Algae help and dosing

rpeters · Jan 18, 2018

I am currently dealing with the algae in the attached photos and at a bit of a loss on next steps. The tank is 120 gallon with 40B sump. The tank is only 3 months old. The last 1 1/2 months the tank parameters have been very consistent but no nitrates or phosphates, everything I read shows I should have small amounts so I started dosing sodium nitrate and Seachem flourish. After the first week noticed an increase in cheato growth but still both were 0 or near 0 ( .25 Po3/.01 Po4), so I started increasing the amount and the attached photos are the result and everything still at 0 now.

So question is was there any correlation between the dosing and algae and how to you raise Po3/4 with out causing the algae which has not made the coral happy

Alk- 8.1 - 8.3
Calc - 430 - 450
Mag - 1300 - 1400
Po3 - 0-0.25
Po4 - 0 - .01

mcarroll · Jan 18, 2018

You need the sticky at the top of the forum: Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

Check out the first post especially as I keep it up to date with the thread's progress.

Holler if you have any questions about that material or any of the links.

Make sure you try to use one of the forms of testing (with or without a scope) to verify what's actually growing.

In a nutshell....

You are on the right track looking at nutrients – your NO3 and PO4 are both effectively be considered zero considering the accuracy of the test kits.

If you have been doing anything to "help those be zero" stop doing it.....no GFO, no carbon dosing, etc.

5-10 ppm NO3 and ≥0.10 ppm of PO4 should stop their progress.

What you need to do from there depends on what happens next/what kind of dino's you have.

rpeters · Jan 18, 2018

So is there a max no3 po4 that one should dose in a given period? I was trying to limit to max of 1ppm no3 and .02 po4 in any dosing but in a matter of a few hours they all tested 0. Using red sea no3 and hanna po4 for testing

mcarroll · Jan 19, 2018

rpeters said:
So is there a max

No....this is one of the few times in reefing that getting there quicker is better. And there's pretty much zero risk of overshooting if you're at least trying to hit the right target. N and P are nutrients, not toxins after all.

As for the rush, consider it a semi-rescue situation and you're trying to stop the progression of a potentially harmful (which means toxic in this case) algae in your tank. The longer it progresses, the stronger its hold gets on your tank. (true of most algae...maybe all....but we have lots of details regarding this on dino's in that thread)

Some folks have had to dose what seems like a considerable amount of fertilizer to make the difference too, so don't be surprised if it seems to take quite a bit more than what the instructions tell you. You're not doing it wrong. I've even told folks in this situatino to add +1 mL to their dose every time until they start seeing numbers on their test kit.

If you read the latest several posts on that thread we've coincidentally been discussing this very point. (Several times in the past as well if you can read the rest of the thread....I know it's long.

)