DIY Ammonia dosing for low nitrate systems

[BigMonkeyBrain]

Cloudy water
Just started dosing ammonia per instructions. Added 10ml of stock solution (ammonia bicarbonate) to 135 gallons. It's been about 4 hours and water is still cloudy. Corals and fish look fine. PH is fine. Any ideas?
thanks,
Albert

Start here:

6.2.3. Cloudy Water in the Aquarium

This article tell one how to deal with cloudy water in any aquarium.

aquariumscience.org

Don't feed and don't dose - lights off until the water clears may help.

Hard to say / know what is happening without an ammonia and nitrite reading.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Are you also organic carbon dosing?

Is the cloudiness greenish or white?

 

[Alazo1]

I just got back and the water is clear now. Fish and corals are fine.
Randy, the cloudiness was white and I will say that it was not severe but definitely enough to notice. I do not carbon dose. I do run UV.
I do have an old api ammonia and nitrite kit. I may test those tomorrow after I dose. I did dose a bit less then recommended (should have been 13ml but only dosed 10ml.
Could it have been some kind of temporary bacterial bloom?.

Albert

 

[East1]

Cloudy water
Just started dosing ammonia per instructions. Added 10ml of stock solution (ammonia bicarbonate) to 135 gallons. It's been about 4 hours and water is still cloudy. Corals and fish look fine. PH is fine. Any ideas?
thanks,
Albert

same happened to me, Uv will clear it, i think it’s heterotrophic bacteria that suddenly is no longer limited by ammonium in the water column suddenly exploding and consuming organics. it’ll take about a week or two to clear naturally if you continue the same dose but you can space out doses, reduce total dosage to mitigate it too.

shouldn’t affect fish or corals except for consuming o2.

edit: just saw your most recent response, i have one tank with UV and one without, it sometimes comes back on the tank without if i increase dosage, for a couple days.

 

[malcolmyoung]

Hello, I'm from Belgium and try this method to dosing and maintain NO3 in my tank. I have between 800 and 900 liters in my tank with refugium and coral frag tank.

I have some questions about my dosage. I started one week ago with ammonium bicarbonate. Previously, I used KNO3 with a dosing of 17 ml by day (with a solution of 100 gr/l of KNO3). For my dosing of Ammonium bicarbonate I mix 20 gr in 1 liter as mentioned.

When I started the dosing one week ago, my NO3 were between 5 and 6, but since the dosing of Ammonium they decrease. I'm now dosing 50 ml of the solution by day distributed each hour all day long, but NO3 still decrease and now at 1,7 of NO3. I will increase the dosage at 70 ml or more.

But is it safe to introduce that amount of ammonium for fish and corals ? I tested my ammonium 3 days ago and no presence of ammonium was showing on the test.

For the next solution I'll mix 100 gr of ammonium bicarbonate in 1 liter to have a more concentrate solution.

Thanks for your advices

 

[Alazo1]

Thanks for the responses. I will reduce / space out doses and report back.

Albert

 

[tedfisher496]

Cloudy water
Just started dosing ammonia per instructions. Added 10ml of stock solution (ammonia bicarbonate) to 135 gallons. It's been about 4 hours and water is still cloudy. Corals and fish look fine. PH is fine. Any ideas?
thanks,
Albert

the tank may have to acclimate processing more ammonia than normal. The tank may have to build up more bacteria to process the added ammonia.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

the tank may have to acclimate processing more ammonia than normal. The tank may have to build up more bacteria to process the added ammonia.

Maybe. Of course, that's not the goal of ammonia dosing, but I agree that we may not be able to stop it.

 

[tedfisher496]

Maybe. Of course, that's not the goal of ammonia dosing, but I agree that we may not be able to stop it.

i asked mike paletta he said its not normal to see cloudy water.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I agree that its not normal. Most folks in this thread did not report it.

 

[East1]

I agree that its not normal. Most folks in this thread did not report it.

I think may have something to do with organic load in the water

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I think may have something to do with organic load in the water

It's possible if N was very low that it might become limiting to bacterial growth. if so, it's also limiting corals and it is good to avoid that situation.

 

[BigMonkeyBrain]

I think may have something to do with organic load in the water

AOA and AOB should only use ammonia and O2 is my understanding. Maybe if the O2 dropped the Heterotrophic Bacteria could not clear the water ?

 

[East1]

It's possible if N was very low that it might become limiting to bacterial growth. if so, it's also limiting corals and it is good to avoid that situation.

Agreed, at least in my circumstance I think this was the case - even dosing KNO3 just fuelled hair algae rather than alleviating the coral growth limiting factor, but I think that was definitely the case I was experiencing in the first test tank and why the bacteria blooms occured. Subsequently my skimmate production increased about 75% similar to the stories you'd read about people getting increased, smelly thick skimmate after beginning carbon dosing. For context I do not carbon dose but have always had some biopellets running passively in the sump.

