I just wanted to get a few opinions here. I've been slowly bringing my reef back from the brink over the last few months. When I started my nitrates and phosphates were close to zero, but I also had a massive amount of algae. So after getting the tank back into shape I had to start dosing nitrates as they bottomed out, but phosphates have been pretty steady at between .06 and .04. Once my Nitrates passed 10 ppm I stopped dosing however I am still recording a slight increase each day. Also, today my phosphate has jumped to .09. I've been changing out skimmer socks probably twice a week.
So today I decided to clean the skimmer and it was filthy. I'm wondering if the gunk in the neck was slowly increasing the nitrate as the skimmer was no longer removing all the organics. Instead they collected in the neck to degraded in nutrients. I'll be testing daily for a bit to see if this stops the nitrate & phosphate increase now that the skimmer is clean again.
Any one else notice nitrate/phosphate increase with a dirty skimmer?
So today I decided to clean the skimmer and it was filthy. I'm wondering if the gunk in the neck was slowly increasing the nitrate as the skimmer was no longer removing all the organics. Instead they collected in the neck to degraded in nutrients. I'll be testing daily for a bit to see if this stops the nitrate & phosphate increase now that the skimmer is clean again.
Any one else notice nitrate/phosphate increase with a dirty skimmer?