Safe limits for Nitrate dosing

Before suggesting dosages of anything, the more experienced folks on this forum need to know the parameters of your tank. Mostly gallons, lighting, plant's types and mass and fish load, but the more information you supply, the better informed we will be about your tank and better able to help you.
Nitrate, and for that matter, all nutrients are dosed based on need. We need to know your tank's needs.

Len

I was dosing around 40ppm every three days, but that has decreased quite a bit now to around 10-15ppm every third day.

IMO I think the plants were sucking up so much because many of them were developing root systems and doing an initial growth "burst". The plants are more "mature" now. They're growing well, you can see it, but they don't seem to require quite as much nitrate as they did. Also, CO2 is much more stable and I don't have algae competing as heavily.

-- Len, correct me I'm in wrong there ^^

I'm actually dosing dry mix instead of solutions now. About 10 ppm every couple of days, which is 4 grams or about 3/4 of a teaspoon of KNO3 mixed with a gallon of tank water.

I'm also dosing by my tank's actual volume, which is about 64g, and not the total of 75g.

I mix the dry with tank water, feed the fish at the other end of the tank, then dump the mix in the OTHER end of the tank into the outflow. I can't go anywhere around the Boesemani tank without them following me

When I was dosing the 40ppm, I dosed about 10ppm every hour or so.

One thing I did notice is that I would never get a reading on my dosing until at least 24 hours after the dose. Dunno if that's normal or not, but hold off on your testing for 24 hours unless someone says it's not normal.

Roan

Unlikely that your plants could consume more than about 3-4ppm a day of NO3.

I've added KNO3 to get over 100ppm(abput 140ppm or so by estimation) and finally started killing some Amano shrimp, but no fish had any signs of stress.

Adding inorganic forms of NO3 is quite different than from people over feeding their fish and the waste becoming NH4, then NO2, then NO3........NH4/NO2 are very toxic require large O2 demand to convert into NO3........the lower O2 and the toxic build up these is what is causing fish health issues, not the NO3.

Plant tanks never have measurable NH4 levels.

Regards,
Tom Barr

plantbrain said:

Unlikely that your plants could consume more than about 3-4ppm a day of NO3.

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What about the algae? I was swack with algae at the time, could it have been a combination of the two trying to out-compete each other?

I really was dosing that much and that much *was* being used. I swear!

I've added KNO3 to get over 100ppm(abput 140ppm or so by estimation) and finally started killing some Amano shrimp, but no fish had any signs of stress.

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Tom, you need a new hobby :joke:

Adding inorganic forms of NO3 is quite different than from people over feeding their fish and the waste becoming NH4, then NO2, then NO3........NH4/NO2 are very toxic require large O2 demand to convert into NO3........the lower O2 and the toxic build up these is what is causing fish health issues, not the NO3.

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NH4? I thought NH3 was the toxic form and NH4+ the ionized, non-toxic form.

Hrm, this brings back a cycling question I had at one time and you just reminded me of it. Had to do with the nitrite cycle lasting a long time and if adding more aeration would assist the "nitrite eaters" in colonizing.

Any takers?

Roan

A good resource to help answer your question on how much nitrate to add to your 10 gallon aquarium is contained at Chuck's Planted Aquarium Pages @ http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_nitrate.htm This was very hepful to me. I have a 55g planted aquarium with fish that is just spectacular now (after many trials and errors). My biggest problem was that my plants depleted my nitrate level down to ZERO. This adverse enviroment only favors algae growth specifically BGA. Once I corrected my nitrate issues ( obtaining the proper N ratio of 10:1) my algae problem melted away- especially the bluegreen algae and brush algae. I maintain my nitrate at 10-15ppm using the formula provided at this site...goodluck!