Really low phosphate but good nitrate and GHA and just lost now!

[Salty_Northerner]

The water shop jugs say 4 TDS but when I questioned him about it he said there's actually 10 TDS. He only puts four on the label because they're the most detected where the other ones he's not too concerned about.

When I asked him how much a rodi system would cost he immediately said.. oh they're very expensive but the most expensive piece would be the ad on deionizer.

Anyways I'm tired of caring 5 gallon bottles home every week and with BRS having a 15% off sale going on and factoring in the exchange rate it was kind of a no-brainer. It'll pay for itself pretty quickly. At least I know where I can get proper quality replacement cartridges unlike ordering something from Amazon where you can buy a kit but you can never find the cartridges. Anyways y'all have a great day.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Increase time between water changes, feed a td more food or number of feeding and add reef roids for coral which will increase po4
With GHA, is your tank by chance at or near a window?

Actually I need to retract my answer about the tank being close to a window. I was thinking you were leaning towards direct sunlight.

The tank sits in the corner adjacent to our living room window and I often will pull the curtains to the side when I'm doing my water testing to be sure I have exactly the right amount of water in the test kit. It wasn't until I seen one of your threads about this time of year with a lot more UV and I thought you can even get a sunburn in the shade so yeah the tank is receiving UV.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

No more guessing what my local water shop is giving me

 

[vetteguy53081]

Actually I need to retract my answer about the tank being close to a window. I was thinking you were leaning towards direct sunlight.

The tank sits in the corner adjacent to our living room window and I often will pull the curtains to the side when I'm doing my water testing to be sure I have exactly the right amount of water in the test kit. It wasn't until I seen one of your threads about this time of year with a lot more UV and I thought you can even get a sunburn in the shade so yeah the tank is receiving UV.

That would be my guess and cause

 

[Salty_Northerner]

TL;DR

Took care of the small patches of GHA on my sand bed by just sucking out the entire top level. I removed a good part of my rock and scraped the back glass which had a very hard solid green algae build up. And hard lesson learned.. even though I've got lots of flow in the tank the way the rockscape was in the back corner just below the over flow by sand bed was like concrete. I could literally grab over a third of the sand bed in my one hand and lift it right off the glass bottom.

Obviously I got some bad advice and had lots of precipitation going on I'm assuming but anyways I was able to break it all up back to normal. Rescaped The Rock so there's flow wrapping around and going through the rock work. Tossed a bit of ab+ into the tank to check how the flow was being distributed and it's looking good now. Had to mix up some new salt water and have been feeding a little harder and phosphate was at .0 2 3 and nitrate around 5. Tested today and po4 is dropping and is at .018 and po3 11.3.

We added a little bit of reef roids today and we'll test tomorrow and see what's going on. Two days after the big clean I sucked a couple small Tufts of GHA that was missed and so far fingers crossed it hasn't returned yet.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

That would be my guess and cause

We added Reef roids today and after it's circulated around the tank we shut the pumps off to broadcast feed. We then proceeded to feed the fish some mysis and the fish would not even go for it. Is that normal?

Normally we just put the pump on feed mode and sometimes we turn the pump completely off to let some of the other inhabitants or bottom dwellers catch a little snack but today the fish showed zero interest in feeding once we put in the roids. But once we turned feed mode back on the fish went after the shrimp. Any advice on why that happens?

 

[vetteguy53081]

We added Reef roids today and after it's circulated around the tank we shut the pumps off to broadcast feed. We then proceeded to feed the fish some mysis and the fish would not even go for it. Is that normal?

Normally we just put the pump on feed mode and sometimes we turn the pump completely off to let some of the other inhabitants or bottom dwellers catch a little snack but today the fish showed zero interest in feeding once we put in the roids. But once we turned feed mode back on the fish went after the shrimp. Any advice on why that happens?

Yes/ movement of the food and roids are too fine for them to eat and the pause in flow sends my fish running
Be aware roids can raise phosphate which contributes to algae

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Yes/ movement of the food and roids are too fine for them to eat and the pause in flow sends my fish running

So basically the smell of a food they've never smelled before threw them off their game and got confused.

 

[vetteguy53081]

So basically the smell of a food they've never smelled before threw them off their game and got confused.

Not smell but appearance and disruption in water flow
If you experience a power outage, you’ll see some very confused specimens

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Not smell but appearance and disruption in water flow
If you experience a power outage, you’ll see some very confused specimens

Thank you I appreciate the info.