Phosphate and algae issues, cant grow chaeto

[Gobi-Wan]

Can anyone confirm the use of biopellets to stabilize redfield ratio and grow chaeto? Will biopellets reduce nutrients to the point where chaeto cant grow? I want to be able to keep chaeto in the fuge for pods, even if I get my nutrients close to 0.

 

[Dan_P]

I have a 6 month old reef tank with some issues I cant understand. I haven't been able to grow chaeto no matter what I try, but my phosphate is over 2ppm and green hair algae has been going nuts in the display for months. Nitrate about 5ppm. I have a 10g refugium with a par36 led grow light. When I first tried growing chaeto I just dropped it in with the sand and rock rubble and it grew slimy gunk on top of it. Then I tried separating it into it's own bare bottom section of the fuge with tons of flow and I tumbled it. That didnt work. Lighting it more than 12 hours a day didnt work. Dosing iron didnt help. The owner of my LFS (the one with best practices in the area IMO) said using biopellets as a form of carbon dosing would help get the "redfield ratio" in check, simultaneously lowering phosphate and nitrate and somehow promoting the growth of my chaeto. Does this make sense to anyone? Or are there other ways to get my hair algae under control in the display and grow chaeto in the fuge? Also if I use a biopellet reactor, I'm not sure if the discharge can be hooked to my octo 110 skimmer- it just has a pump sticking off the side... not really an "intake"
I'm so sick of scrubbing this crap off the rocks every week!
Thanks in advance!

I would consider your issue this way.

You have a new system that has gotten off to a rough start with regards to hair alga. You thought growing Chaeto would help but you can’t grow Chaeto. Growing Chaeto is another issue, ignore it for now.

The PO4 level is high and might be fueling hair alga growth. Use GFO to achieve and maintain PO4 at a lower level, maybe .05 ppm. Wait to see if this reduces physical removal of hair algae.

In the mean time determine whether there are enough snails or whatever present in the system to eat the hair algae. Does adding more herbivores help to reduce scrubbing rocks?

The Redfield ratio is no guide to managing water quality. Forget it.

Since the system’s nitrates are relatively low, you only need to monitor them to make sure they are not increasing. At this point dosing carbon may not be necessary.

 

[Reefology1]

Can anyone confirm the use of biopellets to stabilize redfield ratio and grow chaeto? Will biopellets reduce nutrients to the point where chaeto cant grow? I want to be able to keep chaeto in the fuge for pods, even if I get my nutrients close to 0.

biopellets sounds like a very bad idea! as RHF already mentioned, your P04 is extremely high compared to N03 and carbon dosing will only worsen the problem completely depleting N03 before having any effect on P04.

You may want to read this :
https://andremueller.e-junkie.com/product/1538148/Andre’s-Reef-Guide---Coral-Colorization-Part#1

@ PSXerholic
maybe he can chime in

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Can anyone confirm the use of biopellets to stabilize redfield ratio and grow chaeto? Will biopellets reduce nutrients to the point where chaeto cant grow? I want to be able to keep chaeto in the fuge for pods, even if I get my nutrients close to 0.

That first statement is certainly not correct, and neither should it be a goal. It really makes no sense to target a ratio of nutrients rather than the absolute values of each.

Whether you can also grow macroalgae alongside any other nutrient control method (such as biopellets) depends on how much you use.

 

[Gobi-Wan]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I will replace the biopellets with GFO. I guess in the back of my mind I kind of thought what the LFS guy said about the redfield ratio and its relationship to growing chaeto was BS... though he seemed to truly believe it rather than trying to sell me something.