Nitrates, Phosphates, SPS, GHA help

[Nikoliter]

I have been trying to grow SPS, I have a jason fox home wrecker and I have some on order. My jason fox home wrecker is growing, but at slow rate, but seems to be losing its color. My system is a red sea 250, I have red sea 90 LEDs. I run a red sea protein skimmer, a reef octopus biopellet reactor, chateo grown under a Kessil A80, I run red sea charcoal, filter socks, and I have MarinePUre biofilter spheres in my refeguim, maybe 20 of them. My system is 1.5 years old.

I have two clown, two purple firefish, 1 dottyback, 1 basslet, and a melnarus wrasse. I feed pellets once a day in the morning. My CUC is around 14 astrea snails, 1 turbo, 2 Nassarius snails, maybe 15 blue and red hermit crabs, 2 tuxedo sea urchins, and a peppermint shrimp.

My coral consist of a couple of Acropora, scoly, some blasto's, acans, zoa's, chalices, goni's, ricorida. My zoa's and ricordia show little to no growth. My goni's are doing great. My scoly is doing great along with the chalices. My Acropora seems to be growing, a little slow, and losing its color.

I feed my coral RedSea Ab+ at night, like 5ml, and then I spot feed my goni's and scoly reef roids once a week.

I have battling GHA for about 6 months. I just dosed reef flux. I am going to do a second dose in 4 weeks.

When I first set my system up, I think I over did it with rock and went too crazy, piling it up near the top of the waterline. I added in a ton of rock to give the fish hiding spots, but I think it contributed to my GHA issue because there was just too much rock in my system for the CUC to keep up with. I have since started taking some rock out slowly and I think I have one more piece to take out to get my tank to a reasonable level.

Using the hanna test kits, I always register zero nitrates and phosphates which is probably being consumed by by GHA and skimmer. Obviously I need to get this numbers up to support my SPS.

Here are my questions:

1) I have been skimming wet to try to keep my GHA under control. I have decided to dial it back and monitor nitrates. Thoughts on if this is sufficient?
2) Reef Octopus biopellet reactor - What should I do with this? Just toss it or assume if I dial back my skimmer it should be fine to use. I have the return hose emptying right next to my skimmer inlet.
3) CUC - Should I try to add more to my CUC. If so, what I should I add and how much?
4) I was thinking about adding in 1/8 teaspoon reef roids nightly. Good idea or bad, is there something else I should use?
5) I have seen mixed reviews on RedSea AB+. Thoughts on using this or is there something better?

Any other thoughts or recommendations.

​

 

[vetteguy53081]

I have been trying to grow SPS, I have a jason fox home wrecker and I have some on order. My jason fox home wrecker is growing, but at slow rate, but seems to be losing its color. My system is a red sea 250, I have red sea 90 LEDs. I run a red sea protein skimmer, a reef octopus biopellet reactor, chateo grown under a Kessil A80, I run red sea charcoal, filter socks, and I have MarinePUre biofilter spheres in my refeguim, maybe 20 of them. My system is 1.5 years old.

I have two clown, two purple firefish, 1 dottyback, 1 basslet, and a melnarus wrasse. I feed pellets once a day in the morning. My CUC is around 14 astrea snails, 1 turbo, 2 Nassarius snails, maybe 15 blue and red hermit crabs, 2 tuxedo sea urchins, and a peppermint shrimp.

My coral consist of a couple of Acropora, scoly, some blasto's, acans, zoa's, chalices, goni's, ricorida. My zoa's and ricordia show little to no growth. My goni's are doing great. My scoly is doing great along with the chalices. My Acropora seems to be growing, a little slow, and losing its color.

I feed my coral RedSea Ab+ at night, like 5ml, and then I spot feed my goni's and scoly reef roids once a week.

I have battling GHA for about 6 months. I just dosed reef flux. I am going to do a second dose in 4 weeks.

When I first set my system up, I think I over did it with rock and went too crazy, piling it up near the top of the waterline. I added in a ton of rock to give the fish hiding spots, but I think it contributed to my GHA issue because there was just too much rock in my system for the CUC to keep up with. I have since started taking some rock out slowly and I think I have one more piece to take out to get my tank to a reasonable level.

