Nutrient control question......

Not really but I have found some that are kinda stringy looking on the back of this one rock but I siphoned it out today in my 30 gallon water change, along with siphoning the sand.....I think it's a combination of cyano and Dino's but I have no idea.....on a brighter side I did check my nitrates and they are lower than they have been and were about 3.5 so hopefully that gets Lower and lower....any other ideas for getting rid of this stuff??
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What's this cool little iPhone app?
 
I can't tell much from those pictures.

Does it seem snotty when you push something through it?
I'm kinda starting to think I have a little bit of Dino's also but I'm not positive, some of the stuff on my rocks looks a little string at times, but the sand is not stringy at all but turns brown witching 24 hrs of siphoning it like stated earlier.....I also have lost a bunch of Snails over this process but not my conch or hermits or emerald crabs?? I recently lost two dwarf angels, not sure if that has anything to do with possibly picking off of rocks and eating Dino type algae?? I really don't know I guess.....However my corals have never been better and my sps are looking great??!!! Hahaha sooooo how should I battle this without tearing my tank down and taking rocks out?? It's not terrible and all over my rocks so here is what I'm thinking....

1) keep vinegar dosing (nitrates are currently lower than ever at between 2 and 5

2) water changes once a week like normal or should I do more or less water changes?? I use rodi but I have also heard Dino's like water changes (no idea on this)

3) during water changes blow off rocks with turkey baster and try to suck up brownish algae on rocks and sand as much as possible

Thoughts?? Once again thank you for trying to help me with this extremely annoying issue!
 
I managed to lower my nutrients tremendously by using Marine pure blocks. Before I was running over 15ppm of nitrates and high phosphates around 1ppm and got everything under control with 6 blocks of marine pure on my 600 gallon acuarium, tried everything on a period of about a year struggling to get nutrients under control, bio pellets, vodka dosing, NOPOX.

NOPOX DID WORK, but it seemed to cause RTN on SPS corals. Also caused cyano.

So give marine pure a try, it's great. I'm currently @ <2 ppm nitrate using RED SEA test kit.
0.05 phosphates using Hanna Checker.
 
I managed to lower my nutrients tremendously by using Marine pure blocks. Before I was running over 15ppm of nitrates and high phosphates around 1ppm and got everything under control with 6 blocks of marine pure on my 600 gallon acuarium, tried everything on a period of about a year struggling to get nutrients under control, bio pellets, vodka dosing, NOPOX.

NOPOX DID WORK, but it seemed to cause RTN on SPS corals. Also caused cyano.

So give marine pure a try, it's great. I'm currently @ <2 ppm nitrate using RED SEA test kit.
0.05 phosphates using Hanna Checker.
Good to know, I will look into it!
 
For an update.....I am currently dosing 100ml a day of vinegar and nitrates are finally getting lower!!! They are at about 2.5 now and sps and lps are looking great, but I'm still losing snails randomly and I have lost about 5 fish recently??? No idea if it's related to anything I'm doing or what but my parameters are spot on and still doing water changes weekly.....
I still have brown diatom looking crap on my sand non stop and I am still debating on taking out all my sand but I love the look of a tank with sand...so I am torn....maybe take out some of the sand I have or take it all out and out in a new and different type of sand?? But I don't want anything to mess up what I have going on with my corals because I've never had such good success with my sps before! Haha it's like one thing is great and then something else messes up!
I also still have the brown algae growing on my rocks, I suck some up on water changes and blow off the rest with a turkey baster every Saturday....
 
For an update.....I am currently dosing 100ml a day of vinegar and nitrates are finally getting lower!!! They are at about 2.5 now and sps and lps are looking great, but I'm still losing snails randomly and I have lost about 5 fish recently??? No idea if it's related to anything I'm doing or what but my parameters are spot on and still doing water changes weekly.....
I still have brown diatom looking crap on my sand non stop and I am still debating on taking out all my sand but I love the look of a tank with sand...so I am torn....maybe take out some of the sand I have or take it all out and out in a new and different type of sand?? But I don't want anything to mess up what I have going on with my corals because I've never had such good success with my sps before! Haha it's like one thing is great and then something else messes up!
I also still have the brown algae growing on my rocks, I suck some up on water changes and blow off the rest with a turkey baster every Saturday....


Carbon dosing sometimes creates Red Cyano, Try marine pure and it will get everything under control in about 3-4 weeks
, Start to wean off Carbon dosing. And use chemiclean to get rid of the brown sand.


You will be glad you did, one less thing to dose.
 
Carbon dosing sometimes creates Red Cyano, Try marine pure and it will get everything under control in about 3-4 weeks
, Start to wean off Carbon dosing. And use chemiclean to get rid of the brown sand.


You will be glad you did, one less thing to dose.
That's the thing I've tried chemi clean already and it didn't work so maybe it's not even cyano.....I've never heard of the marine pure stuff...I'm gonna look it up and read up on it
 
Yes but a little block can colonize a lot more bacteria than Big Rocks Read the tests that BRS did comparing it to different kind of rocks, I can tell you its really unbelievable. I spent two years trying to figure out my tank. Spent tons of money adding two 100 gallon refugiums outside my house, so im talking about 3,000 between equipmet and building a closet for them, growing hiuge amounts of chaetto and caulerpa, and still had 15ppm nitrates. I could have probably skipped all this by adding this blocks. How much water volume you have and whats your Bioload? Do you have room in the sump for this blocks?
 
