How much PO4 is too much

[Reefpro]

So I have been fighting a brown "haze" on my tank walls every two-three days and my coral growth has been slow so tested po4 on my Hannah green egg like the recommendation way using one vial. It reads .03. I decided to take water to LFS and have them test using their expensive tester and it came back at .09

My question is how much phosphate is too much and limits SPS growth and gets the haze continuously on the glass. What else could be slowing the growth?

The rest of my reading are as follows

Alk 8.1
Mg 1390
CA 470
PO4 .09
Nitrate .00
Salinity 1.025

My tank is 250 gallon, change 25 gallon every two weeks, I have 6 OR T247 LED's covering the 4x4 cube.
Here is a pic of tank,

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Algae growing on the glass is neither unusual nor a big concern. But it is brown and not green?

I discuss phosphate in detail here:

Phosphate in the Reef Aquarium

 

[Reefpro]

Hi Randy it is clearly brown and not green

 

[Rob Top1]

Of course every tank is different.
I run my system at 10alk, 480ca, Po4 is below .5 but normally over .1 and No3 is normally undetectable, I am feeding heavily in an attempt to raise it a bit. I get the glass haze but nothing more than that.
I am very pleased with my growth and color.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Of course every tank is different.
I run my system at 10alk, 480ca, Po4 is below .5 but normally over .1 and No3 is normally undetectable, I am feeding heavily in an attempt to raise it a bit. I get the glass haze but nothing more than that.
I am very pleased with my growth and color.

You must be restricting algae with low nitrate and/or iron if you do not have an algae problem at 0.1 to 0.5 ppm phosphate.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Hi Randy it is clearly brown and not green

Brown could either bi diatoms or cyano (or maybe something worse, like dinos).

Are you using tap water, which might be a source of significant silicate?

 

[Reefpro]

Brown could either bi diatoms or cyano (or maybe something worse, like dinos).

Are you using tap water, which might be a source of significant silicate?

Randy this is limited to tank walls only. I will take a pick here in a second for reference. With all my other numbers in ck what would be inhibiting coral growth? Colors are great but lack of calcification for corals to be growing. Encrusting takes weeks could photo period being too long be a culprit. I have 6 OR T247 over 4x4 cube
Blues on at 10 am off at 10 pm
Whites on 12 off 830

 

[Reefpro]

Here is pic of inside of tank wall (look) to the right

 

[glb]

Randy this is limited to tank walls only. I will take a pick here in a second for reference. With all my other numbers in ck what would be inhibiting coral growth? Colors are great but lack of calcification for corals to be growing. Encrusting takes weeks could photo period being too long be a culprit. I have 6 OR T247 over 4x4 cube
Blues on at 10 am off at 10 pm
Whites on 12 off 830

Is it slimy and easy to remove or do you have to scrape it?

 

[Reefpro]

It comes off easy if I get to it right away but harder the longer I let it stay. If that makes sense!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Randy this is limited to tank walls only. I will take a pick here in a second for reference. With all my other numbers in ck what would be inhibiting coral growth? Colors are great but lack of calcification for corals to be growing. Encrusting takes weeks could photo period being too long be a culprit. I have 6 OR T247 over 4x4 cube
Blues on at 10 am off at 10 pm
Whites on 12 off 830

Hard coral growth can be inhibited by many things, including phosphate, organics, low alkalinity or very low calcium, low pH, etc.

I don't think your photoperiod is an issue.

 

[billwill]

Yes, having to look through that film to see those spectacular sps colonies and frags must be terrible!

 

[Pete polyp]

You could always just bulk up on snails. That's exactly how I have taken care of this problem in several tanks. I actually go for months at a time without scraping the glass in my tanks. I'm not saying the glass is crystal clear, but it's not extremely noticeable.

 

[Robert_ellis]

Lower p04 to .04-.06. When mine gets a little high like .08-.1 I get the haze in 2-3 days also. .04-.06 takes 6-7 days.

 

[Stigigemla]

When i get brown algae on the front glass i just ADD nitrate. Some corals do better with more nitrate in the water. Almost all grow less (maybe not some Acropora) and a few (often Euphyllia) get pale. I suggest: Add some snails and add nitrate to 1 mg/l.
Then You can do one or more of these:
1. Feed the fishes more.
2. Add a few fishes if they dont want more food.
3. Reduce the light to reduce coral grow.
4. Take out the fastest growing coral.
5. Add nitrate as soon as the algae on the front glass is partly getting brown. ( I do that regularly )

Some GFO in a reactor will reduce the PO4.
Most or maybe all corals grow better in 0.2 PO4. It is just their colors that are getting so murky.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Most or maybe all corals grow better in 0.2 PO4. It is just their colors that are getting so murky.

I don't believe that is true of many hard corals. Elevated phosphate has been shown to slow down calcification in some corals.

 

[cthedaytrader]

Just a few suggestions, I have had similar issues;

Do you happen to dose any carbon sources? Vinegar, Vodka, biopellets? I think sometimes I noticed this would come up when dosing a carbon source, if you are dosing you could try and spread out your doses, or automate them.

