Phosphorus 20ppb / Nitrates 3 - How do I reduce phosphate? I have brown fuzzy "stuff".

[sandy7263]

So I have this Brown fuzzy "stuff" on my rocks, overflow and snails...

I dose Triton and my reactor has charcoal and purigen.

I have a refugium with sea lettuce and chateo. BTW, I now have sea lettuce on my rocks... :mad:

My nitrates are only 3, however my phosphorus is 20ppb which is probably the answer to the fuzzy brown stuff.

I have reduced feeding.

Does anyone have any recommendations to bring down my phosphates?

I was thinking Chemipure, but my nitrates are ok and that reduces both. I also thought about Phosguard, but I'm nervous about aluminum. Maybe that isn't an issue...

Attached is also a picture of brown fuzzy stuff. Snails, urchin and hermits don't seem to eat it. I actually brushed rock and had overflow perfectly clean 1 week ago...

 

[bdare]

I would just replace the purigen in your reactor with GFO.

 

[LARedstickreefer]

What IS this brown stuff? No one ever seems to know. I usually get it when I get lazy or when I over do it dosing nitrates.

 

[ocncheffy]

20ppb is only .06 which is well below the levels of causing any issues. I wouldn’t blame phosphate for this.

 

[rq786]

How old is your tank

 

[motortrendz]

Maybe your overdosing the triton.. I dont think your po4 is the problem

 

[MTBake]

I also don't think it's the phosphates causing this.

Looks like calothrix or possibly lyngbya. I could definitely be wrong here though. I'm not an algae id expert.

 

[X-37B]

Tank looks new? Get some vibrant and be patient and it will go away.

 

[sandy7263]

Thank you for all of the responses!

The tank was set up in August 2019.

 

[Dkeller_nc]

Looking at the pictures of your rock, I interpret that the tank is still quite immature. It also appears that it was started with dry rock, and various waves of algae/diatoms/cyanobacteria are fairly normal when a tank is started this way. As the dry rock matures and becomes covered with coralline algae, there will be a lot less of this (reefers have named the initial phase "the uglies").

And as others pointed out on the thread, you have very low dissolved inorganic nutrients, so it's unlikely that reducing them further will help. In fact, the picture of your overflow suggests the beginnings of a dinoflagellate outbreak, and dinos are known to thrive in really low nutrient water - many intentionally dose nitrates/phosphates to encourage algae to out-compete the dinos.

 

[ScottB]

as @ocncheffy said your phosphorus is fine. You convert it to phosphates (which we quote all the time) like this:
20 *3.0661 / 1000 to get .06 which is fine.

Those are just the normal ugly phase type of growths. Don't fight them. Just keep plugging.

 

[NormanB]

Following along.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

as @ocncheffy said your phosphorus is fine. You convert it to phosphates (which we quote all the time) like this:
20 *3.0661 / 1000 to get .06 which is fine.

Those are just the normal ugly phase type of growths. Don't fight them. Just keep plugging.

I will just say that while 0.06ppm phosphate may be fine and may even be appropriate, it is not low enough to limit the growth of most types of algae, and having a hundred times as much is not likely to allow algae to grow any faster because it isn’t limiting to growth at either level.