AOA and AOB should only use ammonia and O2 is my understanding. Maybe if the O2 dropped the Heterotrophic Bacteria could not clear the water ?

I think AOB will outcompete AOA when NH4+ is applied to the system, but my context from that is from soil science (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2021.108353) so I'm taking some liberties, but I think when applying KNO3 to a N limited system such as my test tank, there was a severe limitation of NH4+ and NH3, as corals would need to reduce the NO3 to consume it, and I presume either corals or algae would be immediately taking up any NH3 from the few fish I do have in that test tank.

Adding some form of ammonium I think rapidly reduced that limitation factor which in the first instance caused a minor bacterial bloom, stepping back the dosages about 20% reduced this bloom but when increasing over the subsequent weeks the bloom did re-appear when I stepped up the dosage a bit too fast (such as a 75% increase)

as mentioned above this was also met with a reduction of algae, improvement in coral tissue expansion and also skimmate production.

My ammonium dose has now stayed stable however I did notice that the PO4 consumption increased by about 30% once I dialed in the ammonium dosage. This dosage of ammonium does produce some residual NO3 and keeps my NO3 levels stable now, so I assume the AOA/AOB populations have stabilised.

 

[Alazo1]

I did 2 doses yesterday at 5ml each. No clouding. I may end up putting it on a doser.

 

[ReeferZ1227]

Question, I've read through pages 1-16 and intend to read through to the end.

One key principle in question appears to be if the coral get the ammonia before other bacteria. One question I haven't seen addressed is, upon the bacteria assimilating ammonia, and converting to nitrite, do they retain the nitrite to then be further convered to nitrate?

My understanding of biology is poor at best, and my question is an over simplification of the process, but the core of my question is:

If the bacteria obtains the ammonia first, would there be a surplus of nitrite available to the coral at any point? and could the coral then be a beneficiary of the nitrite and be one step closer to ammonia opposed to two steps with nitrate? Or does the bacteria consume the ammonia and not release anything until the cycle is complete?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Question, I've read through pages 1-16 and intend to read through to the end.

One key principle in question appears to be if the coral get the ammonia before other bacteria. One question I haven't seen addressed is, upon the bacteria assimilating ammonia, and converting to nitrite, do they retain the nitrite to then be further convered to nitrate?

My understanding of biology is poor at best, and my question is an over simplification of the process, but the core of my question is:

If the bacteria obtains the ammonia first, would there be a surplus of nitrite available to the coral at any point? and could the coral then be a beneficiary of the nitrite and be one step closer to ammonia opposed to two steps with nitrate? Or does the bacteria consume the ammonia and not release anything until the cycle is complete?

I believe the expectation is that different bacteria convert ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate. That said, that may be a hard thing to prove without doing sophisticated lab tests that are almost never done to answer hobby questions.

I do not know how effectively corals can process nitrite relative to ammonia and nitrate.

 

[ReeferZ1227]

I believe the expectation is that different bacteria convert ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate. That said, that may be a hard thing to prove without doing sophisticated lab tests that are almost never done to answer hobby questions.

I do not know how effectively corals can process nitrite relative to ammonia and nitrate.

Makes sense, and I do believe the general consensus is different bacteria with different functions.

The other question I would be curious about, is if the coral did have an opportunity to consume the added ammonia, how long they would be "full" until they could take on more, if it was available.

The purpose of the two questions is
1. Perhaps there's benefits to dosing ammonia beyond the ammonia availability itself, by enabling uptake of intermediary byproducts of the process (nitrite being an example) and;
2. Frequency and dosage in the event either the ammonia or byproducts are desired/able to be used by the coral.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Makes sense, and I do believe the general consensus is different bacteria with different functions.

The other question I would be curious about, is if the coral did have an opportunity to consume the added ammonia, how long they would be "full" until they could take on more, if it was available.

The purpose of the two questions is
1. Perhaps there's benefits to dosing ammonia beyond the ammonia availability itself, by enabling uptake of intermediary byproducts of the process (nitrite being an example) and;
2. Frequency and dosage in the event either the ammonia or byproducts are desired/able to be used by the coral.

I don't know the answer to anything related to best timing for ammonia dosing, except to suggest the possibility that if you want corals to get some against a background to bacterial consumption of ammonia, that spreading out the dosing too much may be counter productive. Flooding the system with lots of ammonia, while still being below toxic thresholds, may allow more to everyone rather than just to the fastest consumers.

 

[Thunderzone]

Some reef aquaria have chronic low nitrogen availability. One indicator is very low nitrate. Nitrate dosing is a fine remedy, but it is possible that ammonia dosing may be more beneficial for some organisms since ammonia can be energetically easier to assimilate than is nitrate.

