Phosphate Vs Acropora

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How do people deal with having low nutrients but lots of hair algae? I have low nutrients 0.03 PO4 and 3.6 NO3 and my LPS are suffering from it so I want to raise my nutrient levels but I have a hair algae problem. I have to spend 4 hours every 2 weeks carefully scrubbing my rock and siphoning algae. Meanwhile I'm losing acans, scolys, and torches. Not to mention zoas which are being smothered by the algae. I'm running 2 filter rollers, a skimmer, an algae scrubber, a UV and ozone. I have a 150 with probably 50 scarlet hermits, 3 emerald crabs, 10 tuxedo urchins, lots of Astrea and Trochus snails, 4 Turbo snails, and 4 tangs.

IMO, most people don’t have 10 year old systems like Jda. 0.03 ppm Phosphate is very low. I’ve seen many reefers struggling with STN/RTN at that level especially in younger systems.

Here’s why people have bad algae problems. They have PO4 at .01-.03 in a young tank. They see algae pop up and take control. The assumption goes that if there is algae the Phosphate level is sky high, but the valves are coming back low, because the algae is consuming it faster than we can test for it.

The Phosphate is low, because the algae is consuming the majority of the phosphate, and is usually outcompeting the corals, and microbiome. The level isn’t high. It’s low. It’s not available, and what is available typically isn’t enough. Everything needs phosphate to function, but the algae is limiting everything else and causing a crap storm in the tank.

The first reaction for most reefers when they see algae is to start GFO, Carbon Dose, Skim Wet, do a water change, etc. Those are the worst thing’s you can do, because they all take a horrible situation and throw gasoline on the already raging fire.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, and against every natural instinct you have as a reefer, but the best thing to do is dose phosphate in that situation, or add more fish, feed more, remove filtration or harvest macro algae, etc. Get the PO4 up to .08-0.15
and watch the tank start to turn around. The algae actually slows down, and will eventually die off. It becomes outcompeted as the good guys wake up and enter the battlefield. Also keeping an eye on NO3 is smart. Zero NO3 can cause Cyano and other issues. Don’t scrub the rocks. Siphon the algae and grab the long stuff with your thumb on the end of the siphon tube. Add a good CUC. Once the algae is fading out and you manually remove the bigger stuff, they will take care of the rest. Just dose it up by .02 ppm daily until you reach .08 ppm. Hold it there for a few weeks and test daily and observe. Then report back. :)
 
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There is some correlation between high nutrients and decreased KH consumption.
About what PO4 level would you say?

I don't see any reason to keep PO4 lower than the .03 mg/l threshold level identified by Southampton University in England.
I’m with you UNLESS the tank is very established like Jda’s.

I'm running 2 filter rollers, a skimmer, an algae scrubber, a UV and ozone.
Sorry for the late reply on this. Stop everything except for the skimmer and skim dry. Dark black skimmate. You have got to get the PO4/NO3 up more.
I suspect you are overdoing it on this side.
Exactly, he is. The tank is only 10 months. It needs to have enough Phosphate and at least a few ppm of NO3.

I have read all of this a million times, but it still does not address the question. If po4 never hits zero, then how could they ever be growth limited?

If you’re starving and I gave you 3 French Fries, would that be enough for you? Haha. You had some food. Your intake was never zero. :) How about 10mL’s of water to go with that. You see it’s not enough and over time you will wither away just like the corals in that kind of environment UNLESS it’s a well established system that has OTHER resources to pull from. The is basically no “buffer zone” in a 6 month old system sadly.


Look at the corals in my build thread at 1-3 ppb of phosphate. Look at any ZeoVit tank. Does these look starved for anything?

You’re comparing your super stable 10+ yr tank to 50-75% of reefers that don’t have a system over 2 years old. You have the residuals that a 10 month old reef does not! Now, let me see those beautiful Acro’s because I haven’t seen any pics in a while.
 
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I have read all of this a million times, but it still does not address the question. If po4 never hits zero, then how could they ever be growth limited?

Let me explain in a more logical way. Let’s look at 6 trace elements. Chromium, Cobalt, Iron, Manganese, Copper, and Selenium.

