Dosing advice with bubble algae

[Maho.B]

Hello. I've been battling a pretty bad bubble algae situation. I manually remove it during my bi-weekly water change and recently I've been manually removing with a siphon running through a filter sick and return the water back to the tank.

A couple weeks ago I stopped dosing phosphate thinking I was simply feeding the bubble algae, and I have read that the reading is false because the bubble algae is holding the phosphate. I let it go from its normal .04 to .05 down to 0.01. I use the Hanna UL phosphate checker.

A week ago or so, I noticed some of my established, really healthy corals were not looking as good as usual. A favia, psammocora, and a chalice. The only thing that changed was the slightly lower phosphate. Not sure if that's the cause, or just coincidence.

Should I start dosing phosphate again to get it back up to where it was, or keep it lower while battling the bubble algae?

I have 6 Pithos crabs coming on Tuesday, so hop my manual removal plus the crabs will get it taken care of. In the meantime I don't want to harm the corals. Thanks.

 

[CHSUB]

A favia, psammocora, and a chalice

Don’t dose po4, try feeding these corals directly a small amount of food every couple of days. I use reef Roids but many to choose from…

 

[Maho.B]

Do you spot feed or broadcast?

 

[CHSUB]

Do you spot feed or broadcast?

Pump off and spot feed with long feeding tube…nothing wasted or rots.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I’d feed more or dose phosphate to get it back up.

Valonia is known to do well at low nutrient levels, and trying to starve it out is likely to have the effect you saw.

 

[Maho.B]

I'm thinking so as well. I'll get it back up to where it was prior and see if the affected corals before better afterwards. Thanks