Is GFO a problem for LPS

EpicWin · Oct 30, 2012

Ok. You guys are going to jump all over me but I don't test for phosphates so I have no idea what they were before I added the reactor and have no clue where they are now. I've heard the salifert po4 test is not accurate to the necessary level anyways.
Here is my issue. Some of my acans and chalices are STN in the strangest way. It is Ike they are peeling away from the skeleton at the edges. I am guessing it my have to do with the gfo reactor. I did not slowly ramp up the gfo. I just added a bunch and everything looked incredible a few weeks later. Now a few months later I really noticed some chalices and acans are unhappy. They always have their feeding tentacles out, which I've heard means they aren't getting enough food. I feed my fish quite a bit 2 times a day. I have a skimmer rated for 350 gal on a 200 gal tank and I have a refugium with cheto. What do u guys think. Should I reduce the gfo? Or is this just a case of no tank can support every coral ?

ritter6788 · Oct 31, 2012

I won't jump on you because I did the same thing the first time I used Gfo.

Yes, the problem you have can be caused by too much Gfo.

How much Gfo are you using and what is the water volume?

In my experience Gfo should be used in much less than recommended amounts. It is very efficient at removing phosphates and can easily over strip the water.

mcarroll · Oct 31, 2012

EpicWin:

I always say "trust your gut - it's always right" and from your description that seems to be the case again here. You ID'd your own problem in your question.

TRUST YOUR GUT! (BTW this is not your fault, per se. I'm sure your brain was responsible for this GFO gaffe....your gut would never do something like this. Don't trust the brain without checking against the gut!) GFO can have two possible effects (AFAIK) that could cause what you're seeing: 1, you may have simply lowered PO4 too much at once, or to too low a level; 2, GFO has a very measurable lowering effect on alkalinity. If your PO4 levels were very high or your alkalinity already low, then either of these are very likely what your corals are disliking so much.

Personally, I would take the reactor offline until you can get a test kit. Also, what caused you to want to add the GFO reactor in the first place?

Let us know, because most things that "seem" to indicate a reactor are actually indicating overfeeding or maybe even overstocking - both of these problems are best addressed directly. In such cases a reactor is just a bandaid...and I hate putting my fish and coral (or anyone's!) at the mercy of a dang bandaid.

BTW, the Salifert kit is "good enough" to tell you what you need to know (use/replace GFO? ..or not?) without going to further expense or bother. If you want something higher-range "just because" then the ULR Phosphorus tester (NOT the ULR Phosphate tester...not that much better than the Salifert results.) from Hanna is a nice option. Personally I think the Hanna would be overkill for you and the Salifert just fine, but it depends a lot on you and your preferences.

I hope this helps!

-Matt

EpicWin · Oct 31, 2012

Wow you guys! Great advice. I love the don't trust your brain. I honestly had no real reason to add the gfo other than I wanted great color in my coral. I think after the advice u guys gave I'm going to take it off line this weekend. I also use ROX carbon from BRS. Do u guys foresee any issues there?

Norcalreefer · Oct 31, 2012

I don't know. I've added gfo to one of my tanks that I had lots of phos fluctuations in. I test with a hanna checker. I had chaeto in my sump and it was growing very quickly because my high phos. I could get my phos down to 0.04 at times, but it would sit around 0.07 (too high for me) most of the time and spike up to 0.15 or a little higher when I had to cut some of the cheato out to make room for more to grow. I have a large amount of GFO on that tank now and I keep that tank at 0.00 95% of the time. I change my GFO when I start to see any phos at all. My acans would not open up fully with the phos levels anywhere over 0.04 and are way way happier now that I have my phos consistently down. I think you should at least get some sort of testing ability on this. I completely disagree about the gut thing. With out testing numbers you can follow your gut feeling all over the place and never truly get any feed back at all. It's just a gut feeling or a guess. I think you where accurate when you said that you don't really know if this is a phos problem at all. All you know is that you changed something and something else changed. You can't really know if it's the phos that changed with out testing.

Airborne · Dec 1, 2012

Yes GFO can strip the PO4. Thats its design. I run around 0.01-2ppm. LPS not as happy. I let it run up to 0.06 best of both worlds for LPS and SPS. Readjust and you will be fine. Also I do run my BRS GFO through a reactor.

Ike · Dec 2, 2012

EpicWin said:
Wow you guys! Great advice. I love the don't trust your brain. I honestly had no real reason to add the gfo other than I wanted great color in my coral. I think after the advice u guys gave I'm going to take it off line this weekend. I also use ROX carbon from BRS. Do u guys foresee any issues there?

GFO with ROX gac can be a nasty combo if not used with some moderation, especially with a really good protein skimmer and a lower nutrient system. It's only annecdotal, but I think I can replicate stress caused by using too much of these two items together in my system at will. I stopped running GAC full time a while back and now only run it for a day or two every month, usually before a water change. The worst hit seem to be favias and acans, but I've also experienced burnt tips on sps from the GAC/GFO/oversized skimmer combo I've got going. It was getting really bad when I was traveling a while back and a lot of my corals would not look good after longer trips. This went away as soon as I realized that my wife was feeding my tanks far less than I was when I was gone.

gmoney243 · Dec 2, 2012

i didnt see any mention of how often you replace your GFO? if u didnt replace it then after 2 months your nutrients went back up and could be causing the problem. to high of nutrients or to low of nutrient can cause corals to die.

Ike · Dec 4, 2012

gmoney243 said:
i didnt see any mention of how often you replace your GFO? if u didnt replace it then after 2 months your nutrients went back up and could be causing the problem. to high of nutrients or to low of nutrient can cause corals to die.

With the coral mentioned (chalice and acan) a little bit higher nutrients is not going to be an issue, in fact they seem to be quite tolerant of higher (within reason) phosphate levels.