Let’s say they all come back detectable on the ICP, but all of them are 0.05 ug/L. They’re not zero, but they’re low and almost depleted. The lowest target I want to see for all of these traces is 0.26 ug/L (Manganese). Simply raising all of these elements to that lower level will make the colors pop way more and increase growth. There’s just no doubt about it, and we’re only taking about an increase of 0.21 ug/L which on the surface seems like nothing, but in actuality it’s quite significant. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

For example, below is a Miyagi Tort I bought form a local reefer (LT). Here’s a piece on the (RT) that I sold recently. The trace elements in my system make a major difference in color and health as seen in the photo. A minimal increase in PO4 can make a big difference in a starving system, just as the minimal increase in traces promotes better color, health, and growth. The plate isn’t always “full” just because the plate has a “small” amount of food.

IMG_9693.jpeg


Another example below of Miyagi tort that may be missing important elements. Pic unknown:

IMG_9694.jpeg


To say that because the Phosphate level never hit zero the corals should not be affected in any way isn’t a fair assumption. We must also consider system age along with other factors. Let’s just face it, some systems need more phosphate than others, because they are limited even at .03 ppm. As much as some would like to think that .03 ppm is a sufficient amount of phosphate, we need to understand that comparing a reef aquarium to the open ocean is not the best comparison. Not only that, but some corals like more phosphate than others. In the beginning my current system couldn’t be ran at anything below 0.14-0.16 ppm. The rock was outcompeting everything in the entire system. The PO4 was not available to anything other than the rock at lower levels. That event alone would never happen in the ocean, and if it did there would be free floating planktons among other resources in abundance 24/7 to compensate for the depletion. So call me crazy, but I want a buffer zone in my reef especially for the first 2-3 years.
 

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If your table has aragonite rock and sand, once you eat a french fry, another gets released from the rock, so you always have three french fries no matter how many that you eat.... more just keep coming.

Remember that you only need french fries to grow or expand, not to just function. You do need a slight amount of french fry to rebuild some damaged tissue, so that is like a nibble or 1/50th of a french fry.

What difference does it make if 3 french fries are always there, or 30? You will never run out of french fries.

The thing that does not work in the food example, other than it just being totally fun and ridiculous all at the same time :), would be if having too many entrees or french fries in the room would stop human cells from functioning well.
 

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I have read all of this a million times, but it still does not address the question. If po4 never hits zero, then how could they ever be growth limited?

Look at the corals in my build thread at 1-3 ppb of phosphate. Look at any ZeoVit tank. Does these look starved for anything?

Also, the po4 in cancun, hawaii and in the coral sea was about 1 ppb - tested myself. I have only ever seen recorded po4 above this in lagoons and tidal pools. Millero showed the average reef po4 at .005 ppm in 2000.

I have NEVER, and I mean NEVER tested tank po4 at zero and I run at 1-3 ppb. Not even a stray test with hannah. There is next to no chance that the tank inhabitants can use up po4 faster than aragonite can release it, IMO. Browse through the build thread and see corals grow to dinner plate in a year, or 18 months, throw away 5 gallons of chaeto ever

I agree that the upwell is high in phosphorous, like Veron said. This phosphorous is bound into zooplankton and not in the form of po4, if you continue to read the book. Somebody only took what he wrote at half-measure. Besides, the was talking about the GBR and not all reefs, which he makes clear, and mentions in other books.

Lastly, who do people constantly mention how a natural reefs have all kinds of nutrients being added and act like nothing is ever added to a reef tank? I would think that any natural reef would like 5x Ehiem auto feedings of NLS pellets, mysis, chunky meat mix from Brine Shrimp Direct, flake food, etc. It is not like people set up a reef tank, never add anything and let all of the stuff in there fight each amongst each other for the scraps.

EDIT: I just calculated this roughly, and my reef gets just under 5 lbs of NLS pellets and about kilos combined of Mysis, Caribbean Mix and Pacific Plankton a month. I think that the ocean would love to have this kind of import per 300ish gallons of natural reef. I still have 1-3 ppb of phosphate.

You have some pretty corals.

You asked a question and I gave you an answer but since you've "read it all before" why don't you accept the research?

