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

[Salty_Northerner]

im slow. I forgot the name was in on of the last few posts haha. Sorry. Anyway im about to set up a 40gallon breeder too! How big is your water box?

I ordered the 35.2 with the Aspen cabinet and Prime HD 16 lights and mesh top.

I have my skimmer and my return pump and ATO and everything else ready to be added once it gets delivered.

 

[Matt Bravo]

I ordered the 35.2 with the Aspen cabinet and Prime HD 16 lights and mesh top.

I have my skimmer and my return pump and ATO and everything else ready to be added once it gets delivered.

Thats great, if I may suggest one more thing. Do NOT TURN LIGHTS ON WHILE CYCLING. I’m sorry if this sounds aggressive but sometimes you can skip most of the uglies stage by simply turning off lights while cycling. That’s what I’m planning to do at least. What are you planning on stocking?

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Thats great, if I may suggest one more thing. Do NOT TURN LIGHTS ON WHILE CYCLING. I’m sorry if this sounds aggressive but sometimes you can skip most of the uglies stage by simply turning off lights while cycling. That’s what I’m planning to do at least. What are you planning on stocking?

That was exactly my plan just like it avoid this. And I just got confirmation and my ulr phosphorus test kit done twice is reading zero ppb.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

@Randy Holmes-Farley I've been getting some advice here but now I'm really scared. Phosphates have been dropping like crazy and we did two back-to-back tests to be sure we didn't goof anything up and we are at 0 ppb phosphorus

 

[twelvefive]

Gotta get dirtier

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Gotta get dirtier

Well if there's no phosphate. In the water how is GHA even growing?

 

[Thales]

I was on the assumption that GHA grows in dirtier water with higher nutrients, but looking at my numbers how is it possible that I'm getting GHA?

Algae grows gangbusters on wild reefs where Nitrate is usually less than .2 and phosphate is usually less than .03. If you can grow corals, you can easily grow algae.

 

[twelvefive]

It's soaking it all in

 

[twelvefive]

@vetteguy53081

 

[vetteguy53081]

Ok I'll try and keep short and to the point but I'll tend to babble so readers beware lol.

About 12 days ago my nitrates were around 14 and phosphates hovering around .021 area.. just about dipping below the .020 range.

Started getting small tuffs of GHA growing on the sand bed and was manually sucking it out.

I did a 50% WC as I vacuumed out about 50% of the sand bed. Added the new SW mix and called it a day. Checked Cal and it was at around 505, dkH 11, magnesium was close to 1600. I've been dosing AFR and reached out to TM about dosing afterwards.

Was told Cal is ok but mag was a bit high and dkh was high so just let things come down before dosing AFR again. I did that and thought things were ok.

Other clues that may help is my refractometer was bunk and reading way high even after being calibrated.. bought the Hanna tester for salinity and it read 1.020 ???

I thought nah the Hanna is way off so bought the TM high precision hydrometer and wouldn't you know the Hanna was pretty much bang on so that validates my idea of what meter was garbage. So with the 50% WC I brought up the SG with a bit of math to balance out to 1.026 and all was fine, fish were cool with it but the corals seemed a bit upset for a few days then they looked awesome! Also added a small amount of Fritz zyme 9 with the WC's weekly if that helps in this puzzle of mine.

Sorry went all over the place there.

Last Wednesday I checked levels.
SG 1.025
Nitrate 5.1
Phosphate 0.52
dkH 9.6
Mag 1580

Then come the weekend and nitrates were falling daily and kept dropping while phosphate kept rising.

Been checking some threads here and thought I could get a grasp of things and figured ok I can deal with this but obviously I can't.

I changed out the filter floss as I've never had it so dirty in just a week. Swapped out the seachem carbon bag as it was a few months old by this time. I instead just bought the loose seachem carbon and put a few tablespoons in a bag and thought I better just use carbon lightly and swap out the cut floss pads at the same time as they were filthy.

I asked my wife to check the levels Sunday monday and today.

This is what she got. And she tests as accurate as myself and I trust her. There's no testing error as we follow a strict procedure.

Sunday
Nitrate 4.5
Phosphate .058

Monday
Nitrate not tested
Phosphate .006

Today (Tuesday)
Nitrate 4.1
Phosphate .009 checked twice.
dkH 8.8

I got her to dose AFR @2ml today to bump dkH to 9

GHA is picking up it's pace growing on sand bed here and there. I've dialed up my pump to reef Crest mode for way more flow. Cerith, Austria, bumblebee and trocus snails don't go for the algae on the sand bed and the blue legged hermits pick around on the rocks and sand bed leaving the GHA alone. Also the red Scarlets would sooner hang on the rock scape and peck away at whatever they find but leave the GHA alone on sand bed.

I added an emerald crab but just popped him in on Saturday and wife said she's been seeing him more the past few days chilling between the rocks.. he's molting and my dottyback is keeping an eye out for him but the crab has been holding his own. I'm assuming he'll be out once he hardens up and hope he'll start eating the GHA.

Sorry again for going all over but tired and can't think all that straight.

