Tropic Marin Phos-Feed

[reefluvrr]

Hi @Hans-Werner

Can you maybe help explain what may or may not be happening in my reef tank.

In our conversation in the Tropic Marin Amino Organic thread. When I carbon dosed previously with Elimi-NP or Bacto Balance, my PO4 levels were indeed down to below 0.1 levels. This to me would mean that PO4 have been “ingested” by bacteria. These PO4 loaded bacteria should be in the water column either being skimmed away by or be ingested by coral polyps.

I believe this is where my problem lies in my tank. My corals are somehow not effectively ingesting these bacteria to get their PO4 source and thus they are slowly “PO4 starving”. Thus when I carbon dosed, I had PO4 measurements of less than or equal to 0.1. However my LPS and SPS were never fully polyped out and slowly died.

Any insights or possible reasons why I am not seeing this happen efficiently in my tank since @Lou Ekus explains when we carbon dose--->bacteria uptakes PO4--->coral polyps ingest these bacteria to get their PO4.

My reef tank has been running well over 4 years with stable dkh and Calcium as I use All 4 reef dosed daily with my Apex DOSer.

Now that I have stopped carbon dosing, my PO4 levels are 0.4. LPS corals are fat and fleshy and SPS have polyp extensions. However, I also question if the corals are efficiently getting PO4 uptake for growth?

In the video you linked about LouEkus talking about Phos-feed. Lou mentioned that there should be no harm in dosing Phos-feed even in tanks with higher PO4 since coral polyps are inefficient in directly uptaking PO4.

Can you help clarify if I would see a difference using a particulate based PO4 such as Phos-feed vs Carbon dosed bacteria “gut loaded PO4”?

Any insight is greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

 

[Hans-Werner]

As already described in the Amino-Organic thread

Your findings are in total agreement with mine. It always is very difficult to adapt scleractinian corals to lower phosphate concentrations, no matter how high the phosphate concentrations have been previously.

Corals adapt to higher phosphate concentrations easily and rapidly but the don't adapt well to sinking or lower phosphate concentrations. It is also in full agreement with my observations that SPS stop to grow for a long time when exposed to lower phosphate concentrations and the chance is high that they will die during adaptation.

My theory is, that phosphate plays a major role in calcification. This results in a kind of memory effect in the skeleton and the coral now demands continued high phosphate concentrations. If phosphate concentrations drop, the calcification is severly disturbed and in result release of CO2 and pH regulation in sites of calcification are disturbed. This causes the problems of scleractinians at dropping phosphate concentrations.

Unfortunately I have not solution to offer to this problem, I am sorry.

 

[reefluvrr]

As already described in the Amino-Organic thread



My theory is, that phosphate plays a major role in calcification. This results in a kind of memory effect in the skeleton and the coral now demands continued high phosphate concentrations. If phosphate concentrations drop, the calcification is severly disturbed and in result release of CO2 and pH regulation in sites of calcification are disturbed. This causes the problems of scleractinians at dropping phosphate concentrations.

Unfortunately I have not solution to offer to this problem, I am sorry.

I am very thankful that you take time to acknowledge my questions and have already given me tremendous advice many times in the past. Thank you.