Well, there's a lot of ways corals can be growth limited. Phosphorus deficiency is just one. I've posted this fig 4 (below) from this paper many times showing how corals can use particulate orgainic phosphorus, dissolved organic phophorus and dissolved inorganic phosphorus (PO4). So it's obvious corals can be kept with very little PO4. But we can't test for particulate or dissolved organic phosphorus and we can't quantify what's being used by other organisms in a system. So you've no clue how close your corals are to experiencing a PO4 deficiency. Maybe you could go another 5 years, maybe 10 years, maybe issues crop up in year 4. You don't know. And one thing I've learned both from experience over 4 decades of keeping reefs and three decades of maintaining them profesionally and most importantly, the research papers I've read is we need to be looking at the species/genotype/variety level needs of our corals do adequetly determine what individual corals need. Like feeding, there's multiple papers showing not only species specifc needs but if particualte foods are feed specific amounts may be need and too much or too little might be worse than nothing at al. So until we have that data I think we need to heed Delbeek's warning about "walking a narrow tight rope" as well as Southampton's research giving us a threashold number to work with.

And yes, some I would consider some of your corals at least partially bleached.

FWIW you can't deterimine a healthy coral by coloration. A healthy coral can be colorful but bright colors can't be used as an indicator of health. Depending on species photobiology lack of coloring fluorescent and chromo pigments can mean a coral has the right amount of light and doesn't have to waste metabolic energy making fluorescent or chromoproteins to deal with less than ideal lighting prameters. (And I'me sure you'll think this is heresy also but fast growth can't be used as an indicatror of health either.) If you want to prove your coral have a healthy photobiology show their Fv/Fm ratio is a healthy ratio, their zooxanthellae reproduction is n the order of 100 days and they have healthy phospholipid levels and their microbiome in their mucus layer is largely autotrophic. Again, we really need long term genus/genotype and variety level data on husbandry needs.

I'm really confused who you're talking about when you're talking about Veron. What you're claiming is being said saying isn't in his book I quoted him from. He is clearly refering generally to all the corals in the indopacific and australian waters not just the GBR. And it is PO4 the corals are exposed to with upwelling. Certainly there is zoo and phyto plankton current bring into reefs AS Debeek points out but upwelling is bringing nurtrient rich waters from the deep that test as high as .3 mg/l.

Please explain how you one time tests discredit, outweigh or prove wrong peer reviewed papers done by research groups? I had a good friend that smoked 1-2 packs everyday until he died in his late 80s but that doesn't disprove any of the research showing smoking is bad for you. It just shows he was lucky.

Can you post a link to Mollero's paper you're refferencing? I've breifly looked at his paper Adsorption and desorption of phosphate on calcite and aragonite in seawater but I don't see where he addresses the role of biofilms altering sorption processes or how it would overide Kleypas' PO4 levels on reefs.

"Many experiments have been conducted with mineral surfaces that can sorb
dissolved ions and organic molecules. It is well known that data, gained with
those mineralogical clean surfaces, cannot be simply applied and compared to
natural conditions. Organic matter is masking the original mineral surfaces and
thus, these surfaces change their sorption behaviour drastically."

Fig 4 from this paper on "Phoshorus metabolism in reef organisms with algal simbionts"
DIP DOP POP.jpg
I
 

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. . . I’m with you UNLESS the tank is very established like Jda’s. . . .

That's understandable, he has pretty colors. But what is "estaablished"? The corals SOuthampton used were from an established system they ran for a minimum of two years before they started running their experiments. What stands out the most in my experiences over rhe decades with systems I've maintained or am maintaining for decades is not all the unique things I've seen but the contradictions I've seen. Contradictions whch the research I post either helps explain or gives some insight to what might be happening.
 

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Put together all of the silos and stovepipes that you have posted and read. There are other forms that mostly all break down into po4. ...so if you have even a tiny surplus of po4, you have those other forms too. There are total phosphorous test kits, if you want to buy one.

The ocean numbers and references are from Dr. Holmes-Farley article. Most of the links are broken or from books, but they are here:


1. Chemical Oceanography, Second Edition. Millero, Frank J.; Editor. USA. (1996), 496 pp. Publisher: (CRC, Boca Raton, Fla.)

