best way to lower and keep phosphate low?

[SynGraves]

I have a 10g nano that has been cycled since November of 2018. Over the last two months I have been getting a brown algae bloom that just keeps coming back. Im not positive but I do not think it is dinos since the bloom do not recede or disappear at night with lights off. Gonna try and get it under a microscope today to confirm. This stuff is only growing on the sandbed.

I've been testing my water before and after water changes. No detectable ammonia or Nitrite. Nitrate is sitting steady around .2ppm. PO4 was at .25ppm...

I limited my tank feedings to every other day and spot feed my two clowns and few corals I have to limit how much un-eaten food is left over. Several snails have been eating this algae and will leave noticeable trails of clean sand.

Should I try GFO in the media basket? Ideally, Id like to get to the root of the phosphate issue so any tips on getting it down and keeping it there would help greatly.

 

[LIreefguy]

You could try Gfo but I wouldn’t. This is a new tank and brown algae on the sand is very common. While Phosphates are high I normally don’t use chemicals unless my corals start to look unhappy.


Take a picture if your tank. Let me see what’s going on.

How’s your rock work
How’s your flow

You could also try to add some marine pure balls to help with filtration

 

[SynGraves]

Ill get a photo tonight when I get home. My hammer corals have not been opening as much as they usually do.

Flow I have a aquaclear 50 HOB with the outflow on the left side of the tank and a hydor nano 425gph on the right aimed across the tank. No dead spots in the tank.

I have 12lbs of cured dry rock. 20lbs of live sand. I tried to seed the tank with a few chunks of rubble live rock from a friends established tank.

Here is a full tank shot from about a month ago. You can see the algae in some areas and a light dusting across the sand bed. In the last two weeks its literally taken over the sand..

 

[LIreefguy]

Do you clean your hob filter at least once a week. Those sponges could be nutrients traps.
Also your rocks are built like a wall.
It’s best to leave spots so water can flow in front and in back of rocks
Something like this

 

[SynGraves]

HOB filter has an inTank media basket. I use marine pure balls in the bottom chamber and leave the middle and top chamber empty in case i need to add carbon or other media. I also have a filter floss pad between the media basket and intake tube which is changed weekly. The sponge you see in the photo is between the outside of the tank glass and the body of the filter. The filter was hanging weird so the sponge is acting as a spacer and absorbs the vibration from the pump.

 

[LIreefguy]

Ok cool. I would attack those Rocks a little different. With less surface on sand and some space in between

 

[SynGraves]

Ill need to figure the rock rework out next WC. Any suggestions for getting that PO4 number down in the mean time?

 

[LIreefguy]

Gfo, rowa. These both work very well

Sometimes too well.

If your going to add start with very little and test your water ever other day until you get to desired levels

For what it’s worth I had Phosphates of .25 before and my corals should no I’ll effect. I currently run .10-.17

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I have a 10g nano that has been cycled since November of 2018. Over the last two months I have been getting a brown algae bloom that just keeps coming back. Im not positive but I do not think it is dinos since the bloom do not recede or disappear at night with lights off. Gonna try and get it under a microscope today to confirm. This stuff is only growing on the sandbed.

I've been testing my water before and after water changes. No detectable ammonia or Nitrite. Nitrate is sitting steady around .2ppm. PO4 was at .25ppm...

I limited my tank feedings to every other day and spot feed my two clowns and few corals I have to limit how much un-eaten food is left over. Several snails have been eating this algae and will leave noticeable trails of clean sand.

Should I try GFO in the media basket? Ideally, Id like to get to the root of the phosphate issue so any tips on getting it down and keeping it there would help greatly.

I do not know if there is a "best" way. I like using multiple methods, like growing macroalgae, bacteria (via organic carbon dosing), water changes, and GFO.

