Ideas on getting nitrates up

[warriorcookie]

So far so good.

I haven't dosed NO3 since tues. My Nitrates did rise as high as 4.0, but I think that was due to overfeeding as well as dosing.

Right now:
NO3: 2.5ppm
PO4: .042ppm

PO4 has been stable around .04-.05ppm. Hopefully by end of the week NO3 will be down to around 1ppm.


This has been interesting. I def won't be dosing NO3 on a regular basis. I'll have it ready though if NO3 and PO4 get out of balance again.

If my PO4 stays where it is, I'm thinking I can start using my GFO reactor for carbon instead....

[Myka]

Lookin good!

[warriorcookie]

Was away all week, came home to a kamikaze stylo had swan dived into a large sinulara. Most of the sinulara was black and falling apart.

Despite this, this were pretty good.

NO3: 0.2ppm
PO4: .037ppm

I had my wife dose 1ppm NO3 of the solution while i was gone and just dosed another 1ppm now.

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[Myka]

How are the corals looking? Any darkening of the sticks yet?

[warriorcookie]

Originally Posted by Myka

How are the corals looking? Any darkening of the sticks yet?

They had gone from white several weeks ago (beginning of thread), to weird random colors, to brown, and now seeing the pinks and blues coming back. Green came back the fastest. Wish I had tried this before the mini-crash. Would have had much better results by now since everything is coming back from near death experiences. Well.... the lucky ones are anyway.

[Myka]

Aw...

[LeanneP]

I noticed that your mg is 1320. I know if mine is that low I have a hard time keeping my alk and ca stable. Not sure if things are more stable than the begining of your thread but it has helped me by having it at around 1400.

[warriorcookie]

Originally Posted by LeanneP

I noticed that your mg is 1320. I know if mine is that low I have a hard time keeping my alk and ca stable. Not sure if things are more stable than the begining of your thread but it has helped me by having it at around 1400.

I had a dosing issue a while ago. I'm still running without a 3rd channel on the doser.

I've been slowly raising Mg. While it was much lower before, I'm much happier with it now. While I generally target 1350ppm, NSW is 1280ppm. So anything in between I don't sweat.

I've had Mg over 1500ppm years ago and didn't see any ill effects. I feel higher is better, but I won't waste money on dosing if it's between 1280 and 1350.

[adam84]

Any updates on the progress, I am thinking about trying this out since I can't seem to get any sort of detectable nitrate in my tank.

[warriorcookie]

Originally Posted by adam84

Any updates on the progress, I am thinking about trying this out since I can't seem to get any sort of detectable nitrate in my tank.

Sorry for the delay, I wanted to answer this properly.

I would say not only has this been successful, but a major paradigm shift for me. I've been so focused on using carbon to reduce nitrate and GFO with reduced feedings to control phosphate, and trying to keep both at undetectable levels.

Now my GFO is offline and my nutrients are detectable but low. Anytime my phosphate starts to creep up my nitrate is usually too low. If I keep my nitrate between 1-2ppm, then phosphate stays around .01 to .04 max. If my nitrate goes below 1 ppm, it's almost a guarantee phosphate quickly rises to as high as .07 ppm.


As far as understand, it's a balance between phosphate, nitrate, and organic carbon (not activated carbon as previously confused). (Carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen). Everything in our tank requires all three of these to survive/thrive. The ratios are different depending on the organism in question. The point is that phosphates are abundant in my tank, I occasionally have to dose nitrates to maintain 1-2ppm, and I regularly dose organic carbon (prodibio).


I also regularly do the following:
-Bi-weekly water changes (10-15%)
-Blow off rocks with MJ1200 and hose before every water change.
-I use 2x filter socks and change them out twice/week.
-Use Apex auto-feeder to feed small amount of pellets twice/day. Food is usually gone in 30 seconds flat.
-We manually feed a mash of human grade seafood at least once, usually twice a day. It's alot spread out over 5 minutes. It all gets eaten, none makes it to the sandbed.
-I feed the corals 3x/week. It's a mix of phyto/zoo/reef roids/oysterfeast/cyclopeze.
-Upgraded my skimmer (Curve 9)
-Added Marinepure large block.

Some might wonder why increase the size of skimmer and add a Marinepure block if I'm struggling to get nitrates up. My intention is to aggressively add nutrients and aggressively remove them. I'll be switching to aquaforest soon so I'll be able to control the rate of nitrate removal by adjusting how much I dose of the bacteria and the carbon.