In an effort to bring Nitrates down, i decided to give No3 Po4-X a shot. After a month or so of using, my nitrates are down from 25 to 2. No complains there. However it also bought my P04 down to near undetectable levels. Right now reading 0 via Hanna Phosphorus ULR.
I was aiming for Red Sea's accelerated growth settings which recommend N03 to be at 1-2ppm, and P04 at 0.1 to maintain a relatively high population of Zooxanthellae that will provide enough energy to the corals for growth.
How do i bring P04 closer to 0.1ppm without increasing Nitrates too?
I have followed the accelerated growth parameters for around 7 months and it certainly works as far as coral growth goes, they really do grow. Not sure SPS are to keen as I only have a few and I believe they can brown due to the increase in zooxanthelia. But LPS and my soft corals loved it to the point I was having to frag some of them!
I also dose NoPox but what I did notice in my tank was that although the nitrates were kept in check, originally at between 1-2ppm, the phosphate gradually increased and this seemed to coincide with an outbreak of hair algea which gradually got worse and worse on the live rock. And I was feeding the fish once a day lightly.
Phosphate peeked at 0.16ppm at which point with the hair algea I had to do something to stop it taking over the tank, so I purchased a Deltec FR509 reactor and started running Rowaphos GFO. Within a week this had reduced phosphate to <0.04 and it remains in check. I have the Red Sea Pro and Hanna testers and from what I believe your unlikely to have 0 phosphate even though the checker says you have. I can now feed the fish a lot more without affecting parameters.
Just to go on a bit further, I started scrubbing the hair algea with a toothbrush and when I checked my Nitrate a few days after it had shot up to 15-20ppm and I've been slowly dragging it back down over the last month or so and currently sitting at somewhere just above 5ppm. The hair algea has not completely gone as yet but it's under control and I've also just added a small bag of Purigen to pull out a few more nutrients. The later is just a bit of a trial.
Having spent hours reading about phosphate etc the general recommendations (apart from Red Sea with their accelerated growth) seems to be around 0.03ppm and any higher levels can lead to algea problems, which is exactly what I found.
I'm by no means an expert on these things as yet, but I'm just telling you my experience in allowing the phosphate to rise above the general 'normal' recommendations. So if you follow it just keep an eye out for nuisance algea issues. It was very slow in my tank over a month or so before I realised something was wrong.
I'm currently dropping back down to normal levels as recommended on here simply because I don't want to take any chances with algea outbreaks because of high phosphate levels.