Talking to the marine biologist in the coral sea, he said that they cannot usually detect po4 in the waters where they collect coral. It is easy enough to reach out to folks in the areas where our corals come from. BTW - in the Atlantic near Charleston where the Ashley River dumps in the Bay, water from there was slightly brackish and had po4 of .12, or so. This is the ocean, but no corals for many hundreds of miles.
 

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BTW - I understand peer review, what it really is and I would much rather have a second source or study than just people agreeing with the methods used... and to network and raise funds. I once had a professor in college with a few dozen honorary pHds (he built some of the original rudimentary computers for early space travel) that told us that he could commission a study that could prove that your mom was your dad and your dad was your mom and it would pass peer review.
 

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BTW - I understand peer review, what it really is and I would much rather have a second source or study than just people agreeing with the methods used... and to network and raise funds. I once had a professor in college with a few dozen honorary pHds (he built some of the original rudimentary computers for early space travel) that told us that he could commission a study that could prove that your mom was your dad and your dad was your mom and it would pass peer review.
In todays society that’s almost a given… :rolling-on-the-floor-laughing:
 
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Had a crazy event. I posted on Facebook, but I’ll share it here for the sake of anecdotal data that a few may find interesting.

So here’s the story about what happened!

Yesterday July 11th at about 4am I finally realized what happened. Although this started on the 10th when I woke up at around 2pm, but probably more like 8am in morning. I checked the system and noticed the skimmer not functioning properly. It was on, but no foam, and the water level was way low jumping around at the bottom. I immediately thought that my 4 yr old threw something into the tank, but my wife assured me that she hadn’t been anywhere near it. Then I started to think that the previous night when I sold some frags and went to work that when my wife stuck her hand into the tank she didn’t wear gloves, and got some lotion or perfume in the tank. She again assured me that she wore gloves to get all the frags out I had previously bagged before I left for work. I really started to scratch my head, because I noticed that several Acro’s had their Mesenterial filaments out. The only two LPS I have also looked way less puffy. So, I begin a through inspection of the system. Nothing was in the tank, and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. CaRx and Kalk were fine. UV was running, heater was fine as far as I could tell. At 0400 I tested the system and here’s were things get interesting and start to make more sense. PO4 comes back 200 ppb+ blinking on the Hanna Phosphorus ULR. I immediately thought oh goodness, what is going on here. So I went ahead and tested again just to rule out a bad reagent. Same…blinking 200 ppb+. Then I tested a diluted sample with 5mL of RODI water. Wait for it….it comes back at a whopping 0.950 ppm. I almost had a stroke right there. My previous value was 0.340 ppm (targeting that high for Dino’s). So this was a MASSIVE 0.61 ppm spike! I thought how in the world is the phosphate this high. So I again started looking into the tank for dead fish with a flashlight or something that maybe fell into the tank, because I have shelves simi close, but not that close unless my little girl or wife bumped it hard enough to send it 2’ or so. I get around to the back RT corner and low and behold the feed door on my auto feeder was about half way open! I had been cleaning the wave-markers and the cords on that side go right by the feeder and I have to sometimes put them over and behind it. I must have bumped it or the cord bumped it enough to open the door. I believe it was about a little less than 1/2 the barrel that went into the tank as it dumps 4x daily. With a spike this massive I figured in the morning about 6am or so when the pH was lowest there may be some corals checking out. Or maybe in the next few days to weeks. I guess we’ll find out. To put the icing on the cake my Hanna Alk checker was out of reagent and I had to open a new bottle with different lot number so I couldn’t judge the consumption accurately! The last reading was 8.1 dKH and the new reagent showed 7.5 which was a big relief, because at least it wasn’t some crazy high number. Nitrate was 22.4 on 07/08 and 20.7 on 7/12. Not much change there. So I think the system is still consuming almost normally. Today I checked before work and it was exactly 7.5 again. The morning this all happened I did turn down Kalk by 300mL which is minimal, but maybe consumption has slowed a little, but not too much though. Corals look really happy. All PE was completely the same on all the Acro’s, and the LPS were puffy again today. The next PO4 value was 0.618 that evening. That following morning was 0.608. Today before work it was 0.570, and no longer needs dilution. So it’s coming down thank goodness. Corals look really good, but the damage may already be done. No browning yet. No loses yet. Stay tuned to find out what happens in the coming days and weeks as I’ll be updating with more data. I’m not doing a water change or anything crazy. The only thing I’ve done is dose a small amount of Waste Away (5mL to my 100/G) to start helping to “slowly” bring the PO4 level back down to 0.35 where my target is right now for the 10% Dino’s remaining on my starboard. The Waste Away will also help slightly with consuming the leftover waste if anything is left. I can’t see any. Let me know your thoughts. Will I get lucky or will the tank take a turn!

