Yea I'm going to slowly increase my PAR up. I have an easier time keeping my PO4 at 0 rather then .02... I would say my PO4 fluctuates between 0-.04 in a given week before I change out GFO. But if I change out GFO before it's all exhausted I can keep it at zero. Is keeping it as zero better then the up and down? I would assume there would be some phosphate in the water before GFO gets it.
if your agressivley pulling water through gfo(reactor) the test is in error as the Po is being stripped. Po, pretty sure, increases and decreases much more slowly than No.(thus my confusion about folks who claim to have a Po spike).
Personally, from my few years of acro abuse Id stop worrying about any of it, and just slowly turn up the lights. Use a par or lux meter. I have a stupidly mixed reef with sps lps softies all over the place.
some of the corals are astounding, some not so much, some it took a month or two for them to come around.
palys xenia stylo acros ALL at the same distance from the light. on the sand I have palys stylos odd sps lps etc, all doing well too. My nutrints ahave gone up and down etc etc Po from 0 to .25 and stuff still grows fine.
I use fairly high light overall. (40,000 lux/600 par aprox) At the top of the tank. thats inches from xenia and my largest acro, 10 in from where my green stylo got so big I had to sell it.
fwiw my flow is also quite bizarre, probably "too low" for acros, the ones, yes, that are growing fine.
these are concessions you have to make in a truly Mixed reef.
