High phosphates enough to kill all coral and coralline?

LovesDogs_CatsRokay

Valuable Member
View Badges
Joined
May 16, 2017
Messages
1,076
Reaction score
2,028
Location
St. Louis, MO
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Over the last 6 months my tank has been crashing. I had issues with a few of my Red Sea lights not coming on because of bad power supplies (I also have T5 lights also though). During that time a massive die off of SPS started happening. I assumed it started because of the lights and then created a domino affect. ALK stopped being consumed causing a spike there which then caused more die off, higher nutrients, higher ALK again, and so on. Most all of my SPS and a lot of LPS is now gone except for a very large Monti and a birds nest. I used to have thick coralline covering my rocks, glass, and powerhead. Every single inch of it is now gone. Anemones and remaining LPS/softies seem to be doing okay for now. But now my Monti has started to die now too. My Triton ICP test came back completely clean except for phosphate at 3.0mg/l. Is that phosphate level enough to keep the death fall going? Is there something else that may be happening that wouldn't show up on an ICP? Fish are doing amazing. 310G with 75G sump, 6 tangs, 1 queen angel, 1 mag fox face, 6 anthias, 10 chromis, 2 wrasse, and 1 blenny.
 

Uncle99

7500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Jul 22, 2018
Messages
9,059
Reaction score
13,305
Location
Province of Ontario
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
If correct, that’s very very high, should be say 0.05-.2ppm.
Likely high enough to be a contributor to making corals and coralline happy over time.

You’ll need to mop up the high organic and stabilize in the band.
 

fish farmer

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Nov 13, 2017
Messages
3,746
Reaction score
5,476
Location
Brandon, VT
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Yeah. When I was having 2ppm phos in my tank all the LPS were gone, just the weed softies survived as well as lots of green hair algae.
 

Reefing threads: Do you wear gear from reef brands?

  • I wear reef gear everywhere.

    Votes: 29 15.4%
  • I wear reef gear primarily at fish events and my LFS.

    Votes: 11 5.9%
  • I wear reef gear primarily for water changes and tank maintenance.

    Votes: 1 0.5%
  • I wear reef gear primarily to relax where I live.

    Votes: 25 13.3%
  • I don’t wear gear from reef brands.

    Votes: 110 58.5%
  • Other.

    Votes: 12 6.4%
Back
Top