Why is my phosphate bottoming out and nitrate also falling slowly? It can't be because I added a small amount of carbon and new filter floss can it??

Once I noticed the rise of phosphate we really slowed down on feeding.

I really don't understand what's going on. The amount of GHA surely can't be sucking up the phosphate that much as the GHA is to small and to sparsely on the sand bed.

I got her to add some ocean magik, a few ml's of RS ab+ and feed a few times today. Tomorrow I'll see if that helps raise the phosphate some, but I'm thinking something else is going on or am I over thinking this?

Tank is now 5 months old today.

We test with the HR Hanna nitrate checker and the Hanna ulr phosphorus checker and have the conversion chart at our disposal. Also mag has started to drop to 1560 as of the other day.

Fish are happy, corals happy as well and growing, and that darn GHA is making my sand bed look like poop.

One more thing, I've also added a bunch of rubble to my intank rack a month ago and also dropped a big of bag of bio gems in the bottom of the rear sump to help bacteria populate for my new larger system before it gets delivered any time in the next week. Could there be to much media for this small Nano tank? There's also about: guessing here: 15lbs of life Rock that's been it there from new that's 5 months old. Sand bed is just under an inch and I've also switched to the red sea black bucket from RC in the past month doing weekly 10-15% WC's and also the big 50% WC.

Who ever can make heads or tails of this all over post I owe ya a beer!

Thanks and appreciate any info you all can possibly share and help me understand what's going on here.

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?

 

[paragrouper]

it always helps to confirm your equipment. Specifically, do you have the correct reagents? Have you confirmed they are not expired? Are your cuvettes clean? also re-verify your test procedures. I had crazy readings from a Hanna checker (phosphates) until I realized I was supposed to set the timer.

 

[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?

No it's not actually. We don't have a whole bunch of GHA so I didn't realize it would suck up everything in the system. The store that has Reef roids are out of stock so I ordered a small bottle of Brightwell Neophos. Would that be okay? If not I can quickly cancel the order on Amazon as they would be the fastest to deliver than anywhere else in Canada.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

it always helps to confirm your equipment. Specifically, do you have the correct reagents? Have you confirmed they are not expired? Are your cuvettes clean? also re-verify your test procedures. I had crazy readings from a Hanna checker (phosphates) until I realized I was supposed to set the timer.

I appreciate some suggestions and all the help actually but yes we absolutely know how to use these checkers and also have 2 months supply of all of the reagents and even opened up a new box to verify the reagent wasn't the issue. My wife is freaking out and this is a new one to me.

I just remotely killed the skimmer as it does work pretty effective in this small tank. She's going to get on top of manual removal from the sand bed until I get home tomorrow evening or I can then take over.

And yes the glass caveats are always rinsed out after use and we put our ODI water in to the very top and put the cap back on so there's no staining of any sort versus a dry caveat.

Also we use or dedicate special two-sided glass wipes and will hold it up to the light to make sure there's no smudges or fingerprints or anything that may interfere with the test. We also place the vial in the exact same position with the 10 mL point and directly to the front of the checker so there's no inconsistencies of the glass.

 

[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?

So you want me to change the water more than once a week? I'm already changing about 1.5 gallons every Wednesday evening. I do have my IPC test from the bucket of salt from Red Sea with me and it does have phosphate in it so maybe do a larger water change?

 

[vetteguy53081]

So you want me to change the water more than once a week? I'm already changing about 1.5 gallons every Wednesday evening. I do have my IPC test from the bucket of salt from Red Sea with me and it does have phosphate in it so maybe do a larger water change?

No - if you change water every wednesday, change every other Wednesday and Red Sea does have a higher content

 

[PocketGoose]

I'm sorry if I missed it - but how long as the tank been set up?

 

[twelvefive]

I'm sorry if I missed it - but how long as the tank been set up?

6 months

 

[Matt Bravo]

neophos is a fine solution imo, just make sure you dose correctly

 

[Salty_Northerner]

neophos is a fine solution imo, just make sure you dose correctly

Thanks everyone I really appreciate all the advice. I'm starting to figure this all out. Back in the day we didn't even test for phosphorus, I don't even think testing kits were available back then. I freaked out seeing a big fat 0.000

I've turned off the skimmer and leaving it off for a few days and test every 24 hrs. I'll report back after adding the Neophos. Dang where where were additives like this 20+ yrs ago..

Hopefully this fixes the problem and don't have another underlying issue.

I'm sure I figured out the issue. Low salinity and then brought it up to where it should've been from day one. Dang refractometer!

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Good morning everyone. I ordered some Reef roids this morning along with two new boxes of reagent for the HR nitrate and ulr phosphorus tester. Hopefully the order will be here Friday. Saturday the Brightwell additive will show up and after my conversation with the water shop where I live I ended up buying the four stage value plus rodi system from BRS.

Got a sneaky suspicion the guy at the water shop wasn't filling me in on exactly what comes out of his RO system. He makes great tasting water but I'm thinking there has to be silicates in the water. Am I wrong by thinking that?