Phospates bottoming out while dosing nopox

[Cuong]

Looks great, but could be better I should say. I've lost a bit of yellow out of my purple passion acropora within the last month. Trying to color it back up. I'm placing the blame on a nitrate spike I had when I idiotically added live sand to my refugium...

 

[Cuong]

Choices would seem to including dosing less NOPOX, feeding more, or dosing phosphate somehow. I'm not really sure what is best.

In a 180 gallon system, Red Sea reccommends to add about 18ml of nopox daily initially. Wary of all the horror stories associated with overdosing and bacterial blooms, I never added more than 7.5 ml a day. I've been at this dosage for the last 4 weeks and it has done what it's advertised to do, albeit too well bottoming out my phosphates. I just started dosing NeoPhos today, almost a capful a day, to counteract this. Don't want to go too crazy with adding too much phopsphates, so I've decided in feeding the same and dosing nopox the same. Will monitor this for a week and see what happens.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

In a 180 gallon system, Red Sea reccommends to add about 18ml of nopox daily initially. Wary of all the horror stories associated with overdosing and bacterial blooms, I never added more than 7.5 ml a day. I've been at this dosage for the last 4 weeks and it has done what it's advertised to do, albeit too well bottoming out my phosphates. I just started dosing NeoPhos today, almost a capful a day, to counteract this. Don't want to go too crazy with adding too much phopsphates, so I've decided in feeding the same and dosing nopox the same. Will monitor this for a week and see what happens.

That sounds good.

IMO, it's just not optimal to recommend a certain amount of organic material to be added to an aquarium based on its volume. That might be a useful starting recommendation, but (IMO) it should be dosed to optimize the nitrate level. Then some sort of actions should be made to deal with phosphate.

Most often, that needed action is to export phosphate, but in some cases you may already have enough or more than enough phosphate export, and may need to reduce the export, feed more, or dose some.

 

[Robert Vacchiano]

Dosing no pox now and had to cut back.Nitrates at 12 and phosphate undetectable. Had a coral bleach out and soft corals not reacting well to no pox. Cut back to 3 mills a day on a 300 gallon reef .Be carefull

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Dosing no pox now and had to cut back.Nitrates at 12 and phosphate undetectable. Had a coral bleach out and soft corals not reacting well to no pox. Cut back to 3 mills a day on a 300 gallon reef .Be carefull

Do you have any other means of reducing phosphate being used? It is somewhat unusual for organic carbon dosing to bottom out phosphate when there is nitrate remaining.