Phosphate dosing - Am I doing something wrong?

[CaptainScuba]

Appreciate you documenting your tribulations here. I added a crap ton of dry rock to an established tank and it's certainly sucking up Phosphate. I have been struggling to get it up to .03 for a while now, adding reef roids every other day in the hopes I'll get stuff not looking so pale and sad

How is all your stuff doing now? Looking better?

Edit - Oh, also wanted to say I'm fallow right now as well for an ich outbreak. Day 13!

My tank is doing much better. My phosphate and nitrate have slowly been trying to climb back to 0. I test weekly and for awhile it was hovering around 0.05ppm +/-0.01 phosphate and 10ppm +/-2 nitrate. Last week it was 0.01ppm phosphate and 2ppm nitrate, so I've been feeding a little heavier and start dosing small amounts of both again.

My biggest issue while going fallow was amphipods. They reproduced out of control and found a taste for my zoanthids. They were slowly migrating across the tank taking out polyp by polyp before I was able to reintroduce my fish. I lost an 8 polyp frag of magicians and a 5 polyp frag of white zombies. They started picking at my mini colony of rastas for about the final two weeks of the fallow period. Once the fish have made their way back into the tank, their numbers dwindled rapidly. Although a few rasta polyps looked to be dying looked sickly for awhile, the rasta colony has since fully recovered.

 

[RFLKPTR]

Appreciate you documenting your tribulations here. I added a crap ton of dry rock to an established tank and it's certainly sucking up Phosphate. I have been struggling to get it up to .03 for a while now, adding reef roids every other day in the hopes I'll get stuff not looking so pale and sad

How is all your stuff doing now? Looking better?

Edit - Oh, also wanted to say I'm fallow right now as well for an ich outbreak. Day 13!

My tank is doing much better. My phosphate and nitrate have slowly been trying to climb back to 0. I test weekly and for awhile it was hovering around 0.05ppm +/-0.01 phosphate and 10ppm +/-2 nitrate. Last week it was 0.01ppm phosphate and 2ppm nitrate, so I've been feeding a little heavier and start dosing small amounts of both again.

My biggest issue while going fallow was amphipods. They reproduced out of control and found a taste for my zoanthids. They were slowly migrating across the tank taking out polyp by polyp before I was able to reintroduce my fish. I lost an 8 polyp frag of magicians and a 5 polyp frag of white zombies. They started picking at my mini colony of rastas for about the final two weeks of the fallow period. Once the fish have made their way back into the tank, their numbers dwindled rapidly. Although a few rasta polyps looked to be dying looked sickly for awhile, the rasta colony has since fully recovered.

Amphipods eating zoanthids... That wasn't on my bingo card to hear about. Absolutely wild. I'm glad things are starting to register and get closer to normal after you reintroduced the fish. Here's to hoping all the ich is out of there as well!