Extreme Phosphate Reduction

[bcarl77]

I noticed the last few days my LPS corals didn’t look great and knew something was amiss. Ran a full parameters check, and phosphate was up around .6ppm. Usually runs around .1 or less. I did a 30% water changes and promptly replaced my GFO. I checked phosphate this morning and it was 0. Now my pulsing zenias are no longer, acans don’t look great, and hammer/frogspawns are not fully extended. Soft corals outside the zenia look okay.

Did I lower the phosphate to fast, was that the problem in the first place?

 

[tangtime]

Big swings and if its truly 0, can be pretty devastating. Never let po4 get to 0. What test kit are you using to test?

 

[bcarl77]

The hanna low range checker. Also realized I had a brain fart and used 4 tablespoons instead of 3. Tank probably has around 12-13 gallons of water volume

 

[tangtime]

Ah that sux, only thing you can do is wait it out. Did you get the low range error?

 

[bcarl77]

Just came back with 0.00ppm

 

[tangtime]

Ok. I had this happen once using lanthium chloride, it didn’t effect my lps, only sps and I did lose a few frags.

It’ll go back up, feed some reef roids or other coral food tonight if you can to help bring them back up. If you have cheato turn off the light on it and even turn the skimmer off til tomorrow perhaps.

 

[bcarl77]

I dosed reef roids a bit ago and my normal dose of red sea reef energy ab. I replaced the GFO back to the 3 Tablespoons. Should I not run it overnight?

 

[tangtime]

Def turn the gfo off.

 

[tangtime]

Also, gfo is like crack, lol it works, is addicting, but isn’t the best answer to nutrient control long term.

If you can find more natural way to control po4 now that it is low would be good. in addition po4 of up to 1.0 has been proven to be not as bad as it was reported years back.

 

[bcarl77]

Well i had it very much under control for the last 3 months. I started using a turkey baster on parts of the substrate to try to clean it up a bit. I do water changes every week along with vacuuming the substrate so this could have resulted in the spike.