Nitrate and phosphate 0

FRANK48 · Sep 13, 2021

Reef. said:
Probably best not dosing anything yet then, see how you go with manual removal, and a good cuc, it will take time though.

Really important to remove as much as possible as any that is left in the tank and dies will just release all the nutrients back into the water.

Use a small sand siphon, in the same hand pull the algae off and straight into the siphon. If possible better to remove the rock and scrub it off, your corals should be ok for a good few minutes out of water

Remember that your tests will be incorrect whilst the algae is there as it will be using the PO4 and the nitrates.

As said you really do need to work out how it got out of control to stop it happening again.

Hard to give exact advice as no picture or details on the tank for more individual advice.

anthonygf · Sep 13, 2021

All good advice. Best thing you can do right now is manual removal for awhile. When I removed all my GHA my nutrients shot up to N 25ppm from 5 and P 0.031 to 0.131 and been 2 months now. Make this simple tool to scrape and suck out as much as you can for how ever long it takes for you to get your nutrients stable.
Get a 1/4" stainless steel straw stuffed inside a 1/2" hose with rubber band as seal, you can pluck the long stuff with your fingers and suck it out into a bucket, if it is short you may be able to scrape it off rocks.

anthonygf · Sep 13, 2021

That is actually not too bad, most of it on back wall. I had clumps on my rocks only. Just manual removal for now, see how it goes for a couple weeks.

Reef. · Sep 13, 2021

That is not as bad as I was expecting, you can fix most that in a day, looks like most is on the back wall, just wash your hand make sure no soap on your hand/arm, use a credit card and scape it off, use floss to catch it in the overflow.

Oh and looks like you are doing things right, just need to clean the back wall more often.

Just John · Sep 13, 2021

anthonygf said:
All good advice. Best thing you can do right now is manual removal for awhile. When I removed all my GHA my nutrients shot up to N 25ppm from 5 and P 0.031 to 0.131 and been 2 months now. Make this simple tool to scrape and suck out as much as you can for how ever long it takes for you to get your nutrients stable.
Get a 1/4" stainless steel straw stuffed inside a 1/2" hose with rubber band as seal, you can pluck the long stuff with your fingers and suck it out into a bucket, if it is short you may be able to scrape it off rocks.

If you want to make this in the future, here are the straws I used. This will definitely come in handy!

FRANK48 · Sep 13, 2021

Reef. said:
That is not as bad as I was expecting, you can fix most that in a day, looks like most is on the back wall, just wash your hand make sure no soap on your hand/arm, use a credit card and scape it off, use floss to catch it in the overflow.

Oh and looks like you are doing things right, just need to clean the back wall more often.

Thank you

Reef. said:
That is not as bad as I was expecting, you can fix most that in a day, looks like most is on the back wall, just wash your hand make sure no soap on your hand/arm, use a credit card and scape it off, use floss to catch it in the overflow.

Oh and looks like you are doing things right, just need to clean the back wall more often.

anthonygf said:
All good advice. Best thing you can do right now is manual removal for awhile. When I removed all my GHA my nutrients shot up to N 25ppm from 5 and P 0.031 to 0.131 and been 2 months now. Make this simple tool to scrape and suck out as much as you can for how ever long it takes for you to get your nutrients stable.
Get a 1/4" stainless steel straw stuffed inside a 1/2" hose with rubber band as seal, you can pluck the long stuff with your fingers and suck it out into a bucket, if it is short you may be able to scrape it off rocks.

T-J · Sep 13, 2021

Shoot, that's easy to fix! Scrape off the back wall with a razor, throw in a few Mexican turbo snails, and you're set! With such a new tank, and such small corals, I don't think you need to be dosing anything. Make sure you're feeding throughout the day, and do water changes. If you're N and P are too low, go longer in between changes.
I've stopped water changes on my 120g. Haven't done one in the past few months. Phosphate finally got up, and Nitrate is slowing rising (along with dosing Neo Nitro). Switched to Tropic Marin powdered All for Reef due to me not doing water changes as much anymore.

FRANK48 · Sep 14, 2021

T-J said:
Shoot, that's easy to fix! Scrape off the back wall with a razor, throw in a few Mexican turbo snails, and you're set! With such a new tank, and such small corals, I don't think you need to be dosing anything. Make sure you're feeding throughout the day, and do water changes. If you're N and P are too low, go longer in between changes.
I've stopped water changes on my 120g. Haven't done one in the past few months. Phosphate finally got up, and Nitrate is slowing rising (along with dosing Neo Nitro). Switched to Tropic Marin powdered All for Reef due to me not doing water changes as much anymore.

Would a lawnmower blenny help?