Another issue, based on the picture, is it seems to be working its way from the bottom to the top? Two things I noticed there, the sand is leaching nutrients, or low flow in these areas create what I think of as nutrient hot spots lol, or dead spots where the nutrients are higher than the higher flow areas like the top of the tank where the test samples are most likely being taken from.

Another issues is Silicate as Randy suggested. I had a similar issue, that I notices I would get a bloom after doing a larger water change, I wouldn't even say it was a really large water change maybe 15%, and I use RO/DI with 0TDS,I know DI cartridges are suppose to remove all silicates but I added a second DI cartridge to mine, and put a silica buster cartridge there instead of a second normal DI cartridge and it solved the problem.

My simple of view of phosphates from my own experience is for an sps dominant tank with a large variety of sps, anything over .03 PO4, I see some issues, some sps brown, slow growth, algae growth, poor polyp extension. Personally, I think below .03 is preferable. I know a lot of people like to say they have dirty tanks and high phosphates, but I always see issues arise in my tank when it gets "dirty" and some sps always brown out very quickly for me stop growing, or have terrible polyp extension, while some sps in the same conditions look fantastic. I think long term, and I am talking years, running a high nutrient sps tank with a large variety of sps is playing with fire.

 

[Stigigemla]

Yes I have also read that calcification slows down in a high phosphate environment. But I believe it was 0,25 ppm it started to slow down some corals and higher levels made an impact on more. I guess a lot of have seen this from Macna 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRIKW-9d2xI
I wouldnt draw it that far but it is worth a thought. Anyway it is great fun for a reefer.

 

[Reefpro]

Just a few suggestions, I have had similar issues;

Do you happen to dose any carbon sources? Vinegar, Vodka, biopellets? I think sometimes I noticed this would come up when dosing a carbon source, if you are dosing you could try and spread out your doses, or automate them.

Another issue, based on the picture, is it seems to be working its way from the bottom to the top? Two things I noticed there, the sand is leaching nutrients, or low flow in these areas create what I think of as nutrient hot spots lol, or dead spots where the nutrients are higher than the higher flow areas like the top of the tank where the test samples are most likely being taken from.

Another issues is Silicate as Randy suggested. I had a similar issue, that I notices I would get a bloom after doing a larger water change, I wouldn't even say it was a really large water change maybe 15%, and I use RO/DI with 0TDS,I know DI cartridges are suppose to remove all silicates but I added a second DI cartridge to mine, and put a silica buster cartridge there instead of a second normal DI cartridge and it solved the problem.

My simple of view of phosphates from my own experience is for an sps dominant tank with a large variety of sps, anything over .03 PO4, I see some issues, some sps brown, slow growth, algae growth, poor polyp extension. Personally, I think below .03 is preferable. I know a lot of people like to say they have dirty tanks and high phosphates, but I always see issues arise in my tank when it gets "dirty" and some sps always brown out very quickly for me stop growing, or have terrible polyp extension, while some sps in the same conditions look fantastic. I think long term, and I am talking years, running a high nutrient sps tank with a large variety of sps is playing with fire.

Great insight, I think the silicates are possibly the culprit. The picture you see looks like bottom to top because I had hit the upper side of tank with a done pad a day or two before. As far as dosing, I do not does anything, I run a CA reactor, and take that back I dose MG with a BRS pump. I run carbon in a filter bag in sump. I will start the GFO reactor again for 12 a day to bring po4 down slowly so as to not shock my sps too much.

 

[Whisker Biscuit]

Just a few suggestions, I have had similar issues;

Do you happen to dose any carbon sources? Vinegar, Vodka, biopellets? I think sometimes I noticed this would come up when dosing a carbon source, if you are dosing you could try and spread out your doses, or automate them.

Another issue, based on the picture, is it seems to be working its way from the bottom to the top? Two things I noticed there, the sand is leaching nutrients, or low flow in these areas create what I think of as nutrient hot spots lol, or dead spots where the nutrients are higher than the higher flow areas like the top of the tank where the test samples are most likely being taken from.

Another issues is Silicate as Randy suggested. I had a similar issue, that I notices I would get a bloom after doing a larger water change, I wouldn't even say it was a really large water change maybe 15%, and I use RO/DI with 0TDS,I know DI cartridges are suppose to remove all silicates but I added a second DI cartridge to mine, and put a silica buster cartridge there instead of a second normal DI cartridge and it solved the problem.

My simple of view of phosphates from my own experience is for an sps dominant tank with a large variety of sps, anything over .03 PO4, I see some issues, some sps brown, slow growth, algae growth, poor polyp extension. Personally, I think below .03 is preferable. I know a lot of people like to say they have dirty tanks and high phosphates, but I always see issues arise in my tank when it gets "dirty" and some sps always brown out very quickly for me stop growing, or have terrible polyp extension, while some sps in the same conditions look fantastic. I think long term, and I am talking years, running a high nutrient sps tank with a large variety of sps is playing with fire.

I agree in that P04 should be 0.03 or lower which is where I try to keep my tank via Red Sea NOPOX dosing. A few days ago I started noticing my acro polyps not extending. Nitrates were below 0.25 but my P04 was at 0.17. Noticed a buildup of detritus in my sump and did a good cleaning and water change. Hoping this will bring my P04 back down.