPox product knocks out two birds with one stone but removing both (No3 and Po4-x).

A skimmer is a must have, to use with Napalm (I mean Nopox) as Red Sea says but also they say don't use a UV, but that's more money saved. But imagine all the money saved by not having to buy reactors, refill gfo, carbon, biopellets, buy tons of rock/media, dozens of expensive other media. You don't have to buy the Marine Pure bricks or the Xport No3 bricks or deal with the mess of growing Chaeto in a refugium and saving the cost by cutting down on many water changes that also cost di resin for your RODI water system, salt, canister filters and I could go on and on.

It seems to me, although I haven't tried it yet and I have been reading with an obsession about how to remove nitrates and phosphates cheap and easy (just like most of us in the hobby have), that this might be a great way to go when I get my 400 gallon setup. They also recommend using trace elements and reef energy to support the NoPox and your system balance.

The link below shows it has been scientifically tested and I would feel more confident in using it than risking what might happen dosing various carbon sources like sugar, vinegar, vodka because they come with a risk of crashing the tank biological filtration and where when using those carbon sources, one has to make an extra effort to remove phosphates in addition at another cost.

Most the time I'm not lazy but good God there's plenty of daily maintenance as it is in this hobby with cleaning filters and I feel like I'm water changing my arse off with the 4 aquariums I have. Why 4? Because some fish I like aren't compatible. We all want better, quicker, easier options, as long as it's healthy, and this stuff looks pretty good from what I've read so far. No I don't work for Red Sea but excited about this product and how cheap and easy it is. I don't have to mix things. The only thing that might be good to get is a doser to divide those drops out evenly through a 24 hour period. I'm not saying I won't have rock or a bio bricks in my sump as I still would want a place for the bacteria to grow but the aquarium can have some room for good flow and not be stacks and stacks of rock that can look like big mess imo.

Great Article by Red Sea on NoPox for those interested:
https://www.redseafish.com/blog/nitrate-phosphate-reduction-via-carbon-dosing/
 
I used NoPox to lower my phosphates at one point -- which it did, way too fast. I ended up with a huge cyano outbreak that eventually went away but I'm not sure I'll ever use it again. I grabbed some GFO and sleep better at night now lol.

EDIT: Yes I followed the directions and went slow
 
Hi, I have been thinking about this product a lot lately and going to try it in my new 400 gallon I've been working on and collecting stuff for 3 years lol. Hope to finally have it cycling by February.

I read that carbon dosing, like biopellets remove a 16/1 nitrate to phosphate ratio. So 16/1 is quite off balance, removing nitrate but not much phosphate. So that explains why people run GFO too to get phosphates down. I was looking at this Nopox and reading up on it so I added an important link below.

You might find this interesting. Today a 1000 ml bottle costs about $25. You can get 500ml for $13 right now at BRS. Or buy a larger container than those. In some cases, vodka costs more than that for a half pint and you can sip a little while your maintaining your tank, joke. But if you had to do 2ml per day of Nopox per 25 gallon that's not much work or expense for a product that removes nitrate and phosphate, and equally (Link below gives more info on how Napox works and removes both nitrate/phos).

Anyway, regarding cost, let's say you have a 200 gallon saltwater aquarium and you dosed 2ml a day per 25 gallons (According to the dosing instructions for a mixed reef) that is 8ml total to dose that 200 gallon system each day, and it should have the aquarium's nitrate and phosphates down between 2.5 ppm and 10 ppm, then you test and adjust the dose from there to get it where you want depending on if you're into SPS or what type of aquarium you run...

A 1000ml bottle divided by 8 ml = 125 (This means you have 125 doses in a bottle, so it will last about 4 months and a couple of days. The cost is 0.2 cents a day (not 2 cents but 0.2) = $25 for 125 days is really not expensive. But the bigger container you buy, the less it costs over time. I haven't tried Nopox yet but going to before I spend money on reactors and such. Yes sugar would be cheaper, but consider that this NoPox product knocks out two birds with one stone but removing both (No3 and Po4-x).

