phosphate problems

[zheka757]

In February im coming up on 3 years since i restarted my tank. im really trying to go into sps corals, and have them grow healthy. some like montiporas, birdsnest and other easy growing sps corals are doing great. But i have interest in going into acros. and i have tried many frags and no luck on alot of them, and the ones that stay alive are drown or green and no polyps coming out at all.
I was told over and over is that its my phosphates. I have cut down on feeding fish, i started refugium 3 month ago by planting 50 mangroves and cheato. no results on my phosphate reading so far. i also tested my rodi water,no phosphates there ether. i have nyos skimmer running 24/7 (emptying cup every week)
This is over 500gallon total water volume system, my water changes are are 50g every 10days using reef crystals salt. im considering using GfO unstop to get it down and keep it down until my refugium will be more grown and maybe can over take the job of gfo. i have no idea where my phosphates are coming from? my bioload i would consider small to medium for my tank size. I don't know what else to do to make my phosphates in check and keep it under control. Any of you have any suggestions for me, i will also attach my testing log i have being doing for the past 2+ years.

 

[Timfish]

It's not your phosphates. See Richard Ross' article here The first picture is of his tank sitting above .9 mg/l. Corals turning from bright colors to brown indicates either not enough light or some kind of bacterail issue (melanin is used by corals to fight bacterail infections). Have you taken PAR readings of your tank? the optimal light for a coral varies significantly between species/genotype/variety.

 

[Vinny Kreyling]

Just what is your PO4 reading, you don't say?
Rock can bind it & release it down the road when we try lowering it.
Use a piece of rock in a container of fresh saltwater, left for 2 days & check the water. If it is the rock PO4 should show in the water. There are 2 ways to deal with it depending on your #'s.

 

[mrtint]

So this is a battle that can be very frustrating. More so in the forums. Is it good or is it bad? I fought this battle on a 3 year old tank. I was growing algae with zero phosphates. Tried a fuge. GFO . Weekly water changes on a 350gallon system (55 gal a week). New bulbs. Increased flow. 3 day blackout period. I did it all. I was desperate and one guy recommended vibrant..... so I tried it! IT WORKED! Now I have been in the hobbie since the 80's and have learned that anything in a bottle is a band-aid and not a fix. The vibrant cleaned all my rock up. That allowed coralline to grow. It also cleaned my sump up. My water changes are farther apart now...... ultimately...... it helped me win my fight with phosphates. I now only dose it when I want to clean the sump up a little or heaters and pumps. One side note about using it is I did get cyno in my sand bed on the surface. This is a easy battle to win but once I winged off of the vibrant. That went away.

By the way if you run a GFO to wait for your fuge to catch up you will be waiting awhile. The GFO will pull what the fuge needs to grow. Also if you do us the Vibrant..... that will keep your fuge from growing too.

I do agree the phosphates are not your problem anyway. I would check lights (PAR) first then flow. That is the most underrated problem people have. I thought I had plenty of flow for years until I added a MP40 on each end of my tank (72" long) once I did that thing out grew my tank in months. I have given more coral away at this point then I have purchased.

Good luck!!!!


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[zheka757]

as far as lights, i have a combination of t5 and leds. with t5 being added 5 month ago. And i have not checked the PAR readings on my lights. as far as flow i have just switched a month ago from jeabo pp20 to cp-120, which is nock of version of gyre flow pumps. with that said, i have 2 pumps at 10,000gph flow on 400 gallon tank.
alae is not a problem for me since i got 6 tangs in the tank to keep algae under control.

 

[zheka757]

Just what is your PO4 reading, you don't say?
Rock can bind it & release it down the road when we try lowering it.
Use a piece of rock in a container of fresh saltwater, left for 2 days & check the water. If it is the rock PO4 should show in the water. There are 2 ways to deal with it depending on your #'s.

it have being in the average range of .2-.6 i attached a picture file of my readings in the first post. is it viewable for you guys?

 

[Vinny Kreyling]

It is viewable @ 90 degrees off which makes it difficult to read.
With PO4 that high you are better off with a lanthanum chloride drip into a filter sock.
When you get below 0.15 you can switch to GFO unless you don't care about the extra expense to get it down. It could get exhausted VERY QUICKLY. Even daily or less.

 

[mrtint]

as far as lights, i have a combination of t5 and leds. with t5 being added 5 month ago. And i have not checked the PAR readings on my lights. as far as flow i have just switched a month ago from jeabo pp20 to cp-120, which is nock of version of gyre flow pumps. with that said, i have 2 pumps at 10,000gph flow on 400 gallon tank.
alae is not a problem for me since i got 6 tangs in the tank to keep algae under control.

If you have 6 tangs. How many other fish do you have? What are you feeding them? What are your nitrates at?
I don't want to get off subject but I think your original post was asking about high phosphates because your acro's were turning brown? Maybe you have a high nutrient tank? Just a thought?

As far as flow. I originally only had 2 of the Gyre 280 (I think they are rated at 6k GPH) and then I added the MP40's along with the 2 Gyre. I am only telling you this because after viewing many huge acropora tanks that are extremely successful I notice the thing they all had in common was mass water flow and great lighting. Of course they all had consistent parameters. It just underestimated what they meant by good flow.


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[BayReefer1232]

On a large tank like that it can take a couple months after increasing your PO4 export for levels to stay consistently low

 

[zheka757]

1 hippo tang
3 yellow tangs
1 Achilles tang
1 gem tang
2 purple tang
1 copperband butterfly fish.
2 blue cromis
1 royal gramma
largest fish is hippo tang at 6''

3 blood shrimps
1 cleaner shrimp
50+ hermit crabs
this is my live stock, auto feeder is on for 2 times per day. feeding them with pellets. i honestly don't think my bioload is big for 500 gallon system.

for some reason i said i have 6 tangs but i actually have 8

 

[zheka757]

this is tank picture

 

[Oldreeferman]

Have you considered dosing NOPOX?
An easy natural way to lower Nitrates & Phosphates quickly & stay at a precise stable lvl that you decide upon. It saved me major issues & no more constant testing & water changes. I now only test once a month & do only 1 water change a month now since i've started using it. Red Sea makes it and its by far the easiest way to remove phosphates & lower Nitrates also.

 

[zheka757]

im currently running second day of gfo, dropped from .6 to .2 in 1 day. probably need to change gfo already ill see how the phosphates will be tomorrow, im planning to lower it down and keep changing gfo every 2 weeks and see if that my problem for acropora corals.

and no i haven't read anything about nopox to consider that option yet.

 

[Vinny Kreyling]

Best way to determine efficiency is to check water out of GFO reactor against tank water to see if it needs changing.

 

[zheka757]

Best way to determine efficiency is to check water out of GFO reactor against tank water to see if it needs changing.

smart, never thought of that, thanks
so on a good gfo does it have to read 0 coming out from reactor? or does it still let by some phosphates?

 

[Vinny Kreyling]

Depends on where you start from. A reading of 0.7 with enough GFO could bring you to -0-
A reading of 1.5 is very doubtful. Starting readings will be higher than after running for a day or so.