Low PO4 (0.00) will result in?

[islander84]

Checked my PO4 with a hanna checker and it read 0.00. I checked it twice to be sure. Can this be the cause of STN on acros? And be the cause of delayed growth?

 

[ritter6788]

Possibly. There needs to be some phosphate. Are you running Gfo or something?

 

[ColaAddict]

how fast did you drop it? rapid drop in phosphate levels can trigger some SPS to STN

 

[bige]

But it does not mean the coral cant heal. I had an acro that was almost all white. Then ditched the reactor went passive ( a bag of gfo) and the acro is healing.

 

[islander84]

I run a large refugium with chaeto and mangroves, then run/ran gfo in a reactor.... i took reactor offline last night.

 

[dturner]

So Acros need phosphates in the water?? Had no idea... seems pretty counterintuitive to me.

 

[creefer]

It is counter intuitive. I have been heavily feeding, reducing the flow through my reactor, and adding aminos to get some PO4 to show up on the hanna. I've done so because I've seen some corals start to fade in color. Interested to see what happens over the next few weeks.

 

[Chameleon]

normally 0.00 phosphate itself wont lead to STN/RTN. What happens is the coral becomes nutrient starved and then other small parameter shifts lead to RTN. Even a minute alk,temp,or pH swing can knock out an acro that has been severely nutrient starved. So I guess yes in a way no phosphate can cause it but usually indirectly. Nutrient starving coral is like walking a tight rope. It can be done successfully, but there isn't much room for error. Phosphates around .01-.02 is much healthier.

 

[iiluisii]

Just feed more while you using the gfo so you can get some fish poo in there lol that might make the phosphates go up a little

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Me z]

Of course low phos and low amonia nitrate can cause problems in acros. Zooanthalae algae is just another plant. Plants need amonia nitrate and phosphate to grow. Too much results in browing from too much zoanthale production and way too much can be toxic and fatal. Same thing with fertilizing a garden add to much fertilizer and you "burn" the crop and nothing will grow until the levels drop back down. Look at the zeovit system specifically designed to maintain super low nutrients. Corals were rtn'ing in many of these systems due to a lack of nutrients. They learned that you need to feed the corals as well if your going to run a low nutrient system that is why zeovit systems require the use of amino acids and coral foods, to keep the corals from starving. The advant in tech hasnt done much in the way of helping to progess the thinking in the way we keep sps. It used to be with old skimmers you had to maintain low bioloads and feed lightly to keep acros happy but with many of the new excellent skimmers and ways of keeping ultra low nutrient systems (biopellets, carbon dosing, zeovit, GFO, etc..) People dont realize that they are starving their zoanthale in their corals. Try feeding a little more the worst that can happen is a small algae bloom telling you to back down a bit. Just my .02.

 

[Jon Warner]

this all leads back to the same issue.

FEED YOUR TANKS!

Simultaneously try everything for perfect water, bio-pellets like ecoBAK, GFO, super sized skimmers...

And then FEED!

In the past we needed to starve an SPS tank to get them to survive. Today we have better technology and products so getting nutrients low is easy... so FEED YOUR TANK.

 

[Linesider]

What's the variance on those Hanna testers. ?