 

[Martin Kuhn]

Can you post another picture showing the full tank and the flow pumps.
Maybe your issue is that you have too many rocks for your tank size (rocks too close to glass....) and the direction / flow rate of your pumps would need correction

 

[Jet915]

I used GFO initially for the first 6 months or so as my phosphates were around 0.3 but slowly weaned off as my tank matured. Now my phosphate runs around 0.1 and I havent run any gfo for 8 months or so....

 

[Purplelobst92]

I have a 10g nano that has been cycled since November of 2018. Over the last two months I have been getting a brown algae bloom that just keeps coming back. Im not positive but I do not think it is dinos since the bloom do not recede or disappear at night with lights off. Gonna try and get it under a microscope today to confirm. This stuff is only growing on the sandbed.

I've been testing my water before and after water changes. No detectable ammonia or Nitrite. Nitrate is sitting steady around .2ppm. PO4 was at .25ppm...

I limited my tank feedings to every other day and spot feed my two clowns and few corals I have to limit how much un-eaten food is left over. Several snails have been eating this algae and will leave noticeable trails of clean sand.

Should I try GFO in the media basket? Ideally, Id like to get to the root of the phosphate issue so any tips on getting it down and keeping it there would help greatly.

just do a weekly water change of 25%, only use rodi water, use filter pads to catch detritus and clean them regularly, use a skimmer, run gfo. The tank is still new, so its kind of normal to go through this kind of thing once more time has passed it will likely subside but doing regular water changes will only help exponentially.

 

[SynGraves]

I do regular weekly water changes, use RODI, and clean the filter pads every few days and replace the pads every two weeks.

I was able to confirm it is dinoflagellates so I am currently working on a game plan for that...

 

[elic173]

So if it’s a brown dust on the sand, that recedes when the lights are off or disappears after three days of lights off, is that more than likely diatoms?

 

[Purplelobst92]

I do regular weekly water changes, use RODI, and clean the filter pads every few days and replace the pads every two weeks.

I was able to confirm it is dinoflagellates so I am currently working on a game plan for that...

yeah its just a normal part of a tanks life it sucks but it goes away with time.

 

[SynGraves]

This is a bit more than a dusting...

 

[ScottR]

Ill get a photo tonight when I get home. My hammer corals have not been opening as much as they usually do.

Flow I have a aquaclear 50 HOB with the outflow on the left side of the tank and a hydor nano 425gph on the right aimed across the tank. No dead spots in the tank.

I have 12lbs of cured dry rock. 20lbs of live sand. I tried to seed the tank with a few chunks of rubble live rock from a friends established tank.

Here is a full tank shot from about a month ago. You can see the algae in some areas and a light dusting across the sand bed. In the last two weeks its literally taken over the sand..

That hammer under the clown is something else. With that thin skeleton, it almost looks like a tree.

 

[ScottR]

This is a bit more than a dusting...

That’s definitely dinos. I’ve never dealt with them so I can’t give sound advice. But I know that they prefer cleaner tanks. They seem to take over when the others decide to take a break. Do you scrape algae off your glass very often?

 

[SynGraves]

Can you post another picture showing the full tank and the flow pumps.
Maybe your issue is that you have too many rocks for your tank size (rocks too close to glass....) and the direction / flow rate of your pumps would need correction

Here is the full tank shot. I'm planning to manually remove as much of the dinos then remove the center rock. I can then move the two remaining rocks a little closer so more flow goes through them rather than around and over.

 

[SynGraves]

That’s definitely dinos. I’ve never dealt with them so I can’t give sound advice. But I know that they prefer cleaner tanks. They seem to take over when the others decide to take a break. Do you scrape algae off your glass very often?

Yeah. Up until about month ago it was an annoying green dusting on the glass. I definitely kept my water too clean. I had a phos spike a few weeks ago that I thought was causing the small hammer to have polyp bailout. I used GFO to lower the phos which helped the coral recover. Unfortunately, I think I zeroed out the phosphate since the app test I was using (now using red Sea) is not very accurate.

So far I removed carbon, gfo, and sticking to a normal feeding schedule for the fish. Manually removing what I can.