IMG_0016.png
IMG_0017.jpeg


The update today:

Looking at these analytical data charts below, it looks like it initially started to rise on the morning of the 9th and peaked on the 11th which explains why my skimmer was so jacked that day! That may be why the corals seem to be tolerating it so far. My fish, CUC, Pods, etc where able to start consuming some of it each day as it was dumping. Thank goodness the door wasn’t open any further. It likely would have dumped almost all of it in with 1-2 rations.


IMG_0019.jpeg
IMG_0020.jpeg



Everything is still alive today and seems to be growing and looking great. ALK is still consuming so I have high hopes.
 

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Let me know your thoughts. Will I get lucky or will the tank take a turn!
My prediction, nothing will happen. Assumption is that corals are used to sudden influx of nutrients.
But, my reef tank has proven more than once that I know very little about reefing :).

Good experiment regardless,
 
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My prediction, nothing will happen. Assumption is that corals are used to sudden influx of nutrients.
But, my reef tank has proven more than once that I know very little about reefing :).

Good experiment regardless,

I hope you’re right. I lost some acros one time with much less of a swing, but my chemistry was nowhere near where it is currently. Plus I just made corrections so everything was about as dialed in as it can get. Hopefully they’ll shrug it off.
 

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Your feeder was likely dumping it faster than the aragonite could bind it. The lowering that you are seeing is likely rock/sand binding. Without organic carbon, I doubt that the life forms in your tank could use any more of it than they already do, since you were not even close to growth limiting anything.

The hosts can protect their symbionts for a bit. I would not expect too much from this one event.

We watched a dog of a friend. She got into a 5g bucket of flake food and dumped 1-2 gallons (unsure, really) into one of my sumps and ate probably just a much. Total mess. Everything was fine after the cloud disappeared in a few days. Now, I am slowly lowering the phosphate levels which stabilized at about .20 from up from about .005. The only thing that I have noticed, for now, is that the coralline has slowed down quite a bit - the stuff grows just too fast at ocean-level no3 and po4 levels.
 

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Get the PO4 up to .08-0.15
and watch the tank start to turn around.
This is 100% the case. I have a small acro system that I started about four months ago, went through the cycling, had coralline algae growth, added a "canary" red planet frag and watched it turn brown within a few days. My nitrates were 5ppm and P04 was .03ppm. Sounds normal right? Well, I started testing Po4 several times a week and watched phosphates hit zero on a hanna ultra low range followed by another .02-.03ppm reading the next few days. This tank doesn't have nuisance algae. I mean none, so I immediately dosed 10ml of seachem phosphorus to 40g of system water, tested and got .3ppm Po4. Eeek... well theoretically anyways according to the community's general practices. I tested the next day and got .12ppm. Wow, that sand/rock must be absorbing it like crazy. Over the following week, I had to keep dosing a cap full here and there all while noticing that frag was turning red and had more polyp extension. I can say without a doubt, my tank was phosphate limited. Phosphates are currently at .15ppm. Literally all I did to see an improvement was elevating Po4. No water changes, no other dosing, no changes in light, temperature, feeding or flow. This tank is also skimmerless and doesn't use algae or anything else aside or nutrient control.
 

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My prediction, nothing will happen. Assumption is that corals are used to sudden influx of nutrients.
But, my reef tank has proven more than once that I know very little about reefing :).

Good experiment regardless,

What he said (but with more tanks over several decades. :D )
 

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I am slowly lowering the phosphate levels which stabilized at about .20 from up from about .005. The only thing that I have noticed, for now, is that the coralline has slowed down quite a bit
Any difference in coral coloration?
 

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BTW - I understand peer review, what it really is and I would much rather have a second source or study than just people agreeing with the methods used... and to network and raise funds. I once had a professor in college with a few dozen honorary pHds (he built some of the original rudimentary computers for early space travel) that told us that he could commission a study that could prove that your mom was your dad and your dad was your mom and it would pass peer review.

