Transient Nutrients with GHA

[BetterJake]

Needing to pull my rock and scrub off lots of GHA growth every week. Nitrate testing at 0 and Phosphate at 0.07. Fairly certain that the GHA is taking up Nitrate before it can be registered with my Hanna checker.

Do I dose Nitrate to get a reading? Would that not cause the GHA to just explode in growth even more than it already is? If Nitrate is in the system since the GHA is using it, doesn't that mean the corals are still exposed to some level of Nitrate as well?

 

[VintageReefer]

How old is the tank and rock? Can you post pictures?

 

[BetterJake]

How old is the tank and rock? Can you post pictures?

Rock/Tank is two years old. No recent pictures as I just scrubbed the rocks clean this morning. Confirmed it is GHA with my microscope.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

How many fish do you have and how much do you feed? Dissolved organics feeds the algae before it is broken down into nitrate. How is the flow - algae loves low flow. What type of filtration do you run?

 

[BetterJake]

How many fish do you have and how much do you feed? Dissolved organics feeds the algae before it is broken down into nitrate. How is the flow - algae loves low flow. What type of filtration do you run?

Reefer 250 (54G display). Tomini, Melanarus, Clownfish, Filefish, Hawkfish. Feed TDO chroma boost 3 times per day. Just running a ReefMat, skimmer is offline. I run two reef wave at 40% power each as it's an LPS tank so medium flow.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Without knowing how you feed or how much you feed, I will just suggest to be careful with the feeding. Pellets IMO tend to sink fast, uneaten pellets will increase the doc's in the water, which are consumed by the algae. With your skimmer off, and no activated carbon, the only other way to remove doc's is with water changes. So being careful with how you feed, and increasing or maintaining regular water changes would be my suggestions.