Hi
My tank has been running for about 14 months now and I'm pretty happy with things. Nitrate has been stable at around 5ppm (tested with salifert and redsea kits). I do 10% water change every 7-10 days (occasionally 14 days).
About 2 months ago I took a small biopellet reactor offline and put in some macro algae (cheato and some red algae Gracilaria Hayi I believe). As after running the pellets for about 6+ months I didn't see any reduction in nitrate and phosphate was always undetectable. The Marco has been growing and I've trimmed back twice (most recently I trimmed back a lot, as it grew rapidly in the last few weeks - the next paragraph will explain why.
About a month ago I started getting a lot of GHA in the display, but was struggling with testing phosphate so invested in a hanna ULR. Tested 37ppb phosphorus so 0.11ppm phosphate. So I slowly started adding rowaphos in a reactor and it's now down to 0ppb.
My question is, is 0ppb now too low for the macro to grow and do its job of reducing nitrate? Should I take the rowaphos offline or will the macro get what it needs from my feeding before the rowaphos takes the phosphate?
I should add that everything in my tank (LPS tank) is has been doing well and I feed corals 1-2 times a week. My reason for wanting to shoot for lower nitrate is I have experimented with a couple of small sps frags which whilst surviving, they are far from thriving, except for some plating monti which has had good growth.
Thanks in advance.
I'll try to add a recent picture of tank.
My tank has been running for about 14 months now and I'm pretty happy with things. Nitrate has been stable at around 5ppm (tested with salifert and redsea kits). I do 10% water change every 7-10 days (occasionally 14 days).
About 2 months ago I took a small biopellet reactor offline and put in some macro algae (cheato and some red algae Gracilaria Hayi I believe). As after running the pellets for about 6+ months I didn't see any reduction in nitrate and phosphate was always undetectable. The Marco has been growing and I've trimmed back twice (most recently I trimmed back a lot, as it grew rapidly in the last few weeks - the next paragraph will explain why.
About a month ago I started getting a lot of GHA in the display, but was struggling with testing phosphate so invested in a hanna ULR. Tested 37ppb phosphorus so 0.11ppm phosphate. So I slowly started adding rowaphos in a reactor and it's now down to 0ppb.
My question is, is 0ppb now too low for the macro to grow and do its job of reducing nitrate? Should I take the rowaphos offline or will the macro get what it needs from my feeding before the rowaphos takes the phosphate?
I should add that everything in my tank (LPS tank) is has been doing well and I feed corals 1-2 times a week. My reason for wanting to shoot for lower nitrate is I have experimented with a couple of small sps frags which whilst surviving, they are far from thriving, except for some plating monti which has had good growth.
Thanks in advance.
I'll try to add a recent picture of tank.
