Go bare bottom or continue to endure?

N

Nem0

New member
I have been struggling with PO4 for months. For the last few months, I had to reduce the feeding to once a day and only managed to get the PO4 down to 0.08ppm.

After starving my fish for a few months and lost some of my anthias, I decided to increase the feeding back to 3 times a day. Now the PO4 is around 0.18ppm. This is happening even though I am growing quite a bit of chaeto macroalgae in my sump.

Adding rowaphos has practically no effect since the PO4 only dropped for a few days and go right back up. So I suspect very high PO4 reserve in my sandbed or LR.

Should I bite the bullet and just remove all my sandbed? I'm keeping mostly LPS, softies with a few sps that are perpetually brown.

What about siphoning out the sandbed a little at a time during water change? Will there be any detrimental effect of doing this? What is better? Remove them all at once or a bit at a time?

Please advice.

Regards,
Dave
 
depends how long the sand has been in the system. I would add some Filter pads to your sump for a week or two to build up some bacteria.

Put all the rock and filter pads in a tub or other tank. Move all the live stock over, and remove as much of the water that you can. Then get all the sand out.

Than put the water, rock back in, test...if all is cool add the live stock.

You don;t want to remove the sand in sections, because those lower levels of sand canm trap some bad stuff....you'll have all kinds of spikes and such during the process.
 
The tank is 250g. I have about 350lbs of sand that makes up about 4-5 inch sandbed.

How do I tell if the sand is the source of PO4?
 
I'd remove a 1/4 inch of the sand layer gently with a small siphon at a time, and when you get down to 1/2 inch deep, break down the tank and go barebottom. If you have this option, I'd buy some base rock, and cook it thoroughly (if you don't know what this means, do the research first!!!) Cooking is basically just submerging it in pure saltwater, and letting the inner contaminants leach into the water, and changing out the water every so often to get the rocks more pure. Be prepared to get rid of some of the rock in your tank. I say this only because I have an established tank, and cooking the rock would have meant losing most of my corals. And I couldn't have sustained the upper half of my reef on the without the base rock below it. I didn't cook my rock at all, but technically I'm cooking it in the tank. I kept doing my water changes as normal, 5-8 gallons per week, then I found it worked a lot better doing 1 gallon per day, using the gallon of wastewater to siphon off the bottom. If there's alot of detritus, I won't do more than a gallon, but I'll let the gallon sit for an hour, then siphon the clean water once the detritus has settled on the bottom, and repeat. The corals really seem to like the once a day siphon.
 
I've been removing my sand bed slowly for about a month now. Once per week when I do a water change I remove more sand. I am trying to get rid of this play sand crap that blows around my tank all the time. I am going to use a thin layer of CC and let the crabs tear thru it. Can't do the look of BB. Doesn't look natural to IMO.
 
First of all, feeding fish 3 times a day is WAY too much. Feed them once every other day and feed them how ever much they will consume in 2 or 3 minutes.

One other question...

What ill effects are you experiencing from the high PO4...besides high PO4? Hair algae?
 
I have a beckett skimmer. Not sure if it is under or oversized. I also culture and harvest macroalgae in my sump.

Currently, I'm using an auto feeder to feed my anthias 3 times a day. The PO4 is now around 0.14ppm. But I'm still worry that eventhough the PO4 is dropping, I think it will not go all the way down to undetectable level. While waiting, all my sps are brown, and I'm worried that the hairy algae will gain a foot hold in the tank.

Should I just bite the bullet and convert to BB now?
 
I agree, 3 feedings a day BB or not is a lot. I have anthias and all of my fish are fine if I skip a day every once in a while. What bad effects are you having from the PO4, brown SPS is probably not because of that. Also, if you're doing it make sure you have tons of flow and massive skimmer, cook your rocks for about 3 months, elevate them, and be prepared to vaccuum your tank quite a bit for it to actually work. I don't think you said how old the SB was. Do you have a phosban reactor?
 
Greg,

The feeding is done by an auto feeder. Each feed is about 20 pellets of Ocean Nutrition Forumula one. So that would work out to be about 60 pellets a day.

My tank is about 2 years old, 250gal with 3-4 inch of SSB with the finest grade sand. My tank inmate includes 1 PBT, 1 YT, 1 naso, 1 AT, 10 barletts, 2 clowns and couple of firefish and gobies. The 60 pellets a day is not even enough to keep my tang fat.

I have tried using rowaphos, but it just run out in every few days due to the high po4 level in the tank.

I use a Hanna colormeter to measure my PO4 so I know it is accurate. Other than my sps are brown, my LPS and softies seems to be doing very well. There is no hairy algae or anything like that in the tank. The only thing I get is a few brown patches of diatom on the sandbed and some green algae growing on the sandbed (not very serious). Got some aptasia problem and the aptasia seems to multipy like crazy under the high nutrient water.

Are you saying that with 0.14-0.18ppm, sps can still color up nicely?

I'm giving up buying rowaphos already since I have to change them out every few days to a week, and starting to get on my nerve.
 
first, pellets add more phosphates to the water than other foods, if you feed frozen once a day that should help quite a bit, adding nori to the tank every couple of days for the tangs. That's a low fish load for that size tank.
if you use a phosban reactor with phosban, I don't have any experience with Rowaphos, you should notice a difference after you give it time to catch up. I would probably suggest 2 reactor for that size tank, they're cheap (about $35)
third, phosphate shouldn't really affect the coloring at those levels but may affect the growth as it is harder for the coral to complete the calcification process.
fourth, try and find some nassarius snails to help keep the sand clean.
I'm still not a fan of BB, too much work and I don't like the look but that's just my opinion.
 
Greg,

Buying the reactor is not the problem. Buying the media is. They seems to exhaust so quickly in my tank. I do have some nassarisu snails, hermit crabs and turbo snails in my tank. Just that I cannot turn up the tunze too high to avoid sandstorm.

So is it true that your suggestion is not to convert to BB?

Sacramentodots,
Yes, I use RO/DI for water top up and water changing.
 
I would siphon part of the sand out and replace it, or leave it out if that's your thing. Then periodically siphon out sand every week along with water changes. Also make sure you rinse the Chaeto every once in a while too. I'm sure you've noticed that they like to trap detritus.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6563819#post6563819 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Nem0
Greg,

Buying the reactor is not the problem. Buying the media is. They seems to exhaust so quickly in my tank. I do have some nassarisu snails, hermit crabs and turbo snails in my tank. Just that I cannot turn up the tunze too high to avoid sandstorm.

So is it true that your suggestion is not to convert to BB?

Sacramentodots,
Yes, I use RO/DI for water top up and water changing.
Click to expand...

Going BB is a lot more involved than just taking out the sand, your entire husbandry is going to change. I would make sure it even is your sand. The reactor makes a huge difference with Phosban, try that rather than RowAPhos, it should last quite a while, at least a month. Start with a very large water change 100g and then try some of these suggestions, it does take time to be phosphates but it can be done. You may want to read through Melev's thread he just brought his back down to 0
 
Thanks. Seems like BB is not as easy as it seems.

BTW, any one has high phosphate level but the sps still color up nicely?
 
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