Reef Roids and Phos

[Kaljaxias]

So I’ve started dosing Polyp Booster and Reef Roods once a week. I just use 1 ml and a pinch respectively. I notice my Phosphates jump up to .08 and my Nitrates stay at its consistent 2. Is it a problem that the phosphate jumps so high? It stabilizes throughout the following couple days and I’m just using socks and skimmer at the moment for filtration. I usually get a tiny Diatom bloom during those 2 days which is annoying but tolerable. Anyway, haven’t used yet to even see if there is a benefit to the RR, it’s a 50:50 looking at the forums.

 

[Spare time]

I try to stay below 0.1ppm but others have a lower target. If you are broadcast feeding, try target feeding instead.

 

[Nick Steele]

.08 phos isn’t high imo.

Honestly I’ve dozed reefroids daily for weeks any never seen any jump in phosphate or nitrates.

 

[Mike from TN]

So I’ve started dosing Polyp Booster and Reef Roods once a week. I just use 1 ml and a pinch respectively. I notice my Phosphates jump up to .08 and my Nitrates stay at its consistent 2. Is it a problem that the phosphate jumps so high? It stabilizes throughout the following couple days and I’m just using socks and skimmer at the moment for filtration. I usually get a tiny Diatom bloom during those 2 days which is annoying but tolerable. Anyway, haven’t used yet to even see if there is a benefit to the RR, it’s a 50:50 looking at the forums.

I was broadcast feeding Roids and was experiencing the same thing. Slight jump in phosphates and diatom bloom.
SOMEWHERE here on this forum, I can’t remember where I saw it, a member made a video of himself target feeding Roids. Mixes them really thick and feeds with a dental irrigation syringe. Just drops little clumps into the mouth of the corals. It looked interesting so I tried it. Very little product is going into the water column and the corals really chow down on it. I feed Roids 2X weekly and have not had a phos swing or diatoms since I started feeding this way.

 

[Kaljaxias]

I was broadcast feeding Roids and was experiencing the same thing. Slight jump in phosphates and diatom bloom.
SOMEWHERE here on this forum, I can’t remember where I saw it, a member made a video of himself target feeding Roids. Mixes them really thick and feeds with a dental irrigation syringe. Just drops little clumps into the mouth of the corals. It looked interesting so I tried it. Very little product is going into the water column and the corals really chow down on it. I feed Roids 2X weekly and have not had a phos swing or diatoms since I started feeding this way.

Sounds like a great technique. So my question now is do you notice a difference in your corals? I guess I’d like to know if the corals benefit from the roids prior to spending more money on the delivery system lol. If you say it’s amazing, I might try it out. My usual routine is daily dosing of RS AB+ along with spot feeding krill/mysis to my LPS. It’s just recently I thought I’d broadcast the Reef Roids to save time and try for better growth color.

 

[Kaljaxias]

.08 phos isn’t high imo.

Honestly I’ve dozed reefroids daily for weeks any never seen any jump in phosphate or nitrates.

Wow, daily! .08 isn’t high I agree it’s just a jump from .01-.02 where I was running. I was afraid of dosing more and driving PO4 up even further and have a perpetual diatom film on my glass. I might try the spot feeding with paste as suggested by another member. I will still keep it weekly for now. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Nick Steele]

No worries I had issues with 0 phos and nitrate so I figured why not feed my corals and fish a metric ton of food and even that didn’t work to raise nutrients. I was doing a full dose of reef roids and a cube or mysis or rods food daily without any raise in either. I got Dino’s now and am trying to dose phos and nitrate still without success.

This is all in a Nuvo 20 btw.

 

[User1]

I was broadcast feeding Roids and was experiencing the same thing. Slight jump in phosphates and diatom bloom.
SOMEWHERE here on this forum, I can’t remember where I saw it, a member made a video of himself target feeding Roids. Mixes them really thick and feeds with a dental irrigation syringe. Just drops little clumps into the mouth of the corals. It looked interesting so I tried it. Very little product is going into the water column and the corals really chow down on it. I feed Roids 2X weekly and have not had a phos swing or diatoms since I started feeding this way.

Not sure if this is what you are talking about but I actually came across this the other day. Sort of remember it thick, direct, feeding. No flow.

 

[Mike from TN]

Not sure if this is what you are talking about but I actually came across this the other day. Sort of remember it thick, direct, feeding. No flow.

That’s the one!

 

[Mike from TN]

Sounds like a great technique. So my question now is do you notice a difference in your corals? I guess I’d like to know if the corals benefit from the roids prior to spending more money on the delivery system lol. If you say it’s amazing, I might try it out. My usual routine is daily dosing of RS AB+ along with spot feeding krill/mysis to my LPS. It’s just recently I thought I’d broadcast the Reef Roids to save time and try for better growth color.

May just be my imagination and a little bit of wishful thinking on my part but it seems like coloration and polyp expansion seems to have improved over a pretty short period of time.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

FWIW, in general it doesn't matter much if organisms eats the food or it just rots on the bottom of the tank, the end result for phosphate is nearly the same: most of the P in foods ends up in the water, not in the organism, since foods have way more P than needed for an organism (even true with people).

 

[Nano sapiens]

FWIW, in general it doesn't matter much if organisms eats the food or it just rots on the bottom of the tank, the end result for phosphate is nearly the same: most of the P in foods ends up in the water, not in the organism, since foods have way more P than needed for an organism (even true with people).

I use ReefRoids once or twice a week at close to the recommended dosage and haven't noticed any PO4 increase. It does seem to increase my nitrate, but then again so does any food that I add. I have to feed 4x my normal amount of food to get any PO4 reading on a RS PO4 Pro test kit.

Of interest to me is how various reef aquaria process phosphate. The majority of reef keepers battle phosphate accumulation, but some (like myself) have difficulty with PO4 even being detected on a test kit (despite relatively heavy feeding of phosphate rich foods and very little visible algae present). One side effect is that NO3 tends to rise steadily in my system which indicates to me that PO4 is in short enough supply that the denitrifying bacteria species aren't getting enough to fully complete the denitrification process.

Would be interested in your thoughts on this, @Randy Holmes-Farley

Ralph.