sixty_reefer
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I agree, where would we be today without Randy. I have learned much from himYou are not alone. I am the worst sometimes, and have paid the price more than once. It is great to get professionals like @Randy Holmes-Farley involved to keep us from making bad assumptions and smack us around a little when we misunderstand or misapply the science.
Yes, this time around phosphates seem to be going down fairly well, I’m getting to a point we’re I am concerned with how low they are, I’ve just retested tonight and phosphates are almost gone from the tank very close from the 0.02 that is border line on my test kit just a very slight blue to the testing water, nitrates have gone downhill to and they around the 1ppm mark I think I will artificially raise them tonight as I don’t feel comfortable being on the border line of the testing capacity, just one mistake away from dinoflagellates.By the way, I am in the process of building your phyto "reactor" for use on my tank right now. It looks way more efficient than culturing phyto in batches. I'm a little leery of the phosphate issue, but it does not seem to be a problem in your set-up.
If you decide to go this route just make sure you have your protein skimmer on at all times after the first week you will se a large reduction in scum some days there’s almost nothing being produced although bacteria needs to be actively exported to reduce phosphates, that was my mistake last time and phosphates did increase eventually. Nitrates did bottom out at one point with 35 fish in the tank and 6 cubes of feeding daily. It appears to be a good way to carbon dose although it’s not as easy to control as the conventional ways of Doc dosing. The correction to the dose in the event of nutrients start to decline need to be made weeks in advance.