For this reason, I thought it would be useful to provide some DIY directions for ammonia dosing.

There are many materials that could be used for ammonia dosing, including some household ammonia solutions, but in order to give better assurance of purity, I'm electing the show directions using food grade ammonium chloride and food grade ammonium bicarbonate.

Ammonium Chloride
Ammonium chloride, NH4Cl is essentially ammonia (NH3) plus hydrochloric acid (HCl). The reason I mention that fact relates to the impact on alkalinity. Dosing NH3 followed by consumption by organisms to form tissue in a net alkalinity neutral process. I'm ignoring the fact that if it is converted into nitrate, alk is lost, because if that nitrate is later used, all the alk lost comes back.

However, the HCl that is effectively dosed will steadily deplete alk. Adding the equivalent of 50 mg/L nitrate (0.81 meq/L; coming from NH4Cl) will have depleted 0.81 meq/l (2.3 dKH) of alkalinity. That may need to be made up for in some other fashion, such as adding more alkalintiy supplement.

High quality ammonium chloride is readily available and inexpensive. Loudwolf is one brand, but there are many. Aim for food grade or ACS reagent grade. Amazon carries many Loudwolf is $7 for 4 ounces, which contains 38,000 mg of ammonium, and is equivalent to 131,000 mg of nitrate, enough to raise 100 L of aquarium water to 5 ppm nitrate about 262 times. So cost is not significant.

Ammonium Bicarbonate
Ammonium bicarbonate, also known as baking ammonia, NH4 HCO3 is essentially ammonia (NH3) plus CO2 and water.

As mentioned above, dosing NH3 followed by consumption by organisms to form tissue in a net alkalinity neutral process. The CO2 and water also do not impact alkalinity. Thus, ammonium bicarbonate is a net alk neutral way to dose ammonia.

High quality ammonium bicarbonate is also available from Amazon as baking ammonia. It is readily available and inexpensive. One brand sells 11 ounces for $15, so it's cost is similar to the Loudwolf ammonium chloride per unit of ammonia added (one needs to use more of the ammonium bicarbonate than the ammonium chloride, evening out the cost).

Stock Solution
Using either of these materials, we will make a stock solution for dosing. Keep it closed up as it will smell of ammonia and slowly loses ammonia to the air. Ammonium bicarbonate will have a higher pH, smell more, and lose ammonia to the air faster.

13.5 grams of ammonium chloride (about 3 - 4.6 teaspoons, varies by brand) in 1 L RO/DI water.
OR
20 grams of ammonium bicarbonate (about 4 and 3/4 teaspoons) in 1 L RO/DI water.

Both solutions contain approximately 4300 mg/L (4.3 mg/mL) ammonia, equivalent to 15,700 mg/l nitrate.

Dosing

Don't be overly afraid of dosing ammonia due to toxicity, but one cannot dose substantial amounts all at once. IMO, it is safe to add 0.1 ppm ammonia (equivalent to 0.36 ppm nitrate) at once to any reef tank, and one can likely add more, if it mixes in well. Don't dose it right onto a fish, but dosing 2-3x that amount at once is also likely OK. Of course, using a dosing pump to spread out the dosing is fine and may be preferable, but be sure to guard against dosing pumps out of control (e.g., stuck on). Stock solutions can be increased or decreased in potency to match pumping needs. The ammonia could also be put into an ato since exact daily dosing is not required.

To add 0.1 mg/L ammonia to an aquarium, you would need to add 2.3 mL of either stock solution to a 100 L (26 gallon) aquarium. You may need to add this amount multiply times per day to dose enough.

I'd add it to a sump, if possible, to dilute it well before it gets to the main tank. Most folks dosing ammonia wouldn't also be using media intended to push the nitrogen cycle in various ways, but if you do, dose downstream of that media.

Of course, if anything seems to react badly the first time or two that you dose, stop dosing, double check the amounts, and perhaps come back to this thread for further discussion of what might be happening.

This article has a lot more on ammonia in reef aquaria, although some parts of it may not be correct (such as the utility of products such as Prime):

Ammonia and the Reef Aquarium by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com

Happy Reefing!

edit: One can use this calculator for dosing these stock solutions. Use the entry for ammonia from ammonium nitrate when using the ammonium bicarbonate. For ammonium chloride, use it the same, but dose 0.7 times the amount it says to add to the aquarium.

James' Planted Tank - Dosing Calculator

I was sourcing Ammonium Chloride here in the UK and found Dr.Tims ammonium chloride on Amazon in a 2 ounce bottle so it’s already in solution. Would this be a comparible strength to your stock solutions and would dosing be the same ?