I have a MRC-3 beckett style skimmer. It will skim a lot of stuff. It's about 3ft tall. Would you suggest using the this stuff according to directions and doseage on the bottle?On the onset of using them it binds quite a bit of phosphate together quickly, and unless you have a huge skimmer and possibly a mechanical filter also, it can leave behind some stringy stuff. You can just blow it off the rocks or vacuum it up. Its bound phosphate and can't be released, so your testing should read true.
You can knock the phosphates down rather quickly with this stuff. I use the SeaKlear myself, on a weekly basis, you don't need alot for it to do its job.
Here is what I would do...
Start changing your filter socks every 2-3 days, if you need to get more in order to do this or if the socks are the least bit suspect get 100-200 micron socks. I clean mine in the washer, no soap, HOT WATER and Hydrogen Peroxide. Let air dry and you can be sure they are clean and not contaminated...I wash in the washer. Not sure about soap or not. Wife does them. Might be a good idea to tell her not to use soap anymore. What do you think about bleach? Probably a bad idea, as it could add chlorine..but shouldn't the chlorine come out as a gas as the socks are drying?
I mix salt in plastic garbage cans that have never been used for anything else.Test your fully mixed (and aged) new salt water for Phosphates, there are several potential sources in making up new water. RO filter issues, salt mix issues, mixing/storage container issues. Lets be sure we know you are actually diluting the phosphates in the water when you do a water change.
Once you see your phosphates <= 5ppm, switch back to GFO, I would recommend the HC stuff in the beginning until we are sure you really have it under control.
Let us know what changes you decide on and how your testing goes...
Coral growth seems to be very slow for me. Chalices and acans don't do well. Zoas are slow, but palys seem to go nuts in my frag tank. I probably average about 2 paly growth a day, if not more.Hmmm. Considering to have no algae, you have a reef and frag tanks and seem to have no ill affected corals, no chemical filtration will affect your numbers and neither do water changes, maybe you just have a bad test kit? To me it sounds like there's no phosphate in the water to begin with.
How many other test kits have you verified it with?
I did for a while, but really didn't see any difference. I tried vodka and bio pellets.Have you considered carbon dosing? Check out the Redsea videos on using nopox. Red Sea providing complete solutions for coral reef & marine hobbyists by developing complite Aquarium systems & chemistry solutions.
The tank isn't full all the way to the top. It's a standard 220g, and I have probably 350lbs of rock in it. Something to mention... I once had power go out for 6hrs. I had fish die that quickly. What I think happened is that I have so much rock that the bacteria consume oxygen very quickly...and starved out the fish.When you say that the tank is FULL of live rock, does that mean it is just a huge pile of rocks all the way across the tank and stacked to the top? How much flow can get in between your rocks on the bottom? And can you siphon the sand at all? You might be surprised how much detritus can build up under and around the LR. I understand the thought process of having lots of surface area for bacteria, but when it is simply too much rock for there to be any flow in and around them, you can start to have issues.