Set Apex DOS to on instead of auto and just dosed 200ml nitrate

[ukgeoff]

Hi, I’ve just made a massive mistake on my apex, I set my doser to on instead of auto and dumped 200ml of Randys diy nitrate recipe into my 40 gallon tank by mistake, instantly increasing my nitrate level up from 5 mg/L to over 200 mg/L.

It took me a few minutes to realise my mistake when I heard the doser pumping as I didn’t realise it was being dosed and unfortunately when I realised it was too late.

Luckily I had 12 gallons of Ro water stored up which I immediately mixed up and replaced. My Hanna meter is flashing at 75. I have done 4 x 4 gallon further water changes but my Hanna is still flashing 75.

It takes me 30 minutes to make 3 gallons of ro water and at this rate it’s going to take a lot of water to get my nitrate back down again.

Should I simply use tap water to get my nitrate down and then deal with the phosphate later? I live in the uk and it’s currently 11pm. My LFS has nutrisea water so I can go and get ready mixed salt in the morning.

If anyone has any advice it will be very much appreciated, thanks.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Do things look OK?

my guess is they will be OK, and you can mostly wait for it to get consumed.

Phosphate bottoming out is a concern so keep an eye on it.

 

[ZeroReefer]

The rapid rise is probably not great but nitrates are not deadly to the fish, stony coral could have some issues. I had a 250 gallon tank that was over 200 nitrates for a couple months before we caught it and it took about 6 weeks of nopox and water changes to slowly bring it down again, I lost a torch and a Duncan but all the softies, fish and inverts were fine

 

[ukgeoff]

Hi, many thanks for your help, I ended up doing 3 x 50% water changes which reduced my nitrate down to 20mg/l.

I still can't believe my mistake, it's so easy to set the APEX DOS to ON rather than AUTO... they say you can make a mistake once or a thousand times, but once you've learnt your lesson, you won't make the mistake again lol. For anyone who is new to an APEX DOS, don't switch the DOSER setting to ON to dose your schedule, you need to set it to AUTO. If you set the DOS to on, the doser keeps pumping out whatever you're dosing into your tank which in my case was a potent mix of nitrate!

I was in such a panic last night, my nitrate went from 5 to over 200 in a couple of minutes, and I thought my tank would be wiped out. I found it interesting to read that such a massive sudden increase in nitrates doesn't affect the fish and LPS corals as much as I feared.

Just to kick salt in the wound, I sent an ICP test out 5 hours before this happened. Oh well, live and learn at least all my livestock is alive. Thanks again for your help and I have nobody else to blame for this episode but myself!