A skimmer is a must have, to use with Napalm (I mean Nopox) as Red Sea says but also they say don't use a UV, but that's more money saved. But imagine all the money saved by not having to buy reactors, refill gfo, carbon, biopellets, buy tons of rock/media, dozens of expensive other media. You don't have to buy the Marine Pure bricks or the Xport No3 bricks or deal with the mess of growing Chaeto in a refugium and saving the cost by cutting down on many water changes that also cost di resin for your RODI water system, salt, canister filters and I could go on and on.

It seems to me, although I haven't tried it yet and I have been reading with an obsession about how to remove nitrates and phosphates cheap and easy (just like most of us in the hobby have), that this might be a great way to go when I get my 400 gallon setup. They also recommend using trace elements and reef energy to support the NoPox and your system balance.

The link below shows it has been scientifically tested and I would feel more confident in using it than risking what might happen dosing various carbon sources like sugar, vinegar, vodka because they come with a risk of crashing the tank biological filtration and where when using those carbon sources, one has to make an extra effort to remove phosphates in addition at another cost.

Most the time I'm not lazy but good God there's plenty of daily maintenance as it is in this hobby with cleaning filters and I feel like I'm water changing my arse off with the 4 aquariums I have. Why 4? Because some fish I like aren't compatible. We all want better, quicker, easier options, as long as it's healthy, and this stuff looks pretty good from what I've read so far. No I don't work for Red Sea but excited about this product and how cheap and easy it is. I don't have to mix things. The only thing that might be good to get is a doser to divide those drops out evenly through a 24 hour period. I'm not saying I won't have rock or a bio bricks in my sump as I still would want a place for the bacteria to grow but the aquarium can have some room for good flow and not be stacks and stacks of rock that can look like big mess imo.

Great Article by Red Sea on NoPox for those interested:
https://www.redseafish.com/blog/nitrate-phosphate-reduction-via-carbon-dosing/

I won't comment on most of your post. This product isn't really the godsend you make it out to be. It's carbon dosing. It's not new. It's not hard. A quick study will show that carbon dosing can lead to other, larger problems as it messes with your chemistry. Again, for another topic.

To my point...It will cost you 20 cents a day in your example though. Not 0.2 cents.
 
Oh my math, lol. You're right 20 cents a day = $25 dollars in 125 days. And I appreciate your response and feel free to comment on my post because, as I mentioned, I haven't use this yet. My post is based on what I read and not everything we read is always right, so if you have tried it, I would be happy to hear you or anyone's experience. Sounds like a low cost experiment to conduct.
 
I have used NoPox for the last 6 months with excellent results. I have a Marine pure block in my sump, which acts as a stand for my skimmer. I dilute Nopox at a ratio of 3 part RO/DI water : to 1 part NoPoX. (4:1 dilution). I dilute in order to get better dosing precision, using a Jebo doser. My total water volumn is 80 gallons. I'm currently dosing 12 ml, every 12 hours. This is approximatly 2ml of NoPoX per 25 gallons per/day. I run reef-spec carbon passively in a mesh bag. My nitrate is zero and my phosphates average 0.018. I sometimes dose Sodium Nitrate to provide additional nutrients, to help lower phosphates. The only negative I have experienced is the development of a spider web like material, that occassionally appears on my rock. I believe its a bacterial film. It's only a visual detractor. I have a 75 gallon mixed reef tank with 15 fish, 30% SPS, 40% LPS and 30% softies. I feed pellets once daily and frozen once daily. I'm sure you will agree that I have a high Bio-load.
Since using NoPoX and getting my filtration on autopilot, I have finally been able to concentrate on my fish and coral. I have tried a macro algae refugium, ATS, and an algae reactor. To me nothing compares to the simplicity of NoPoX carbon dosing.
 
I completely agree. I have ceramic media bricks in my sump which help with this. I've been able to stop my GFO and biopellet reactor. Nopox is much easier IME.


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I have the the brick in my sump too for just dosing for a week it sucked up all the nutrients from my system that my Cheeto stopped growing because there nothing left to feed off of. Can you imagine ?


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I used it for a while, I have attached Pictures.
1. Nitrates went down slightly
2. Helped my skimmer work better
3. Cleaned out all of my GSP
4. Did not due much for Bubble algae, slowed it slightly
5. I felt like my SPS corals grew faster with it than without
I am getting ready to move all fish and coral into a new tank, so I will probably resume dosing afterwards. I can't keep Vodka at work, so this is perfect.
 
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