Using the hanna test kits, I always register zero nitrates and phosphates which is probably being consumed by by GHA and skimmer. Obviously I need to get this numbers up to support my SPS.

Here are my questions:

1) I have been skimming wet to try to keep my GHA under control. I have decided to dial it back and monitor nitrates. Thoughts on if this is sufficient?
2) Reef Octopus biopellet reactor - What should I do with this? Just toss it or assume if I dial back my skimmer it should be fine to use. I have the return hose emptying right next to my skimmer inlet.
3) CUC - Should I try to add more to my CUC. If so, what I should I add and how much?
4) I was thinking about adding in 1/8 teaspoon reef roids nightly. Good idea or bad, is there something else I should use?
5) I have seen mixed reviews on RedSea AB+. Thoughts on using this or is there something better?

Any other thoughts or recommendations.

​

Reef rounds will likely fuel more phosphates and GHA
Is the tank at or near a window ?
Are you using RODI water or tap water from the faucet ?
How long are your white lights in and at what intensity

 

[Spare time]

If you have a biopellet reactor, a refugium, and lots of hair algae, it sound like you need some more nitrate and phosphate. I would raise the coral feeding by more and feed the fish more. The flux should handle the hair algae. If not, try an urchin. Reef energy really doesn't impact phosphates (based on me using massive doses and seeing no impact on phosphate; I only run refugium+socks+carbon+no water change).

 

[Nikoliter]

Reef rounds will likely fuel more phosphates and GHA
Is the tank at or near a window ?
Are you using RODI water or tap water from the faucet ?
How long are your white lights in and at what intensity

I have Spectrapure Maxcap 5 stage RODI system. I change the filters as needed, as soon as I start seeing 1 tds. My tank is about 6 feet from a window. part of the tank gets a little light in the morning for about 2 hours.

I run my Redsea 90's at about 70% blue and my whites are at 15%.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I have Spectrapure Maxcap 5 stage RODI system. I change the filters as needed, as soon as I start seeing 1 tds. My tank is about 6 feet from a window. part of the tank gets a little light in the morning for about 2 hours.

I run my Redsea 90's at about 70% blue and my whites are at 15%.

I suspected windows why I asked and is a likely culprit to the gha growth
The UV coming in is enough to fuel that much algae
Block the side facing the window with black construction paper. I get mine from Walmart

 

[PooseReefer]

I have had two successful attempts using Phosphate RX from BRS. Basically I skimp on the GFO for a long period, then get an algae outbreak, try and use GFO to combat, but don't get any meaningful results. I think GFO is good maintenance but not a panacea for a problem like you are experiencing.

The first time around using Phosphate RX I had let nitrates get too low. I was also using NoPox and both nitrate and phosphate dropped to near zero and was bad for the system. Lost a very nice lobo. This time nitrates were 7.0+ and I used 10 drops of Phosphate RX ever day for about 10 days on my 90 mixed. The algae was DECIMATED and even died on my algae scrubber which means I probably overdid it.

Phosphate RX, a few drops a day in the overflow. Has worked more than once for me. Then I go back to standard good practice maintenance. I don't think this is a long term solution.

 

[Dkmoo]

stop cleaning your refugium and let it get dirty and GHA explode in there.

The issue with Chaeto seems to be that until it reaches a certain mass, it cannot effectively complete against GHA in the DT. Skimmers can work to a degree b/c they reduce the waste that can turn into Ammonia/nitrite/nitrate, but doesn't actually absorb them directly so anything that get past your skimmer will eventually cause algae growth.

This is purely theoretical on my part but perhaps micro and macro algae absorb Ammonia/nitrite/nitrate differently and that maybe GHA absorbs ammonia easier so it gets first dibs on the waste even before macro algae gets its turn. But, it would make sense that the best DIRECT competitor for GHA in your DT is GHA in your refugium. As i always say - every strand of gha grown in your fuge is one less strand grown in hour DT. Couple that with an army of CUC it should keep gha to a minimum in the DT. Once the gha is established in fuge and the # dwindles in the DT, it will only make the fuge more effective at competing.

This is why my fuge has no macro algae but has a wide variety of micro algaes.