Certainly! With the right argumentation, any fact or event can be misrepresented or disregarded, any idea, concept or action can be presented as reasonable and logical.

And can peer reviewed paper be missing something or expressing a bias on part of the researcher, yup. One example I know of is Yamashiro, 1999 that's been used to justify maintain low PO4 levels and Marshall & Clode, 2002. Both looked at how bisphosphonate affected calcification with contradictory results. The cause being how tissue was removed from coral skeletons and Yamashiro's technique gave faulty results as it removed calcium that was preserved in Marshall & Clode. ENCORE is another paper that has been used to justify keeping nutrients below ambient reef numbers but has been critisized on several points. Not only did corals grow through out the experimant, algae problems did not crop up as expected and some of the data was collected from corals transplanted to areas where corals did not naturally grow. To quote Szmant who reviewed their data "It is apparent that in spite of the researchers' best efforts, the results are weak and contradictory." Szmant, 2002,

As far as peer reviewed and anecdotal experience, the one thing that stands out the most in my experience is the contradictions I've seen maintaining multiple reef systems 5, ten or 20 years or longer. There's lots of thing I could say based on what I've seen in one of my tanks. But peer reviewed research explains things or gives insight into what I've seen.


I have read all of this a million times, but it still does not address the question. If po4 never hits zero, then how could they ever be growth limited?

Also, the po4 in cancun, hawaii and in the coral sea was about 1 ppb - tested myself. I have only ever seen recorded po4 above this in lagoons and tidal pools. Millero showed the average reef po4 at .005 ppm in 2000.

I suggest you reread Molero's text book. FIg 8.6 shows PO4 levels at the equator at .05 mg/l. (If you don't have access to a copy you can borrow a copy to read at https://archive.org/, with a free memebership it can be borrwoed for 1 hour intervals.)

Put together all of the silos and stovepipes that you have posted and read. There are other forms that mostly all break down into po4. ...so if you have even a tiny surplus of po4, you have those other forms too. There are total phosphorous test kits, if you want to buy one. . . .

I have no clue what you are talking about with stovepipes and silos, unless you're just gaslighting.

If you are talking about Hanna's low range phosphorus tester it's only testing for PO4 and then converting to it's equivalent amount of P, the number is not representative of the amount of dissolved organic phosphorus or particulate phosphorus. The Hach 8048 is also testing just for also and the result has to be multiplied by a conversion number also. The Hach PO-24 does test for total phosphorus after a sample is filtered and "digested" before testing, is this the test kit you used?

. . . The ocean numbers and references are from Dr. Holmes-Farley article. Most of the links are broken or from books, but they are here:


1. Chemical Oceanography, Second Edition. Millero, Frank J.; Editor. USA. (1996), 496 pp. Publisher: (CRC, Boca Raton, Fla.)

Talking to the marine biologist in the coral sea, he said that they cannot usually detect po4 in the waters where they collect coral. It is easy enough to reach out to folks in the areas where our corals come from. BTW - in the Atlantic near Charleston where the Ashley River dumps in the Bay, water from there was slightly brackish and had po4 of .12, or so. This is the ocean, but no corals for many hundreds of miles.

Well, Dr. Holmes-Farley ain't giving average ocean numbers in his article even though he lists Kleypas, et al, in his refferences and Molero gives a number consistant with the low end given by Kleypas but how do either of those contradict Kleypas, et al? Or Conkright, et al, for that matter, who had tens of thousands of tests for their paper.
 

Timfish

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. . . I agree that the upwell is high in phosphorous, like Veron said. This phosphorous is bound into zooplankton and not in the form of po4, if you continue to read the book. Somebody only took what he wrote at half-measure. Besides, the was talking about the GBR and not all reefs, which he makes clear, and mentions in other books. . . .

I would like ot know who it is you're talking about here and the books you're thinking of. What are your refferences.
 

hart24601

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Some numbers if anyone is interested from perhaps the top acro true aquaculture vendor. Phosphate around 0.3ppm.
 
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Bubbles, bubbles, and more bubbles: Do you keep bubble-like corals in your reef?

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