I’ve been in a fight with turf algae for at least a year and it’s beyond frustrating. Corals (acros most notably) seem to be ok and are growing. Some better than others obviously.
Rock was set up with dry pukani and Tonga from my previous tank. Clearwater scrubber 100, reefoctopus skimmer, and UV gph set to manufacture recommendation for algae. I have NEVER gotten a PO4 reading above 0.04 and that was when my system was 1 month old. Nitrate would bounce between 2-10, but it has zeroed out since I’ve been doing weekly 10% water changes trying to syphon crud out.
I’m assuming the algae is consuming all of the PO4 making it untestable, but the algae scrubber is still pulling out full sheets of algae on the screen. Skimmer producing well.
I now have double zero nutrientand am starting to get cyano growing on top of the turf which maybe would tell me my PO4 is actually very high and my nitrates are indeed 0?
I feed 2 light serving of frozen daily and one rotation of pellets on an auto feeder mid day to keep my anthias happy or I would only feed once.
PO4: 0 (Hanna phosphate ulr)
NO3: 0 (Red Sea)
I have tried vibrant, blackout, reef flux but they did not really do much and seemed more like a bandaid. I don’t really want to try that again and stress things out.
Would carbon dosing help? Never really tried it before.
thanks for your advice!
Rock was set up with dry pukani and Tonga from my previous tank. Clearwater scrubber 100, reefoctopus skimmer, and UV gph set to manufacture recommendation for algae. I have NEVER gotten a PO4 reading above 0.04 and that was when my system was 1 month old. Nitrate would bounce between 2-10, but it has zeroed out since I’ve been doing weekly 10% water changes trying to syphon crud out.
I’m assuming the algae is consuming all of the PO4 making it untestable, but the algae scrubber is still pulling out full sheets of algae on the screen. Skimmer producing well.
I now have double zero nutrientand am starting to get cyano growing on top of the turf which maybe would tell me my PO4 is actually very high and my nitrates are indeed 0?
I feed 2 light serving of frozen daily and one rotation of pellets on an auto feeder mid day to keep my anthias happy or I would only feed once.
PO4: 0 (Hanna phosphate ulr)
NO3: 0 (Red Sea)
I have tried vibrant, blackout, reef flux but they did not really do much and seemed more like a bandaid. I don’t really want to try that again and stress things out.
Would carbon dosing help? Never really tried it before.
thanks for your advice!