Red Sea NO3:POX4X Real Time Review.

[trio91]

i have a bottle of the stuff that has been lying around for a little more than a year now....i am following along as i am now having a similar issue and am on the fence about using the stuff

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I personally went this route because vodka and vinegar dosing seemed more complicated...NO3PO4-X gives a baseline dosage based on your nitrate levels, tells you to test once a week, and adjust when / if needed. (Plus I had bought a bottle of it a while back when I was dabbling with the different methods of carbon dosing so I figured I might as well use it up as it hadn't expired yet.)

I had a bio-pellet reactor (undersized for my 266G build though) and could never get it working well...Most likely just wasn't patient enough and I added it to a system that had been running for almost 2 years. Other thing I noticed was the Cyano that showed up and it never really went away until I took the reactor offline.

I also figured that if I was vodka dosing it'd more or less end up in a mixed drink of sorts. Why waste booze!?! (It's cold here in MN. Got to stay warm somehow!)

I personally don't think NO3o4-X is any better than the other options, probably slightly more expensive than vodka dosing and definitely more expensive than vinegar (I assume)...I'd like to try pellets again, but the reactor I'm looking at just isn't in the budget at the moment. I figure that the cost is about $20-25 for almost 2 months worth of dosing and it seems to be working right now, so might as well not change it.

Thanks for the info.

 

[TheWhiteFord]

Can you clarify what is amazing about it?

Have you tried other types of organic carbon dosing?

It keeps both of the leves (No3 and Po4) under 1ppm (I have 11 fish including 3 tangs)

 

[nstd]

What's the diff between nopox and vinegar?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

What's the diff between nopox and vinegar?

NOPOX contains mostly vinegar and vodka (acetic acid and ethanol) plus small amounts of methanol and isopropanol. It also says it contains some trace metals. IMO, it's not been clearly established by reefer experience that NOPOX gives a qualitatively different result than vodka, vinegar, or combos of them.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

It keeps both of the leves (No3 and Po4) under 1ppm (I have 11 fish including 3 tangs)

Thanks. Have you tried any other organics?

 

[jsker]

Never thought of the mason jars for dosing @JaysLittleOcean. Nice

 

[TheWhiteFord]

Thanks. Have you tried any other organics?

I dosed vodka for a while and it had so-so results for me

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I dosed vodka for a while and it had so-so results for me

Thanks.

Do you recall how much you were dosing that didn't give good results compared to how much NOPOX you dose now?

 

[TheWhiteFord]

Thanks. Have you tried any other organics?

I dosed vodka for a while and it had so-so results for me

Sorry it double sent

 

[TheWhiteFord]

Thanks.

Do you recall how much you were dosing that didn't give good results compared to how much NOPOX you dose now?

No I don't remember how much vodka I dosed, right now I dose 5ml NOPOX every other day

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

No I don't remember how much vodka I dosed, right now I dose 5ml NOPOX every other day

OK. I was just wondering if the difference was the product itself, or perhaps the dose.

 

[nstd]

When most people carbon dose do they do it manually or with a dosing pump?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

When most people carbon dose do they do it manually or with a dosing pump?

Some of each. I've done both.

One advantage of dosing pumps is to spread out the dose during the daylight hours when pH and O2 are highest (organic carbon dosing of any type lowers both).

It is also a bit easier to dose vinegar with a pump to avoid the immediate pH drop when dosing it, but when I dosed in manually once a day I mixed calcium hydroxide into it to avoid any pH drop, and added it all at once in the AM.

 

[zzzdiver]

I've dosed NOPOX for about a year after coming off the zeovit system. I dose it manually in the morning. Currently po4 is 0-.02
No3 is zero
I'm down to using 1.5 ml currently on a heavy feed 100 gal tank

 

[zzzdiver]

To be clear I use both red sea and KZ energy (amino acid) along with a couple other coral food products from KZ depending on what I seeing and how the corals look. With using a auto Doser for NOPOX you need to keep it from evaporating along with the small volume I've used from the start with a maximum of 5 mL and the minimum of 1 mL I wouldn't be comfortable that my dozer could be that accurate

 

[nstd]

Some of each. I've done both.

One advantage of dosing pumps is to spread out the dose during the daylight hours when pH and O2 are highest (organic carbon dosing of any type lowers both).

It is also a bit easier to dose vinegar with a pump to avoid the immediate pH drop when dosing it, but when I dosed in manually once a day I mixed calcium hydroxide into it to avoid any pH drop, and added it all at once in the AM.

Randy, even with a small dosage (I.e. 1-2 ml) of vinegar, will PH drop in a 70g system?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Randy, even with a small dosage (I.e. 1-2 ml) of vinegar, will PH drop in a 70g system?

No, but that dose may not be very effective either. You may need more than 10x that dose.

As to the pH drop, it depends on both the starting pH (less at higher pH) and the alkalinity (less with higher alkalinity), but is on the order of about 0.3 pH units when dosed at 1 ml per gallon.

 

[pdiehm]

I use Red sea NO3PO4x and it works amazing!

I tried and what I saw was brown stuff all over my rocks and sandbed...stopped it when the overflow box fell off and had to essentially restart from scratch.

 

[TheWhiteFord]

I tried and what I saw was brown stuff all over my rocks and sandbed...stopped it when the overflow box fell off and had to essentially restart from scratch.

Could you please reword this? I can't really understand what you are trying to say