Phosphates in a daily swing

[Marc2952]

for over 6 months ive been struggling to keep my phosphates stable, ever since i beat dinos all those months ago they just wont stop dropping. And they drop a different amount almost daily. What can be the cause of this? I dont have much algae in my tank ( my sea hare keeps most of it on check) and i dont run a refugium. I dont even use filter socks since that was causing a slight swing in my salinity everytime it clogged. I dont think that my rocks are still not saturated since ive dosed ridiculous amounts of it for all those months. Sometimes it stays stable but most of the time if i dont test twice a day i risk it dropping to 0 which immediately causes my alk consumption to plummet.... all of this in the course of a day. As you can see in this chart its a constant battle.

 

[Marc2952]

Btw ive been running fallow for the past 3 months and will add some of my fish today. Can the lack of fish be the cause? I still feed my tank oyster feast and phyto every 3 days.

 

[Timfish]

Not feeding fish every day certainly does reduce the amount of phosphate available for your corals and sponges (sponges can sequester phosphate as well as recycle it). What happens if you start feeding daily instead of every 3 days? Can you add a bunch of hermit crabs that could be fed daily?

 

[Marc2952]

Not feeding fish every day certainly does reduce the amount of phosphate available for your corals and sponges (sponges can sequester phosphate as well as recycle it). What happens if you start feeding daily instead of every 3 days? Can you add a bunch of hermit crabs that could be fed daily?

Yea i have a couple of hermit crabs nassarius snails and two shrimps that i feed daily with a pinch of pellets. Doesnt seem to increase the phosphates though. About a month ago i was feeding oyster feast daily but the tank was getting too dirty and algae was starting to grow, and even then phosphates just dropped to 0 if i let it.

 

[Miller535]

You are not going to have any meaningful amount of Phosphate without fish and fish food.

 

[Marc2952]

You are not going to have any meaningful amount of Phosphate without fish and fish food.

Im excited to finally add my fish again, hopefully it helps stabilize the phosphate. These last 3 months have been a Rollercoaster lol

 

[Timfish]

Algae is going to pull it out too. This is a shot in the dark but maybe pull some rock out to see how much sponge is growing onit and scrape it off and see what happens with your PO4 consumption?. It'll be impossible to completely remove all the sponge with out killing everything by bleaching or drying it out so it will grow back but if you see a slow down in po4 consumption at least you know where it's going.

 

[Miller535]

Im excited to finally add my fish again, hopefully it helps stabilize the phosphate. These last 3 months have been a Rollercoaster lol

I would add your fish slowly, as you having only been feeding a pinch of food a day, your bio filter is not going to be what it was 3 months ago.

 

[Marc2952]

I would add your fish slowly, as you having only been feeding a pinch of food a day, your bio filter is not going to be what it was 3 months ago.

Ok cool as of now i have a juvi kole tang, pintail fairy wrasse, 2 flame hawks and a royal gramma. Which would you suggest i bring up first? They are all small so 3 at a time shouldnt be a problem right?

 

[Marc2952]

Algae is going to pull it out too. This is a shot in the dark but maybe pull some rock out to see how much sponge is growing onit and scrape it off and see what happens with your PO4 consumption?. It'll be impossible to completely remove all the sponge with out killing everything by bleaching or drying it out so it will grow back but if you see a slow down in po4 consumption at least you know where it's going.

I Ctually cleanes my sump yesterday and the amount of sponges and feather dusters that i found was ridiculous it was even clogging the return pump looks like brand new now so i will see if there is any improvement.

 

[Timfish]

I would add your fish slowly, as you having only been feeding a pinch of food a day, your bio filter is not going to be what it was 3 months ago.

Sorry but I'm going to disagree. That PO4 is disappearing so fast seems to indicates the corals and sponges and whatever else still has a healthy appetite. Coral may have been able to compensate for the reduced input of nitrogen by nitrification with thier simbiotic diazotrophs but they will readily and likely preferably chose the ammonia and urea from fish.

Ammonium Uptake by Symbiotic and Aposymbiotic Reef Corals: Ingenta Connect

www.ingentaconnect.com

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aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Elevated ammonium delays the impairment of the coral-dinoflagellate symbiosis during labile carbon pollution

Labile dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a major pollutant in coastal marine environments affected by anthropogenic impacts, and may significantly con…

www.sciencedirect.com

Urea uptake by the scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata

Urea can be one of the major sources of nitrogen for phytoplankton, but little is known about its importance for corals. Experiments were therefore de…

www.sciencedirect.com

Diazotrophs: a non-negligible source of nitrogen for the tropical coral Stylophora pistillata - PubMed

Corals are mixotrophs: they are able to fix inorganic carbon through the activity of their symbiotic dinoflagellates and to gain nitrogen from predation on plankton and uptake of dissolved organic and inorganic nutrients. They also live in close association with diverse diazotrophic communities...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The Assimilation of Diazotroph-Derived Nitrogen by Scleractinian Corals Depends on Their Metabolic Status - PubMed

Tropical corals are associated with specialized bacteria (i.e., diazotrophs) able to transform dinitrogen (N₂) gas into a bioavailable form of nitrogen, but how much of this diazotroph-derived nitrogen (DDN) is assimilated by corals under different environmental conditions is still...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Miller535]

Sorry but I'm going to disagree. That PO4 is disappearing so fast seems to indicates the corals and sponges and whatever else still has a healthy appetite. Coral may have been able to compensate for the reduced input of nitrogen by nitrification with thier simbiotic diazotrophs but they will readily and likely preferably chose the ammonia and urea from fish.

