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Dosing Nutrients


ReefdUp

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I was wondering who all here is dosing nutrients? I just started and was wondering how long it takes to see an improvement and recover. And... this is to slightly vent.

 

I typically keep my tanks at high nutrient levels "naturally" just by feeding. Well, the busy summer and low fish count in my display (everyone is still in QT) along with high alk just combined into a near-crash. I lost 5 sps before I could get them all into my QT. Ugh. My phosphate was 0.02 with 0 nitrates and 10dKH. Burnt tip city!

 

I'm on week 2 of dosing nitrates (dosing about 2ppm daily), a dash of phosphate as necessary, bacteria, and carbon trying to settle the tank back in. I've never had to deal with this before in nearly 13 years. Sigh. Makes me want to be rash and just dump in fish and food.

 

Anyway, I noticed the burnt tips on my Setosa are recovering and starting to regrow. I'm hoping I'm at the turning point... as I'm leaving for a week.

 

Gotta love how this hobby still manages to throw a loop after all these years.

 

 

 

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Sorry to hear it. I too have been dealing with low nutrients for some time now. I can't remember the last time I had my skimmer on with a cup as it was pulling too much out of the water. I don't have many fish in my 40B system so keeping nitrates up is tough for me and I dose it as well. I dose about 2ppm 3 times a week. That said I started using Aquavitro Fuel and that has helped me stay consistent around 10ppm nitrate so I have been dialing back my nitrate dosing to find the happy medium. I am finally at the point where I am seeing some green algae on the glass/rocks again and couldn't be happier to see it haha. Keep pressing forth on your dosing and kick off that skimmer/remove the cup. Hope it all recovers.  

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ULNS + high end of alk = burnt SPS tips. Lowering the alk may have helped the tip issue also. 

 

Are you targeting a particular nitrate:phosphate ratio? 

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Thanks for the sympathetic ears!

Eh, my skimmer hasn't run in ages. My sulfur denitrator and GFO reactors are also just collecting dust. My, how times have changed!

I'm dosing only to keep me at low levels of nutrients, not at any particular ratio. My opinion (rather uneducated at this point probably) is that although the red field ratio is fairly known, dosing at that ratio may result in an imbalance. Who knows if I'm leaching nutrients from somewhere, or if my test kits aren't detecting other forms of nutrients available (organic vs inorganic). But, if there is a stable amount in the water for uptake, the corals shouldn't be limited.

So, right now I'm dosing 2ppm per day nitrate (holding steady at 2ppm per day, so I'm using what I'm dosing). Phosphate is holding steady at 0.04 with tiny swings based on feedings (+/- 0.02). I'm dosing a tiny bit of MB7 daily, and I've dosed a bit of carbon when the higher nitrate wasn't changing the phosphate level.

The new growth is likely related only to the higher nutrients as my alkalinity is fairly unchanged. It was 9.8dKh when this fiasco started, and two weeks after turning off my dosing pumps, it has only dropped to 9.6 (yay coral death). I just (finally) got my shipment of sodium bisulfate and am aerating it. I plan to dose that tomorrow to drop the alk by 1.6 dKh (albeit going slow to hopefully not kill the pH).

It's funny though. For years I've always laughed about how my coral rescue tanks always look better than my displays. I wonder now if the die-off was actually something I needed...(just chalk that idea up to the end of my beer for the evening.)



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