Natural / Mechanical filtration

[Treefer32]

I'm amping up my filtration in my 340 gallon display and 75 gallon sump. For the past four years I've ran just my skimmer and Algae turf scrubber. I was having phosphate issues so I increased my lighting period to around 22 hours a day of my Turf scrubber. It's full of hair algae within 3 days to the point of the primary drain being clogged with hair algae. Which is great! I love that it's full in 3 days. It's doing it's job.

It wasn't enough though. phosphates kept rising. They were up to .66 ppm. I've got them down to .04 to .09 ppm. I was keeping them under .1 ppm with 33% water changes (roughly 130 gallons changed per month.) If I skipped a water change within a week the phosphates were back up to .1 ppm. So, I started vodka dosing. I'm up to 6.6 ml a day of dosing. And so far phosphates take 2-3 days to creep up by .01 ppm.

I want to go without water changes going forward and am thinking about dosing phytoplankton (specifically nanochloroses (sp?)) around 15 ml per day (I'd manually dose this once per day).

Three goals for the phyto dosing:

• Increase Pod presence for my copperband butterfly fish. He loves hunting and I'd like to amp up one of his primary food sources. (I've had him close to 2 years now, he eats frozen from my hand, but, he definitely hunts for other food.)
• Increase food supply for my corals (lots of SPS and LPS to feed)
• Increase pod supply that reduce cyano and other bacteria
• Aid in maintaining nitrates and phosphates.

Would Phyto and Vodka dosing kinda cancel each other out or would they both serve their purposes in this size of tank. Looking for more inexpensive and natural solutions to maintain healthy micro fauna to feed corals and some of my picky eaters. Phyto dosing looked interesting to me and some of the Mercer phyto solutions came out to be around $24 a month for what I'd need. If I replacing my salt subscription with phyto subscriptions, I'd be saving $30 a month in salt. Just keep a bucket on hand for emergencies or small water changes.

 

[lapin]

It is a good idea

Some things to think about:
With water changes you are removing some DOC's that will not be taken up by organisms in our tanks.
With water changes you are replacing elements that are being used by corals. You might need to dose things and that might cost some money for chemicals and a dosing pump.

 

[Treefer32]

Good point on the DOCs. I thought of the trace elements. I'm dosing the big three (quite a bit actually) 10 ml per hour alk and calcium (separate dosers) and Magnesium chloride / magnesium sulfate I'm dosing about 4 ml per hour just to get sulfates in the tank.

I'm also dosing around 35 ml per week Red Sea A, B, C, and D trace elements. I'm not testing for them. Manganese I understand can be taken up fairly quickly by hair algae in my turf scrubber. So, not sure if I'm just feeding my algae or if I'm feeding the tank, but yes, am continuously dosing basic trace elements for corals. I may send off for a couple ICP Tests every 2-3 months, which would offset the cost of salt.