Phyto dosing.

[Bakeman]

For those of you that have feed your tank with phyto did you get a distinct smell from your tank afterwords? I got a bunch of pods and phyto from algae barn that I introduced to me newly started tank (180 gallons with 43 gallon sump). I feed the recommended dosage to my display tank as well as my refugium that is in my sump. I did have some high nitrates so I feed my tank twice in one day. I had heard that phyto would help with nutrient export which it did. On the second day I feed them again in the morning and then my wife was asking what that smell is (not good - it’s in our living room). So I put in some active carbon from my LFS while I waited for the clear FX pro to be shipped to me. The active carbon helped. I was able to implement the clear FX pro today but you can still get a small hint of bad smell from the back of the tank. I have smelled the actual phyto bottles (kept in the fridge) and they smell fine. No rotten gas smell. I’m also shaking them up each day. Any ideas? I’m just starting up so I have two clowns and a coral beauty. They are doing fine and I feed them twice a day on frozen shrimp. So the ONLY thing being feed into the tank right now is frozen shrimp and phyto. I’m assuming it’s the phyto that giving me that after smell. Any comments would be appreciated. Sorry for the lengthy post.

Thank you

 

[shred5]

Some phyto has a really bad smell but if yours does not I do not know why they would add a smell to the tank.

Do you have a skimmer? that can lead to a smell for sure.

You could be smelling hydrogen sulfide. Do you have a sandbed?

Is the smell like rotten eggs/sulfur?

 

[Bakeman]

I do have a skimmer. I put my nose right up to the collection cup and that’s definitely where the smell is coming from. There are holes drilled all along the top of the lid to the collection cup. My wife is saying that she can no longer smell it so we might be ok. My skimmer isn’t really pulling much out right now - collection cup is pretty much empty. Therefore, is it possible that the smell from the collection cup is because it still needs to be tuned better? Or just the nature of the beast? I did read somewhere that people have put a bag of carbon on top of the skimmer collection lid to mask the smell. Your thoughts?