Zero phosphate, should I stop the phyto?

[jda]

In general, when you have coral, don't ever cut feedings... rather increase export. The fish feedings is what actually drives the bus to get corals their building blocks, along with high quality light.

 

[Borat]

Keep in mind I am dosing about 3-5ml in about 13 gallons of water which is about half of the dosing per 20 gal from algae barns directions.

Ahh understood.

Sold phyto (i.e. not cultured by yourself) is mostly dead (that's no problem). So your phyto dosing is basically adding nutrients to the tank. Addition of nutrients should not decrease (directly) your phosphates and nitrates.

I wouldn't worry about phosphatess and nitrates in this context - if it helped your tank, keep dosing.

Cheers.

 

[BiggestE22]

Some of you know I was in a big battle with cyano recently and did a 5 day blackout and peroxide. My nitrates and phosphate we're both low but detectable right where I wanted them. My hammer coral has been looking puny though and there is some brown stuff growing on its skeleton causing recession. Everything else seems happy enough. I tested this evening and had 0 nitrates, and 0 phosphate. I had backed down on the feeding to help deal with algae, but not that much. The diatoms are finally burning out. I dose approximately 3 ml of algae barn phyto in the evening and have been for a couple of months and this is the first time I've seen the nutrients bottom out and think that maybe one of the things aggravating the hammer coral.

Brown jelly on Hammer is bad

 

[Duncan62]

Does phyto reduce phophates ? I never heard this before. If you have low or 0 phophates you should most likely feed more or lower refugium light time or something along the lines of this.

You need to feed more or filter less. Lol get away from 0.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Back when I was growing phyto en masse at home (Nano, Tet, Iso, Rhodomonas, and Chaetoceras) I would dose a 1 liter bottle of those varieties mixed in my 110 gallon reef every other day. Never saw corals as happy, and my feather dusters, thorny oyster, and flame scallop thrived

 

[Borat]

Back when I was growing phyto en masse at home (Nano, Tet, Iso, Rhodomonas, and Chaetoceras) I would dose a 1 liter bottle of those varieties mixed in my 110 gallon reef every other day. Never saw corals as happy, and my feather dusters, thorny oyster, and flame scallop thrived

Why did you stop?

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Why did you stop?

Had to tear the tank down. Came home and one corner of the stand had collapsed and tank was leaning. Drained tank, sold all fish/inverts/corals/rocks/phyto that afternoon.

Was out of the reef hobby for a bit, but back at it now with my 75 gallon. Reinforced the hardwood stand this time around

 

[Bombschell]

Brown jelly on Hammer is bad

Fortunately no brown jelly yet. That is what killed my frogspawn and kind of kicked this whole mess off though. There is some cyano or something on the hammer's skeleton causing recession, but no goo at this point.