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Dosing nitrates


Muttley000
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I started thinking about it this last week. Over the last month or so, I have seen them drop from 5 to almost 0 (Salifert). I feed a lot every day, and still cant seem to get them up any more. Some of my zoas have been closed up, and I am wondering if this is the reason why. I removed some of my bio pellets in an attempt to help bring them up. I might turn them off all together. 

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I could be in for a group experiment. Also have been reading 0 Nitrates and would like to see something. Would you have an interest in testing different products, or same product with different dosing schedules, or run the exact same to compare results? I imagine we could have completely different outcomes with running the same program.

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2 hours ago, crimsonvice said:

I started thinking about it this last week. Over the last month or so, I have seen them drop from 5 to almost 0 (Salifert). I feed a lot every day, and still cant seem to get them up any more. Some of my zoas have been closed up, and I am wondering if this is the reason why. I removed some of my bio pellets in an attempt to help bring them up. I might turn them off all together. 

I’m turning mine off this weekend!

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1 hour ago, Flounder said:

I could be in for a group experiment. Also have been reading 0 Nitrates and would like to see something. Would you have an interest in testing different products, or same product with different dosing schedules, or run the exact same to compare results? I imagine we could have completely different outcomes with running the same program.

What test are you using? Any product recommendations?

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Removed the biopellet reactor today

nitrates still measure zero (Red Sea) after the heaviest feeding week in my systems history, phosphates measure .01 (Hanna ULR)

cheato not growing at all.  Will see what happens for a couple weeks and then look at reducing lighting period on my ATS

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I was thinking about my setup this morning. Started to notice nitrates reducing after I added the Kessil H80. Then about 1 maybe 2 weeks ago, I got tired of cleaning filter socks, so I just started running without them. I was changing one 7" sock, once a week with my water change. Maybe with the socks gone and the addition of the H80, it was enough to drop my nitrates. Biopellets will be off for 48 hours tonight. I will test and see where they are sitting. Still have been feeding heavy. 

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53 minutes ago, crimsonvice said:

Nitrates have gone from .2 to.5  hopefully they will keep going up. 

Wow. Did your biopellets ever really shrink?  Are you watching your phosphate to see if it goes up along with nitrates?  Over 6 months I bet my level of biopellets only went down a half inch!  I always expected they would shrink if they were doing something. 

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18 minutes ago, Muttley000 said:

Wow. Did your biopellets ever really shrink?  Are you watching your phosphate to see if it goes up along with nitrates?  Over 6 months I bet my level of biopellets only went down a half inch!  I always expected they would shrink if they were doing something. 

Yes I did see them go down in size. I didn't really notice it until I went to add a few more. There was a big difference between the size of the new pellets and the ones that had been in there for 6 months. It wasn't a fast size change though. 

I will monitor Po4 as well, but not as close. I am not totally sold on the devastating effects of phosphates.

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1 hour ago, Flounder said:

What gives you this idea?  

Phosphates are necessary for corals to thrive. Many people drive phosphates too low by overusing chemical filtration like GFO. There is supposedly a point where high phosphates will interfere with calcification, but I do not know what that number is. My question was more out of curiosity to see how much the rise in phosphates would match the rise in nitrates, wondering how much the biopellets really remove. 

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^This.

Also, GFO and other phosphate removing tools have not been around for horribly long (?10+ years?). I mean that is longer than I have been in the hobby... but people were keeping healthy reefs before this, without really paying attention to phosphates. I have no statistical information or other data to back up my theory, just have read and looked at the husbandry of other reefers and my personal experience. 

I do test for phosphates, not on a consistent basis, but I do. I have run GFO and Biopellets, but mostly in efforts to help reduce nitrates to eliminate algae issues, not necessarily phosphates. So like @Muttley000 said, this is a good opportunity to see if the elimination of both filter socks and biopellets will elevate nitrates and phosphates concurrently, or if there will be no relation. I will test every two days for the next two weeks and see what the results say. 

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On 5/7/2018 at 6:42 PM, crimsonvice said:

Tested today. 4 days no biopellets. Nitrates are .2 and po4 is .12. So far no significant changes. 

They thing with PO4 is that sometimes it slacks into the rock and reads low in the water column. Does not mean it’s not there. Also .2 from 0 in 4 days, is progress in my book. No matter how little. 

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8 hours ago, Joe said:

They thing with PO4 is that sometimes it slacks into the rock and reads low in the water column. Does not mean it’s not there. Also .2 from 0 in 4 days, is progress in my book. No matter how little. 

Nitrates were never 0. They seem to have stayed right around .2 to .5. I would like to see them more between 2.0 and 5.0. 

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15 hours ago, crimsonvice said:

Nitrates were never 0. They seem to have stayed right around .2 to .5. I would like to see them more between 2.0 and 5.0. 

Got yea. So do make a product like nitrate up? lol.

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