How much phosphate is too much?

[Rich Klein]

+1 on the alkalinity relative to nutrients. I have been through 2 bouts of Dino, both caused by trying to battle GHA the wrong way, by reducing nutrients. Now I keep my tank at ~ 8.5 DHK, .05 PO4 and 5 NO3. Instead of starving the tank to reduce Algae I hand removed it, and cleaned the rock work with a toothbrush over a month period.

 

[Neoalchemist]

Running a "dirty" tank seemed to work best for me with small cell amph dinos. Other things I have been doing as well:
- Maintaining over 10ppm No3 / >0.1ppm Po4
- Dosing silicates (SpongExcel) almost daily
- Added a bunch of pods...but, I have never seen one in the tank since I added them! But, I have a large amphipod colonization already present.
- Let GHA cover the back wall of tank completely...but that all ended up disappearing.

I ended up having an ostreopsis outbreak occur as well...but they seemed to just disappear with all the above treatments as well.

Now, I am having green cyano outbreak with a few amphid dinos on the sand bed. So, I am weekly siphoning out the cyano AND trying something different that seems to be working: I am siphoning only the slightest top layer of "brown" dino sand and placing it in a small bucket...then washing the sand with tap water (which breaks the outside "shell" of amphid dinos) and then soak that sand in a water/peroxide solution (to kill dinos as well as kill the cyano also mixed in). Then let the sand completely dry out...then sprinkle it back into the tank. This is actually working very well...those residual brown dino patches are becoming less and less.

+1 on this whole post. I would suggest at this point in the fight to add a grungy piece of live rock from an established tank. This is what I did and haven't seen dinos in numbers since. Clean all visible cyano and dinos just before you add the rock this might also help knock back the cyano.

 

[Sarah24!]

Hello,

I read the thread and (knock on wood haven’t had Dino’s) however people keep forgetting that every tank is different and responds different. For example I had to start dosing nopox because, my nitrates and phosphates where too high maybe 30ppm nitrates and .25 ppm on phosphates and my lps loved it and sps just hated it and I lost a few in my mixed reef. Even with me doing 60 gallon water changes a week, nitrates and phosphates didn’t budge. I had to start dosing nopox just to get them to drop.

Now that I’m dosing this few key things biggest is test often but most important is once you start nopox you can’t stop ever. It will starve your corals and they will die. So at the moment I still see signs of cyano and some hair alage etc and I don’t dose more than the min amount of nopox. I also feed heavier because I want my corals to get food. Now with that said all my sps do great, lps with clean water some do amazing and others do great for a long time then just die. I haven’t even figured out why yet because for example I will have two blue and green hammers. They both started as one and it broke and is two. One does extremely well the other is struggling in the same tank. One is on the left and on is on the right. Makes one scratch their head and wave makers mirror each other and i feed left and right sides.

But one chasing numbers isn’t ideal at all. You want your tank to swing (a little bit ((A LITTLE BIT), up and down. If it’s so stable the corals can’t handle any change and they die on us. As with Dino’s, it’s been shown on threads that hitting zeros is never a good thing. I’m even trying to find ways to not carbon dose, ween off where I’m only at 5ml a day instead of 16 min for my water volume. Keep things super simple and it reduces the amount of things that go wrong.

Running 2-5ppm nitrates should be good for any mixed reef and below .25 phosphates is fine. My tank normal is super stable and consistent and this last month has thrown some wild curvy balls, let’s hope one isn’t Dino’s. Have you tried implementing stage 2 uv to control alage and other nasties. That level 2 will kill alage Dino’s, Bactria viruses etc including free swimming ick and Velvet. (Not to be confused with uvc which just clarifies water). The difference is one uses a 185 nm bulb and the other a 284 bulb. The 185 kills all the nasties and has a longer dwell time which is better.

 

[sghera64]

I'm wondering at what level phosphate do corals stop calcifying? I've been battling Dinos for ever and the only thing that seems to help is phosphate 0.08 is it safe to go higher than 0.12?

Regarding the OP's first question: I read a lot of posts but did not see a direct answer.

I believe BRS(TV) had an episode last year on Nitrate and Phosphate (and Redfield ratio) in which Ryan said there was some evidence that over 100PPM PO4, calcification begins to slow down (but every system and coral is different).

So there is one person's answer: >100PPM PO4

 

[CoralClasher]

Well last night I cleaned the glass and added enough phosphate to bring it up to 0.1 this morning everything looks good but my phosphate is only at 0.02

 

[Belgian Anthias]

Corals don't stop calcifying due to Phosphate! Corals will stop growing due to high phoshate availability only when other building materials are not supplied in time to support the growth. This may cause bleaching. High availability is not always the same as a high level!
Recent research concerning the coral holobiont has shown that increased availability of Phosphate increases the calcification rate and has minimal effect on the coral's Photo-biology (ShantzAndBurkepile2014) Battling dino's by increased competition has minor influence on the calcification rate and the symbiotic dino's living in the holobiont. Battling dino's by starvation will influence coral growth and all other live present. Not all dino's are photo-synthetic and may feed on diatoms. They may form microbial mats on surfaces in combination with other micro-plankton. Battling diatoms may influence dino growth, by introducing sponges and bi-valves using silica and feeding on micro- plankton. A lot of dino's will form spores when starved. Starving removes competition. The moment favourable conditions are restored they will be back faster as there competitors, together with cyano's. Phosphate is needed by all organisms.
If usable Phosphate availability increases in a closed system this means other factors are limiting growth! If the level of nutrients as N;P increases, in most cases other factors are responsible for present problems. Don't blame the messenger!

