Nuked with nutrients

[iwishtofish]

Well, it's funny how fast one can get into trouble when overfeeding. I bought a new diamond goby about a month ago, and I wanted to be sure it got enough to eat. So I overfed :

Also have cyano in a few places on the rocks. My snails and hermits are doing a stellar job in keeping the hair algae from really going wild. I am showing just the bad areas...much of my rock is still pretty clean.

My recovery plan is to feed wisely (and sparingly) and to add a phosban reactor. Water changes will probably remain at 20% every two weeks. I have a skimmer (Tunze 9002), and it produces skimmate, but maybe not enough. Flow is best I can do with too much rock, and light cycle is 10 hours (with SPS).

Am I looking at a long-term recovery (like 1 yr), or can I expect things to get better sooner if I do things right?

 

[BLKTANG]

Adding a reactor,& doing what you mentioned should recover your system in a month or so.

 

[iwishtofish]

That would be great, BLKTANG!

 

[schigara]

I had the same exact thing happen and added 5 more common Turbo snails and they are moving down the hair algae where the Zebra Turbos wouldn't.

I am also running a phosban reactor with Phoslock (gfo) granular ferric hydroxide which seems to be working well.

With SPS, start slow with the GFO and rinse the stuff very well before putting in the reactor and use only 1/4 the recommended ammount for the first few days and then slowly increase to the full ammount for your water volume. The gfo had no effect on my Mille's but my Blue Tip Acro and a Birdsnest closed up for the first day or so of use.

 

[swsmr]

i wouldn't mind some green in my tank, as long my nitrate level stays at zero then i'm happy, plus they keep the fox face and angel busy

 

[iwishtofish]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11926919#post11926919 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by schigara
With SPS, start slow with the GFO and rinse the stuff very well before putting in the reactor and use only 1/4 the recommended ammount for the first few days and then slowly increase to the full ammount for your water volume. The gfo had no effect on my Mille's but my Blue Tip Acro and a Birdsnest closed up for the first day or so of use.

Thanks fot that GFO advice, schigara! I have purchased some PhoSAR pellets as I have read that PhoSAR doesn't absorb quite as rapidly as some of the other GFOs, and is therefore less likely to shock a system (don't take my word for that, anyone!!). I still will start slow with it.

swsmr, I agree that some green can be nice. However, I see green (and brown) and therefore phosphates, and I suspect this can be only bad for my SPS. So I do need to clean up! Just hoping that my goby gets enough food - he "catches" a lot if I feed a lot, but he's not very good at it.