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.

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.

Also, I should mention why I chose NaNO3.

There are many things that can be used to increase nitrate. Calcium Nitrate, Potassium Nitrate (Flourish, Stump remover), Sodium Nitrate and more.

I dose Calcium already and alot of other trace elements at the same time, so I didn't want to dose more calcium that would be difficult to account for.

I also wasn't excited about increasing Potassium as I already dose it as part of trace elements and I didn't want to have to account for it.


Excess Sodium I can handle. The only downside I can see is the potential to throw off my salinity slightly over time. The amount of sodium I'll be dosing will be less than what I've added with the various 2 part products I've used in the past. I'm sure the tiny amount of excess sodium ions will be brought back into balance with water changes.

So I went with the calcium nitrate and have been dosing for a little over a week now and have to say that I am already seeing a good change in coral color and polyp extention especially in the LPS corals. I have raised the level to 1ppm over a couple days and held it there without any noticeable changes in any other perameters. No nuisance algae growth thus far except maybe having to clean the glass a little more, overall I am very happy with the results.

Awesome!

The boost of potassium, calcium, and sodium is probably not enough for you to notice.

Potassium nitrate boosts nitrate by 7.1 ppm for every 1 ppm potassium.
Calcium nitrate boosts nitrate by 3.1 ppm for every 1 ppm calcium.
Sodium nitrate boosts nitrates by 2.7 ppm for every 1 ppm sodium.

I know, it's my neurotic tendencies flaring up again. Excess Sodium ions seemed to be the least concerning and easiest to deal with.... I should have mentioned the major contributing factor being an excellent certain someone offering to help me out with some NaNO3 they already had. Lol.

Apologies for dredging up this old thread, but am curious as to how these numbers came about. I would have thought the KNO3 would produce a K+ and NO3- equally.....must be more going on in the saltwater.