Phosphate

[adamsfour]

I recently saw a rise in nitrate and phosphate. The only change I made was switch from NPX pellets to Tropic Marine pellet. Always had an issues with NPX pellet creating slime. I just switch back and will report change if any. Anyone have similar experience

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Pellets are really dense as I'm sure you know. Any difference in the ingredients from one to the other?

 

[vetteguy53081]

I recently saw a rise in nitrate and phosphate. The only change I made was switch from NPX pellets to Tropic Marine pellet. Always had an issues with NPX pellet creating slime. I just switch back and will report change if any. Anyone have similar experience

Some reasons for increase:
Type of food especially reef roids
Overfeeding
insufficient or no skimming
Lack of maintenance
Use of tap water
overcrowding with livestock
Salt blend containing Phosphates
** Even in store purchased water

A few things to check

 

[TheSheff]

I recently saw a rise in nitrate and phosphate. The only change I made was switch from NPX pellets to Tropic Marine pellet. Always had an issues with NPX pellet creating slime. I just switch back and will report change if any. Anyone have similar experience

The reason for the rise is likely because of the switch. Biopellets take time to colonize bacteria, so when you added those new pellets you completely removed the food source for that bacteria.

 

[adamsfour]

Thanks for the reply. Prior to the switch both phosphate and nitrate were very low for basically years. The only reason I switch was to try and get away from the slime accumulation. Nothing else changed. I agree it points to the product changes. It a shame as the tropic marine product was basically maintenance free.

 

[TheSheff]

Thanks for the reply. Prior to the switch both phosphate and nitrate were very low for basically years. The only reason I switch was to try and get away from the slime accumulation. Nothing else changed. I agree it points to the product changes. It a shame as the tropic marine product was basically maintenance free.

I think that if you were able to maintain the nutrients while that bacteria was being established than you could use it, and it might be a better option as it seems like a good product.

 

[adamsfour]

I would hope so but product had been in use end of May. I would think a month would be plenty of time to establish itself.

 

[jda]

I don't use pellets, so I don't know for sure, but you could be establishing a totally different bacteria set with the slimy making way for the unslimy. This takes time for the old to die out and the new to sufficiently populate. This might need more than a month.

 

[adamsfour]

Ok. Yea no sure. Always had good chemistry with NPX pellet was just trying to reduce the overhead

 

[jda]

Think of bacteria populations on OC as turning a cruise ship... takes a while... and might take even longer if you abort one turn and start another.

I have never used bio pellets. A friend told me that he quit because he did not see anything get exported from the tank - like extra skimmer output that you get from dosing V/S/V. If this is true and all that you are doing is growing things that stay in the tank and hold on to the extra building blocks, then when they die off, they will release all of these back into the tank. If I am wrong, then my apologies.

 

[Reef.]

I’m thinking the differences in pellets is unlikely to be huge (could be tho) to make your po4 increase to such an extent that it becomes an issue.

PO4 can seem fine one day then the next it’s 3x higher, could just be po4 has now stopped cumulating in the rock and sand, has now started to collect in the wate, or you have been removing po4 so the rock and sand is releasing more po4.