So about a month ago I got a nice bloom or green algae and cyano. On 736 Hanna my phosphates were reading in the .05 range. Glass was also getting covered much quicker than usual, like have to wipe it everyday or there's a very noticeable green film. Most of my sps look great buy growth on 90% has slowed, and a few have browned out. I started running small amounts of phosfiltrum gfo. The situation has improved some but I'm reading 0 everytime on my Hanna 736 but the algae is still growing on the glass daily. Is this the algae masking a phosphate problem? Should I continue to run gfo? Ive been so busy at work I haven't been able to do a good water change in two weeks. Should I change a good 20%? It's frustrating we spend this money on test kits but if you have algae growing you can't get a good reading!! Thoughts? By the way I dose potassium nitrate to keep them between 2.5-5
Phosphate experts
- Thread starter Seth401
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Yes on the gfo. go slow dont overstrip the water too quickly. water changes wont help with Po. i literally add a tablespoon at a time.
consider increasing lighting intensity for the corals.
What is you No at?
with the high Po and dosing no Im not surprised you have algae either. And you may also want to look at whet your feeding. I have a lot of filter feeders and if I use marine snow the tank explodes.
I honestly am not big on the chemical stripping then re dosing. It seems and IME to hard to keep balanced.
Are you running a refugium?
The problem with PO is it binds to the rock and sand in higher concentrations and leaches back into the water. GFO then strips the water of Po then is pulling the Po of the rock and sand. The difficulty there is the corals need it to so if your numbers are high you have to pull the Po out carefully.
As stated above you need to determine the source of the Po. Those would past things like over feeding or a food really high in Po and it built up and bound to the rock. Another would be the addition of a rock that was high in bound Po.
I did once find the legendary unicorn of Reefing once. The bad rock. It was leaching Po and full of nitrates. It was old old from an old tank.
Without knowing a lot more about your tank rock bio load and food and it's life the last month or so I'm not sure what to reccomend to rebalance the system.
Off the cuff. I'd stop skimming for a couple weeks and test every few days stop carbon dosing stop no dosing and slowly increase light in the display. Test the PO every three days and perhaps maybe slowly reintroduce GFO if the numbers warrant after a week or so.
That would let the existing food in the system rot to increase no. Let bacterial populations balance themselves. Send more food to the corals. Allow for more photosynthesis so the corals use the food faster than the Algae. Yup it's gonna be ugly for a month. Maybe. Or it'll be the best thing.
I honestly am not big on the chemical stripping then re dosing. It seems and IME to hard to keep balanced.
Are you running a refugium?
The problem with PO is it binds to the rock and sand in higher concentrations and leaches back into the water. GFO then strips the water of Po then is pulling the Po of the rock and sand. The difficulty there is the corals need it to so if your numbers are high you have to pull the Po out carefully.
As stated above you need to determine the source of the Po. Those would past things like over feeding or a food really high in Po and it built up and bound to the rock. Another would be the addition of a rock that was high in bound Po.
I did once find the legendary unicorn of Reefing once. The bad rock. It was leaching Po and full of nitrates. It was old old from an old tank.
Without knowing a lot more about your tank rock bio load and food and it's life the last month or so I'm not sure what to reccomend to rebalance the system.
Off the cuff. I'd stop skimming for a couple weeks and test every few days stop carbon dosing stop no dosing and slowly increase light in the display. Test the PO every three days and perhaps maybe slowly reintroduce GFO if the numbers warrant after a week or so.
That would let the existing food in the system rot to increase no. Let bacterial populations balance themselves. Send more food to the corals. Allow for more photosynthesis so the corals use the food faster than the Algae. Yup it's gonna be ugly for a month. Maybe. Or it'll be the best thing.
