How to keep up with phosphate consumption

[Stelioshah]

Hey guys, for the past few months I am really struggling to keep phosphates higher than 0 (using hanna phosphorus checker). Whenever I dose the phosphates up to 0.03ppm, within a few hours they are back to 0ppm. I went away from home for a few weeks and since I could not keep up with the consumption via auto feeding, some corals melted, that's how I know its phosphates. Ever since I returned and started dosing back the rest of the corals got as fat as they were before I left. The problem is that when I dose phosphates on a daily basis I get more and more harder to remove algae. But at the same time that's the only way to keep them above zero. Phosphates literally are as zero as they get, the algae makes sure of this, there is no phosphate in the water. I am not using gfo or anything else and the light is kind of dim considering it is mainly an lps tank. The nitrates currently are sitting at around 10-15ppm. Will reducing nitrates to about 5ppm help? I really don't know how to deal with this. The phosphate consumption is insane. The tank is a bit less than a year old, only dry rock.

 

[slythy]

The ultra low range hanna? Are you positive you are actually dosing .03 phosphates?

do you have a refugium? I have to dose mine weekly with my refugium eating most of it
I cant imagine your actually up taking that much phosphate within an hour

 

[Tuan’s Reef]

Have pic of your tank? If you remove as much algae manually, that should lower the phosphate consumption. Do you have a refugium?

 

[Stelioshah]

The ultra low range hanna? Are you positive you are actually dosing .03 phosphates?

do you have a refugium? I have to dose mine weekly with my refugium eating most of it
I cant imagine your actually up taking that much phosphate within an hour

Yes the ultra low range phosphorus and I do have a refuge with no algae currently, and yes I am positive that I am dosing to 0.03ppm and that the checker works. If I dose in the morning and measure within the next hour the checker gives a reading. If I measure in the afternoon of the same day it reads zero again. This happens daily I have checked this for a whole week straight dosing early in the day checking right after and then again at night.

 

[Stelioshah]

Have pic of your tank? If you remove as much algae manually, that should lower the phosphate consumption. Do you have a refugium?

That's the thing, I remove all the algae of the aquarium I do a water change clean the filter and then dose some phosphates. Within a day after the water change they are back at zero and this cycle starts again.

 

[Stelioshah]

Have pic of your tank? If you remove as much algae manually, that should lower the phosphate consumption. Do you have a refugium?

It currently almost is night time here so the lights are almost out. I will post a picture tomorrow. The only algae I am getting is brown film algae and coralline. In the past week after doing a few water changes I also got some red cyano another indicator of low nutrients.

 

[slythy]

How large of a tank? What medias are you using? What phos are you dosing and what amount? What corals are you keeping? Might be able to feed some heavy phosphate coral food

I feed really heavily to help keep phos and nitrates up with my refuge and corals.

 

[Stelioshah]

How large of a tank? What medias are you using? What phos are you dosing and what amount? What corals are you keeping? Might be able to feed some heavy phosphate coral food

I feed really heavily to help keep phos and nitrates up with my refuge and corals.

Tank is ~40 gallons I have the tunze 9004 protein skimmer and a mechanical filter with carbon in it. The phosphate solution is K2HPO4 if I am not mistaken. I currently have 2 zoa frags, 1 ricordea florida mushroom, one platygyra frag, an acan head, a stylophora and a cyphastrea. Half of the stylophora melted while I was away. Now that I am keeping the phosphates up again I can see new skin growth at the melted parts of the coral. I am already feeding liquid rotifers (I was almost feeding daily) and currently corol and growth pellets.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

If accurate, it is likely being both biologically consumed and bound to rock and sand, I’d dose more each day. 0.03 ppm is not that much.

 

[Stelioshah]

There is a total imbalance in general. While feeding nitrates always get higher and higher steadily but phosphates never do. I am mainly feeding pellets, my fish don't like frozen apart from frozen eggs.

 

[Stelioshah]

If accurate, it is likely being both biologically consumed and bound to rock and sand, I’d dose more each day. 0.03 ppm is not that much.

What do I do with the algae then? Do I hope that it goes away on its own?

 

[killer2001]

I am dealing with this at the moment as well. I believe the solution may be a combination of things, such as continuing routine water changes, sucking up as much algae as you can, and then replacing the algae with other things that absorb nutrients such as more corals or chaeto in a refuge, all while keeping the nutrients up and not bottoming out.

 

[slythy]

I think youd have good results with a fuge and cheato. Its a good natural way to keep both in check and it keeps the algae growth to the chaeto and not bad algaes

 

[Stelioshah]

I think youd have good results with a fuge and cheato. Its a good natural way to keep both in check and it keeps the algae growth to the chaeto and not bad algaes

I did have some chaeto and it all melted away within a month, only 2 small branches of caulepra (they were mixed in the chaeto i bought) have survived since then but they are growing extremely slowy... these also almost totally melted while I was away but I managed to save them. The amount of algae in the fuge is negligible that's why I said with no algae, it is a microscopic amount..

 

[Stelioshah]

Have pic of your tank? If you remove as much algae manually, that should lower the phosphate consumption. Do you have a refugium?

Here you go, coralline growth, brown film algae growth, cyanobacteria (ever since I did some water changes after cleaning the algae) and the half melted regenerating stylophora, it gets new skin growth daily no long gha not anything like that to be the culprit..:

 

[mtraylor]

I cant keep phosphates in m frag tank either. Only get readings if i dose allot. That being saidy corals are fine. I found that keeping nutrients high by dosing resea ab+ im abke to sustain awesome corals.

I experimented some with dosing. If I dose. Enough to sustain .03 phosphates using neophose. My aquarium will burst into hair algae outbreak if I continue to keep nutrients high with ab+ so I no longer chase the phosphates.

Frag tank was started with dry rock. I now just b periodically dose some phosphates. I dose nitrates every other day to keep sustained.

 

[KStatefan]

I am dosing 0.07 ppm of phosphates per day right now trying to keep above zero. Finally might be getting somewhere after 10 weeks PO4 was 0.04 on Saturday.

 

[Stelioshah]

I am dosing 0.07 ppm of phosphates per day right now trying to keep above zero. Finally might be getting somewhere after 10 weeks PO4 was 0.04 on Saturday.

Did you get this much algae? When dosing I pretty much need to clean the glass every 2-3 days (the algae also gets very strong). When I was not dosing I would get no coral growth and no algae at the same time. I was sustaining everything via feeding but it still wasn't enough, my corals were slowly fading away and getting stressed. I realised this when I first dosed phosphates and everything seemed happy again..

 

[Tonycass12]

I'm in the same boat. Ive dumped a ton of neophos into the tank trying to slowly bring phosphates up and they just hold steady at 0.

 

[KStatefan]

Did you get this much algae? When dosing I pretty much need to clean the glass every 2-3 days (the algae also gets very strong). When I was not dosing I would get no coral growth and no algae at the same time. I was sustaining everything via feeding but it still wasn't enough, my corals were slowly fading away and getting stressed. I realised this when I first dosed phosphates and everything seemed happy again..

I clean the glass every other day or so and have turf algae and a little hair algae but I would rather have that then dinos. I need to add some utilitarian fish to my mix.