schafon
Active Member
Hi everyone!
I have few questions that I wanted to ask for a couple of days now.
1. My (currently fallow) DT has high phosphate and maybe high nitrate. I'm not sure about the nitrate since the test kit kind of confuse me, I'm using the Red Sea algae control kit that tests for both Phosphate and Nitrate. The result with the Phospath is pretty straight forward, around 0.5 mg/l. But when I'm testing for nitrate using the low range I get a darker color than the available colors and with the high range (dilution) I get weird silvery water. But the last time I tested nitrates in my LFS it was around 17(around a month 1/2 ago).
My question is, this is crazy high Phosphate compared to what is recommended and yet I keep really healthy (soft) corals that grow very nicely. I'm not sure if I should try to reduce the Phosphate, I mean, if it's working why fix it? But I wanted to hear what you guys think, does it has any impact on the soon to be back fish?
A bit of info about the setup:
It's 120G, I'm running microalgae in the sump, cal around 430-450(not dosing), and alkalinity is around 8.5-9.0(also not dosing).
10% water change weekly. Running a skimmer and UV.
The phosphate was high from the start, most probably since I used uncured dry rocks (the first water test after 9 days from putting water in the tank had 0.4 Phosphate). Tank is live for 77 days now.
2. My second question got nothing to do with the first question lol, I know that it's recommended to keep a least 10ft from a DT to a QT, reason being is that ick might get to the DT by aerosol transmission, I agree that this could happen, but, if you have copper in the QT, is there still a chance that this could happen? Does the free swimmers die when they hatch or is there something else copper is doing?
Thanks!
I have few questions that I wanted to ask for a couple of days now.
1. My (currently fallow) DT has high phosphate and maybe high nitrate. I'm not sure about the nitrate since the test kit kind of confuse me, I'm using the Red Sea algae control kit that tests for both Phosphate and Nitrate. The result with the Phospath is pretty straight forward, around 0.5 mg/l. But when I'm testing for nitrate using the low range I get a darker color than the available colors and with the high range (dilution) I get weird silvery water. But the last time I tested nitrates in my LFS it was around 17(around a month 1/2 ago).
My question is, this is crazy high Phosphate compared to what is recommended and yet I keep really healthy (soft) corals that grow very nicely. I'm not sure if I should try to reduce the Phosphate, I mean, if it's working why fix it? But I wanted to hear what you guys think, does it has any impact on the soon to be back fish?
A bit of info about the setup:
It's 120G, I'm running microalgae in the sump, cal around 430-450(not dosing), and alkalinity is around 8.5-9.0(also not dosing).
10% water change weekly. Running a skimmer and UV.
The phosphate was high from the start, most probably since I used uncured dry rocks (the first water test after 9 days from putting water in the tank had 0.4 Phosphate). Tank is live for 77 days now.
2. My second question got nothing to do with the first question lol, I know that it's recommended to keep a least 10ft from a DT to a QT, reason being is that ick might get to the DT by aerosol transmission, I agree that this could happen, but, if you have copper in the QT, is there still a chance that this could happen? Does the free swimmers die when they hatch or is there something else copper is doing?
Thanks!