Ammonium Uptake by Symbiotic and Aposymbiotic Reef Corals: Ingenta Connect

www.ingentaconnect.com

Error - Cookies Turned Off

aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Elevated ammonium delays the impairment of the coral-dinoflagellate symbiosis during labile carbon pollution

Labile dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a major pollutant in coastal marine environments affected by anthropogenic impacts, and may significantly con…

www.sciencedirect.com

Urea uptake by the scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata

Urea can be one of the major sources of nitrogen for phytoplankton, but little is known about its importance for corals. Experiments were therefore de…

www.sciencedirect.com

Diazotrophs: a non-negligible source of nitrogen for the tropical coral Stylophora pistillata - PubMed

Corals are mixotrophs: they are able to fix inorganic carbon through the activity of their symbiotic dinoflagellates and to gain nitrogen from predation on plankton and uptake of dissolved organic and inorganic nutrients. They also live in close association with diverse diazotrophic communities...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The Assimilation of Diazotroph-Derived Nitrogen by Scleractinian Corals Depends on Their Metabolic Status - PubMed

Tropical corals are associated with specialized bacteria (i.e., diazotrophs) able to transform dinitrogen (N₂) gas into a bioavailable form of nitrogen, but how much of this diazotroph-derived nitrogen (DDN) is assimilated by corals under different environmental conditions is still...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

He's putting a pinch of food in a day, that is not adding any meaningful amount of phosphates. Not nearly what fish waste and food will. As well as he had a different post before where he over stripped his tank of phosphates, which I did myself, and it took me dosing for a very long time before my rock and sand stopped absorbing it. Your biofilter changes with your bioload. That's just what is. And depending on how many fish he has, corals do not uptake enough or fast enough to uptake that much ammonia and nitrogen all added in one day. This is the same reason why regardless how long a tank has been running the rule of thumb has always been to never add more then a few at a time. I am not suggesting to him to add 1 fish a week. But a couple today, then in a few days of couple more, and so on.

 

[KrisReef]

How is OP measuring PO4? Wondering how much of the variability is test precision based?

very cool topic, BTW!

 

[Reef.]

Remember most tests have a +/- margin, one test kit it’s .03 so your true reading could be anywhere from 0 to .06, with that in mind your readings don’t look too bad.

 

[Miller535]

@Timfish , even @Humblefish recommends what I am saying, and I would argue that he knows more about the topic then most of us put together.

Fallow periods: Going Fishless

Going Fallow **Read this before going fallow**: Why a fallow period will sometimes fail The reason to go fallow (fishless) is to eliminate a fish disease from your DT (display tank). Going fallow works because you are denying the disease a fish host to feed on, essentially starving it to...

www.reef2reef.com

.

Quote from humblefish

" After the fallow period has ended, you can return your fish to the DT. I recommend doing it one fish at a time, spread out over a couple of weeks. This will give your bacterial levels time to adjust to the added fish bio-load, and avoid a potential mini-cycle/ammonia spike. I also prefer to add back smaller fish first, so they are established ahead of the larger, more aggressive ones. "

 

[Marc2952]

How is OP measuring PO4? Wondering how much of the variability is test precision based?

very cool topic, BTW!

I currently test with the hanna phosphate low range

 

[Marc2952]

Remember most tests have a +/- margin, one test kit it’s .03 so your true reading could be anywhere from 0 to .06, with that in mind your readings don’t look too bad.

So its normal for phosphates to drop from 0.10 to 0.03 in a matter of hours?

 

[Marc2952]

He's putting a pinch of food in a day, that is not adding any meaningful amount of phosphates. Not nearly what fish waste and food will. As well as he had a different post before where he over stripped his tank of phosphates, which I did myself, and it took me dosing for a very long time before my rock and sand stopped absorbing it. Your biofilter changes with your bioload. That's just what is. And depending on how many fish he has, corals do not uptake enough or fast enough to uptake that much ammonia and nitrogen all added in one day. This is the same reason why regardless how long a tank has been running the rule of thumb has always been to never add more then a few at a time. I am not suggesting to him to add 1 fish a week. But a couple today, then in a few days of couple more, and so on.

Apart from the pellets i do add Royster feast and phyto every 3 days. I also fose nitrates and phosphates daily just so it wont drop to 0

 

[Marc2952]

I was thinning of dosing phosphates on a doser instead of by hand but the consumption is so unpredictable that i dont want it to spike too much.

 

[Dolphins18]

Hey man I had a similar issue not long ago. In order to stabilize them I’d suggest first getting a gfo reactor and running a very small amount of GFO (1/5 of the recommended dose) as well as finding the marine flake food that has the highest minimum phosphorous amount on the back. I use a food called nutridiet marine. The purpose of this isn’t to feed the fish, it’s to help stabilize your phosphates, so feed it daily and test daily. The gfo will keep it down at a level where it isn’t constantly swinging. You will have to add/remove gfo to fine tune it to the right level, it’s just a lot of patience, testing, and fine tuning and you will eventually find yourself right where you want to be.