 

[PhreeByrd]

I'm not sure I agree that "every tank is different". In many, if not most respects they are all similar, and most processes are (or should be) subject to the same basic chemistry and biology. Problems arise when we start fiddling with natural chemical or biological processes without understanding or appreciating all of the relative ramifications -- many of which still remain unknown, and most of which are uncontrollable.

I don't have an answer for the OP, but with PO4 levels as high as 0.25 ppm and NO3 at 25-35 ppm, I've never seen slowed growth or color issues with any of the SPS, LPS, or zoanthids in my tanks. When I have reduced PO4 to below 0.05 ppm, everything except the SPS suffered greatly. I do not believe it's necessary to maintain your water at an ideal Redfield ratio (if that was even possible without certain insanity). The corals will use what is available to them in the ratios they want... and they will do as well as they can under the conditions they are in. Having been underwater in some reasonably polluted ocean areas, it is clear that corals of many kinds, including acropora, can grow just fine in very high nutrient environments... and the upper limits appear to be far beyond what any of us should ever see in our tanks. Coral coloring, IME, is much more light-dependent than nutrient-dependent.

In any case, chasing numbers to try to achieve what 'somebody' says are the perfect nutrient levels is a sure road to frustration, pain, and failure.

 

[Clownfishy]

Interesting topic for me at the moment. I have just dosed dry KH2P04 to help maintain my Phosphates as I have/had a Dino problem. Misjudged how concentrated the dry chemical is and my Phosphate jumped from .1 to .5
I have just thrown some Rowaphos in a rector and within an hour they are down to .44 so will be running Rowaphos for a few hours to get them back down to .1 - .15 as that seems to help avoid Dinos in my aquarium. Before then, I ran Phosphate at .03 and lower and as I have now experienced Dinos, I am never going that low again! I am also not be dosing so many granules next time!!!

 

[najer]

Interesting topic for me at the moment. I have just dosed dry KH2P04 to help maintain my Phosphates as I have/had a Dino problem. Misjudged how concentrated the dry chemical is and my Phosphate jumped from .1 to .5
I have just thrown some Rowaphos in a rector and within an hour they are down to .44 so will be running Rowaphos for a few hours to get them back down to .1 - .15 as that seems to help avoid Dinos in my aquarium. Before then, I ran Phosphate at .03 and lower and as I have now experienced Dinos, I am never going that low again! I am also not be dosing so many granules next time!!!

Slowly does it, .1 is a good target.

 

[Jordan Prather]

You can also try a 3 day black out and peroxide dosing that's how I won my battle with dinos

 

[DEWreefing]

My nitrates are at 40ppm and my phosphates are 1.5 ppm I have kept them this way for 8 months no issues.

 

[CoralClasher]

Looking better everyday. Phosphate 0.11 this morning. I would say DT is about 90% Dino free but refugium is still holding on to some and now getting cyano. What's the best way to deal with cyano without chemiclean?

 

[Neoalchemist]

Looking better everyday. Phosphate 0.11 this morning. I would say DT is about 90% Dino free but refugium is still holding on to some and now getting cyano. What's the best way to deal with cyano without chemiclean?

Suck it out. I've seen a few claims that raising n03 a bit more will chase the cyano out. I've been planning my eventual battle with cyano after dinos, but I will hold off for a while until dinos are far in the rearview mirror.

 

[CoralClasher]

Well it's been a few days with higher phosphate and I thought I would have more GHA. The little bit of green algae I have left looks sick and dying off. Maybe I need more phosphate? Tested 0.16 this morning.

 

[CoralClasher]

Should I keep adding phosphate till I get a GHA bloom? Seems like 20ml of NeoPhos raised 0.04 daily.

 

[CoralClasher]

From what I can see I'll never go back to ULNS!!! I just need to figure out what's a healthy level of nutrients.

 

[CoralClasher]

I have good lights on the DT and refugium running opposite hours. I'm running all the lights on factory presets for like 13 hours. So I probably need lots of nutrients to keep things thriving?

 

[Neoalchemist]

Well it's been a few days with higher phosphate and I thought I would have more GHA. The little bit of green algae I have left looks sick and dying off. Maybe I need more phosphate? Tested 0.16 this morning.

I would stay where you are at. Somewhere around .1 is enough.

 

[Neoalchemist]

Where are your nitrates hanging?
Cyano like low n03 and you could be iron limited with cheato growing, so gha might have trouble getting a foothold, but you don't really need it.

 

[CoralClasher]

Where are your nitrates hanging?
Cyano like low n03 and you could be iron limited with cheato growing, so gha might have trouble getting a foothold, but you don't really need it.

My No3 is off the chart using Red Sea that reads up to 4ppm. I just used a API and looks like 5ppm or lower?