Supreme Guide good, but....

Johnny5ive · Aug 2, 2016

The "Supreme Guide..." is good but not very in-depth when it comes to chemistry. I'm restarting my 29 nano due to outbreak of aptasia. Luckily I wasn't that invested with corals, only a couple of clowns.

One thing I didn't do with the old setup was monitor phosphates and had red algae, even with the use of fresh seawater. So this time I made sure my phosphates were 0 at start-up. I was getting weird results from testing. Not sure if it was due to old test kits or not. Nitrite was slow to start. Then I came across this article: http://www.bioconlabs.com/nitribactfacts.html
Turns out all forms of nitrifying bacteria need a certain amount of phosphate to produce ATP (Adenosine Tri-phosphate) for cellular function or else you will get "phosphate block". So...I went out to CVS and bought a Fleets enema. A little overkill cause it has 96G of monobasic and bibasic phosphate. Only needed to dose .2ml to bring phosphates to 0.5 ppm. A little high for an established tank, but harmless for now. I also wonder...In established tanks, can a crash be attributed to 0 phosphates and the death of nitrifying bacteria?

Now, what I'd also like to know is....After cycling is over are the other stages (as cited in the Supreme Guide) of diatoms, cyanobacteria, and green-brown algae an inevitability? Some "experts" say "yes' and others say ""no".Will dropping phosphates below .03 ppm prevent this? In my old setup, I had cyanobacteria with no idea how to get rid of it. But then, I didn't test for phosphates. My plan for after cycling include: control of phosphates and nitrates, Limit lighting (JBJ LED 89 watts) to 6 to 8 hours a day(Would like to get a setup from Steve's LED's so I can use a controller for gradual on, off), Using RO/DI water for top offs and fresh seawater for weekly 5 gal changes, and regular filter cleaning.

Johnny5ive · Aug 3, 2016

I need to make a correction on the Fleets enema. It is 26 G of combined mono and bibasic phosphate in 197 ml. which is 132 ppm/ml. So it takes very little to raise phosphate. In my case, 0.2 ml raised phosphates from 0 to about 0.25 ppm. One thing I am going to invest in is a Hanna Phosphorous checker.

brandon429 · Aug 3, 2016

not any reef cycle has ever been arrested for having too little po4 you can disregard that unless you are running the harshest possible po4 adsorbing media and then yours will be the first seen. This is a giant cycle thread below, and not once do we cover po4 because it doesn't matter (so far am open to changes if needed)

its not saying that chem wise they aren't correct, its saying that when you make a cycling reef tank, po4 is taken care of and what they wrote isn't applicable. if you hooked up three gfo canister filters your tank would still cycle along the lines listed here, hope that helps to know

brandon429 · Aug 3, 2016

http://reef2reef.com/threads/new-ta...d-cocktail-shrimp-live-rock-no-shrimp.214618/

I estimate a thousand reefs have cycled off only that info. the day po4 changes a single outcome ill make a whole page on it

brandon429 · Aug 3, 2016

the way your approach ties into that thread is simple/redundancy, so its not harmful at all to do what you are doing.

if you add things to support the bacteria, that's in addition to what they already would've got during the normal cycle anyway, it wasn't a breakpoint between cycle success at all.

theres group A rock that gets ammonia and time and then an accurate digestion test

then theres group B which is ready to rock n roll. phosphates get into any natural standing water system at all times...rates of input and sources vary, but not such that you can stall a cycle using any common approach.