Sea Veggies and Nitrates

[Mr31415]

I am sure most people know this - but for those who don't, I did a little test. I wanted to see how much nitrates SeaVeggies can leach in to your tank when left to "rot" - i.e. if you forget to take them out.

I took some salt water (about 200ml) @ SG of 1.009 (hyposalinity so this is not 100% accurate), at 26C which was freshly prepared from RO water and Tropic Marine salt. The nitrates were tested before I introduced a 3cm x 2cm seaveggie. It measured about 0.1mg/l. I added the sea veggie and left it like that for 4.5 hours, after which I tested the nitrates again. It was 20mg/l. Obviously this will be dilluted quite a bit in larger aquariums, but it does have a significant impact if feeding heavily and you do not promptly take it out if uneaten.

Just thought I'd share this.

 

[fish_is_my_name]

Wow! did not know that. Thanks for the info.

 

[vanmo92]

wow. thanks for the info. didnt theink it would be that high. And to think i have left them in there for a week before (was out of town).

 

[ACBlinky]

Sounds like the piece you used was about 1" square. If it raised nitrates to 20mg/L (ppm) in 200ml (0.2L) of water, a similarly sized piece would raise NO3 to 2ppm in 2L, roughly 1ppm in 1g of SW. If I've got that right, I think it makes things pretty easy to calculate (very roughly).

So...
if a 1" x 1" piece = 1ppm NO3/g

A 4" x 4" piece (16 square inches) will (theoretically) raise NO3 by 16ppm in 1g, 1.6ppm in a 10g tank, 0.16ppm in a 100g tank.

I feed a 2" x 2" square to the fish in my 65g daily. Using my rough math, looks like it could potentially raise NO3 by 0.6ppm on any given day. Honestly not something I'm going to panic over