Guppyguppy
Community Member
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2021
- Messages
- 34
- Reaction score
- 6
- Location
- chantilly
- What state or country do you live in
- Virginia
my nitrate and phosphate readings say i should reduce them but my corals are telling me not to. My system is a 113 g tank about 30g sump, it is about 9months old. In general, my corals look like they are starving, don't have much polyp extension for lps and slowly loosing tissue from bottom up on most of the lps like candy cane and hammer and goniopora. I have one sps frag that slowly stn from tip down and has little tissue left now. I had these corals for about 4-6 months at this point, only thing doing ok is a bta which grew big for about 3months but the last couple of weeks has gone on a splitting spree and now i have about 6. Also have a leather toadstool that is growing well but the lps and one sps is not growing and slowly stn ing.
nitrate about 10-15
phosphate .6 yes thats .6 and not .06 (weird thing is i have absolutely no algae problem and my snails and urchin has to be fed nori)
alk about 8.9 i don't dose anything but never goes down
calcium 450
I have plenty of nutrients in the system as per the readings i have also brought water sample to my lfs to double check and they got about .5 phosphate and about 10 nitrates
I tried to bring down the phosphate with gfo slowly and instantly i had a negative reaction with all my lps, what little polyp extension they had were almost all gone. so i stopped but my phosphates still read around .6 or so . Why do i not have any algae? i can understand if the algae on the rocks were all eaten by the urchin and snails but i don't even have much of a algae film on the glass even after about 3days or so. If my corals are starving, i don't want to feed them any because i have tank full of anthias and chromis and i feed them heavily at least 3times a day some days like 5 and i don't want my phosphates to go even higher. My lfs is telling me they are not growing because of my high phosphate level but my corals looks even worse if i try to bring my phosphate down. Is there some kind of a chemical issue in the tank? I also want to mention that i have been battling brown like substance on the sand that comes and stays for like a week and dissapears for months and comes back for another week or so, possibly dinos it has some bubbles and breaks up in clumps. Should i try to feed the corals and possibly bring up the phosphate more or should i try to reduce the phosphate and see my corals close up even more?
nitrate about 10-15
phosphate .6 yes thats .6 and not .06 (weird thing is i have absolutely no algae problem and my snails and urchin has to be fed nori)
alk about 8.9 i don't dose anything but never goes down
calcium 450
I have plenty of nutrients in the system as per the readings i have also brought water sample to my lfs to double check and they got about .5 phosphate and about 10 nitrates
I tried to bring down the phosphate with gfo slowly and instantly i had a negative reaction with all my lps, what little polyp extension they had were almost all gone. so i stopped but my phosphates still read around .6 or so . Why do i not have any algae? i can understand if the algae on the rocks were all eaten by the urchin and snails but i don't even have much of a algae film on the glass even after about 3days or so. If my corals are starving, i don't want to feed them any because i have tank full of anthias and chromis and i feed them heavily at least 3times a day some days like 5 and i don't want my phosphates to go even higher. My lfs is telling me they are not growing because of my high phosphate level but my corals looks even worse if i try to bring my phosphate down. Is there some kind of a chemical issue in the tank? I also want to mention that i have been battling brown like substance on the sand that comes and stays for like a week and dissapears for months and comes back for another week or so, possibly dinos it has some bubbles and breaks up in clumps. Should i try to feed the corals and possibly bring up the phosphate more or should i try to reduce the phosphate and see my corals close up even more?