Yes but a little block can colonize a lot more bacteria than Big Rocks Read the tests that BRS did comparing it to different kind of rocks, I can tell you its really unbelievable. I spent two years trying to figure out my tank. Spent tons of money adding two 100 gallon refugiums outside my house, so im talking about 3,000 between equipmet and building a closet for them, growing hiuge amounts of chaetto and caulerpa, and still had 15ppm nitrates. I could have probably skipped all this by adding this blocks. How much water volume you have and whats your Bioload? Do you have room in the sump for this blocks?
I Corrected my prevoius post, I meant that this blocks can house a lot more bacteria than rocks.\
 
Refugiums, marine pure blocks under tank sump, ozone, orca pro 2 skimmer
Plus lots more , and what really lowered my nutrients was the blocks, after many unsuscesful attempts.

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I managed to lower my nutrients tremendously by using Marine pure blocks. Before I was running over 15ppm of nitrates and high phosphates around 1ppm and got everything under control with 6 blocks of marine pure on my 600 gallon acuarium, tried everything on a period of about a year struggling to get nutrients under control, bio pellets, vodka dosing, NOPOX.

NOPOX DID WORK, but it seemed to cause RTN on SPS corals. Also caused cyano.

So give marine pure a try, it's great. I'm currently @ <2 ppm nitrate using RED SEA test kit.
0.05 phosphates using Hanna Checker.

Where do you think phosphate went when using these blocks?

They provide space for denitrifying bacteria, but I can't see how they result in a big phosphate reduction if you stopped organic carbon dosing. :)

FWIW, a possible drawback to them is release of aluminum. That may or may not be a problem, but a number of folks have reported it.
 
Randy doesn't nitrifying bacteria reduce phosphates?. I don't think this blocks are aluminum based. But I'll do a triton test and see how my aluminum is doing.

It might be coincidental but nitrates went down from 15ppm down to <2 and phosphates are <0.05 using Hanna.

No GFO or any other means of phosphate export that I know of .
 
Randy doesn't nitrifying bacteria reduce phosphates?. I don't think this blocks are aluminum based. But I'll do a triton test and see how my aluminum is doing.

It might be coincidental but nitrates went down from 15ppm down to <2 and phosphates are <0.05 using Hanna.

No GFO or any other means of phosphate export that I know of .

I'm not sure why you observed what you did, but in general, I would not expect large phosphate reductions to follow (especially long term) from the use of Marinepure blocks. :)

Nitrifying bacteria convert ammonia into nitrate (via nitrite). Like any living organism, if they increase tissue mass they will take up phosphate somehow. But adding a substrate for bacteria is unlikely to alter the tissue mass of nitrifying bacteria noticeably since in reef tanks it is already running pretty much fulls team ahead (since there is rarely any appreciable excess of ammonia). I do agree that if the role is to reduce live rock amounts, this sort of product will serve that need for a nitrifying bacteria substrate.

Denitrifying bacteria convert nitrate into N2. Like nitrifiers, if they increase tissue mass they will take up phosphate somehow. But they use disproportionally more N than P by a wide margin since they are using nitrate both as a source of N atoms for their tissues, and also as an electron acceptor in place of O2, and that extra N disappears as N2.

So when denitrification is an important process (either with something like these blocks, which use natural organics in the water, or when the process is driven by adding organic carbon), the system is often left with extra phosphate that folks usually have to deal with other ways. That is why products like GFO are often used along with organic carbon dosing.

If you read through the MarinePure Cermedia product literature, they focus exclusively on the nitrogen cycle bacteria mentioned above, without mention of phosphate that I have seen. :)

http://www.cermedia.com/marinepure-technical.php
 
I'm not sure why you observed what you did, but in general, I would not expect large phosphate reductions to follow (especially long term) from the use of Marinepure blocks. :)

Nitrifying bacteria convert ammonia into nitrate (via nitrite). Like any living organism, if they increase tissue mass they will take up phosphate somehow. But adding a substrate for bacteria is unlikely to alter the tissue mass of nitrifying bacteria noticeably since in reef tanks it is already running pretty much fulls team ahead (since there is rarely any appreciable excess of ammonia). I do agree that if the role is to reduce live rock amounts, this sort of product will serve that need for a nitrifying bacteria substrate.

Denitrifying bacteria convert nitrate into N2. Like nitrifiers, if they increase tissue mass they will take up phosphate somehow. But they use disproportionally more N than P by a wide margin since they are using nitrate both as a source of N atoms for their tissues, and also as an electron acceptor in place of O2, and that extra N disappears as N2.

So when denitrification is an important process (either with something like these blocks, which use natural organics in the water, or when the process is driven by adding organic carbon), the system is often left with extra phosphate that folks usually have to deal with other ways. That is why products like GFO are often used along with organic carbon dosing.

If you read through the MarinePure Cermedia product literature, they focus exclusively on the nitrogen cycle bacteria mentioned above, without mention of phosphate that I have seen. :)

http://www.cermedia.com/marinepure-technical.php
Read somewhere on their website that it will take phosphates too.

I can tell you on the nitrates side it was night and day difference, I was fighting it for 2 years. Before the blocks phosphates where around .20 now .005 or lower.
 

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