Help I've ruined my tank!

[jray8]

Around Thanksgiving, I started having nutrient issues in my tank. I was able to keep nitrates under control with water changes, but phosphates continued to climb and reached nearly 0.50 ppm. In early December, I added a filter pad designed to reduce both nitrate and phosphate. With the holidays keeping me busy, I didn’t monitor the levels as closely as I should have. By Christmas Day, nutrients had bottomed out, and I experienced a resurgence of dinos.

To correct this, I slowly dosed NeoNitro and NeoPhos in small amounts over a few weeks to bring nutrients back up. As of today, nitrate is 5.3 ppm and phosphate is 0.02 ppm, with all other water parameters within normal ranges.

While the dinos are improving, my corals are clearly stressed. I have zoas, GSP, and a Duncan, all of which have remained tightly closed for at least 2–3 weeks. Even the GSP, which has always been very resilient, is completely shut down. My concern is whether this nutrient swing may have caused permanent damage to my corals.

What are your thoughts? Thank you

 

[dvgyfresh]

yes you stripped the tank of vital resource , all life in our tanks requires phosphate when that bottoms out bad things happen , .02 is still very low and within margin of error, it could still be 0.

 

[exnisstech]

Coral should bounce back. TBH if your tank looked good I wouldn't worry about PO4 of 0.5 . I have a tank that runs PO4 0.4 to over 0.9 which is a high as I can test. Tank looks good so I just roll with it. I like to let tanks run themselves as much as possible and don't chase some number.

EDIT: I do try to avoid bottoming out N and P and will dose either or both if I see at or near zero test results.

 

[Uncle99]

Phosphate at 0.02ppm is too low.
Even for the best test kit Hanna, the margin of error is about 0.04ppm, meaning, your 0.02ppm may be actually zero, thus, Dino’s will continue to persist.

Raise that to .1ppm to ensure even with margin error factor, there IS phosphate available.

FWIW, I’ve run phosphate at .3-.4ppm for more than 5 years.

 

[jray8]

I was having some algae issues and was attributing it to high nutrients.

 

[exnisstech]

I was having some algae issues and was attributing it to high nutrients.

Many people do and often it's the first thing mentioned and blamed when asking for advice on battling algae. My experience has been the opposite. The few times I have had trouble with nuisance algae has always been tanks with low nutrients at or near zero.

EDIT: I've also found nuisance algae loves dry rock.