Try this one instead.I swear by the nopox. A phosphate sponge is only as good as it's limit of phosphate absorption and if not removed it begins to release the po4 back into your system. I don't think the loss if your fish and shrimp will contribute much or at all. Keep using the reactor and it should solve your problem. If I see po4 in my test results I dose my tank with this product and it removes them in 24hr or less.
Could not read the whole thread, but maybe this will help:
Never want to scrub rocks; that just removes your filter (periphyton and gha). Instead, the more that grows on your rocks, the more phosphate is being pulled out of the rocks. You just need to increase your exports. Longer answer:
Nutrient Export
What do all algae (and cyano too) need to survive? Nutrients. What are nutrients? Ammonia/ammonium, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate and urea are the major ones. Which ones cause most of the algae in your tank? These same ones. Why can't you just remove these nutrients and eliminate all the algae in your tank? Because these nutrients are the result of the animals you keep.
So how do your animals "make" these nutrients? Well a large part the nutrients come from pee (urea). Pee is very high in urea and ammonia, and these are a favorite food of algae and some bacteria. This is why your glass will always need cleaning; because the pee hits the glass before anything else, and algae on the glass consume the ammonia and urea immediately (using photosynthesis) and grow more. In the ocean and lakes, phytoplankton consume the ammonia and urea in open water, and seaweed consume it in shallow areas, but in a tank you don't have enough space or water volume for this, and, your other filters or animals often remove or kill the phytoplankton or seaweed anyway. So, the nutrients stay in your tank.
Then the ammonia/ammonium hits your rocks, and the periphyton on them consumes more ammonia and urea. Periphyton is both algae and animals, and is the reason your rocks change color after a few weeks. Then the ammonia goes inside the rock, or hits your sand, and bacteria there convert it into nitrite and nitrate. However, the nutrients are still in your tank.
Also let's not forget phosphate, which comes from solid organic food particles. When these particles are eaten by microbes and clean up crew, the organic phosphorus in them is converted into phosphate. However, the nutrients are still in your tank.
So whenever you have algae "problems", you simply have not exported enough nutrients compared to how much you have been feeding (note: live rock can absorb phosphate for up to a year, making it seem like there was never a problem. Then, there is a problem).
So just increase your nutrient exports. You could also reduce feeding, and this has the same effect, but it's certainly not fun when you want to feed your animals
Scrubbing just removes the filtering organisms from the rocks; it does not remove the nutrients (phosphate) from the rocks. Worse, it kills the animals that were living in the rock, which frees more more nutrients within the rocks, which will come out of the rocks and fuel even more algae. Scrubbing is the worst thing you can do.
Stronger lights and flow.
-how strong of flow??
But a skimmer does not remove any nutrients.
I only saw that you tried it, but not the details. If nopox is carbon dosing, then it could work.
-NoPox is a form of carbon dosing. Have been dosing 2.5ml/day. Every review I've read of people using it said it cleared up their GHA in a month to two months.
If you think about it, a WC is a small percentage reduction, and only once a week. It does work though.
-that is why I increased my WC percentage and schedule. It's still increased from what I normally do, but isn't up to 20g/week like I had been doing it. I figured a 50% water change weekly for 2 months would decrease my algae.
Almost as bad as scrubbing the rocks. It kills the filtering organisms (periphyton) living on the rocks, but at least the life inside the rocks stays alive. The more of the natural filtering you kill, the more nutrients stay in the rock, giving more fuel to the gha on the rocks.
-Are you sure those bacterias on the right are photosynthetic? I guess I never thought about them feeding off light.
This is the first real clue I've seen. No algae can take off without nutrients. You may not have a high standing level of nutrients, but you do have a high flowing level of them, and the are flowing right by the bryopsis. They dying of the bryopsis was an indicator that phosphate was being used up out of the rocks.
The solution is counter-intuitive: Let everything grow on the rocks, don't scrub anything, increase your DT photopheriod to strengthen the natural filter on the rocks, and wait six months. Oh, and check your TDS
