What is up with all the chemicals we use now in our reef tanks?

[JCOLE]

I think that is somewhat left over from the ULNS/zero PO4, NO3 ideas of the recent past. I rarely have to dose or use anything other than calcium, alkalinity and magnesium.

There is a happy middle ground IMO. If my PO4 get's much above 0.14, SPS growth slows down and the tank doesn't look good. Conversely, if PO4 get's below 0.05 colors fade and I get worried about dino recurrence. In some tanks it will require GFO to keep it within those ranges. Others won't need it at all or rarely in my case.

Yes, I think so as well. I think it is worse now though without the abundance of live rock, etc. I am all for low nutrients. I have seen the effects of high and low phosphates. However, for some reason, I am able to keep very stable Nitrates and Phosphates without non-natural export methods. There has to be something to it.

 

[brandon429]

I think a lot of this works like solvable equations.

GFO, Phosguard, NoPox, Chemi-Clean = somewhere in that tank I can reach in, do an action, and a cloud results.

one of the big 3 will always (regardless of the generation of reefers) be a low storage, throughput-type of design that simply doesnt store waste. i.e. not a deep sandbed that runs untouched.

that doesnt mean another of the big three isn't perfectly balanced untouched deep sandbeds

1 method left to corral the masses in a thread@!- someone find n post

 

[fcmatt]

How much phosgaurd did you use versus your current level of PO4 at the time of adding.. and what was your water volume? If your PO4 was at .02 and the tank looked fine why would you even consider using it? Did you rinse it completely? it sounds like you might have added to much and literally stripped the water of all PO4 giving the corals a shock of some type.

The reason we have such products is because they do have proper use cases and they must be used carefully. GFO is a known good product. I figured you would discuss some type of snake oil product that we have no evidence it actually does something.

 

[ReefLab]

I think the fact that our reef tanks are not natural require dosing of chemicals and different types of processing that involve complex mechanisms in nature that do not exist in our tanks. Not to mention nature has a nearly infinite amount of water - almost as if we did a 100% water change more than once a day.
The complete ecosystem in the sea cannot be realistically recreated in a 100 gallon tank so chemicals are there to supplement. A refugium and a base of phytoplankton and pods are a great way to reduce excess nutrients but If you looked in the sea, you would see on the order of 1x10^6 microbes in each mL of water. kilometers miles of seaweed growing nearby thriving reefs (think a refugium that is 150% of tank water volume).These numbers are unrealistic in our tanks.

edit: just read a source that says coral reefs occupy roughly 1% of the area in the ocean. Think about all the organisms and ecological systems in the other 99% that exchange chemicals in the reefs many times over every day.

 

[JCOLE]

How much phosgaurd did you use versus your current level of PO4 at the time of adding.. and what was your water volume? If your PO4 was at .02 and the tank looked fine why would you even consider using it? Did you rinse it completely? it sounds like you might have added to much and literally stripped the water of all PO4 giving the corals a shock of some type.

The reason we have such products is because they do have proper use cases and they must be used carefully. GFO is a known good product. I figured you would discuss some type of snake oil product that we have no evidence it actually does something.

My total system volume is around 180 gallons. At the time I had around .25-.30 phosphates. I dropped in the prefilled bags of Phosguard that treats 100 gallons. It definitely worked and lowered my tank to around .08 in 3 days. Aluminum based phosphate removers tend to suck the color from Monti's, etc.

Again, I didn't bring it up because I doubt their uses and effectiveness. I know what they are used for along with they work really well.

I brought it up because it seems to be the go to and first line of defense. If someone sees a little but of Cyano then the recommendation is always Chemiclean, etc. I just feel that we should probably start implementing natural removal first along with time and patience before immediately using chemical warfare to suck out the nutrients.

Again, I am not against these products. I have all of them at my disposal. I just believe in natural, time, and manual removal of nuisance algae before dropping the atomic bombs.

 

[JCOLE]

I think the fact that our reef tanks are not natural require dosing of chemicals and different types of processing that involve complex mechanisms in nature that do not exist in our tanks. Not to mention nature has a nearly infinite amount of water - almost as if we did a 100% water change more than once a day.
The complete ecosystem in the sea cannot be realistically recreated in a 100 gallon tank so chemicals are there to supplement. A refugium and a base of phytoplankton and pods are a great way to reduce excess nutrients but If you looked in the sea, you would see on the order of 1x10^6 microbes in each mL of water. kilometers miles of seaweed growing nearby thriving reefs (think a refugium that is 150% of tank water volume).These numbers are unrealistic in our tanks.

edit: just read a source that says coral reefs occupy roughly 1% of the area in the ocean. Think about all the organisms and ecological systems in the other 99% that exchange chemicals in the reefs many times over every day.

That's the thing. They are not exchanging "chemicals". They might be processing and fighting off man made chemicals such as sun screen, oil, etc that are introduced to the oceans daily. That seems to be going well for them so far......
We don't have people dumping chemicals into the ocean to lower phosphates , nitrates, etc. Nature does this for the oceans in organisms that help export the waste and pollution.

 

[brandon429]

For cyano I like to just blast the sandbed totally clear of anything but sand grains

Such a fast fix technique. They say always hit the source along with treating a symptom, we do. After pics are stacking up great
Taking the feed waste out of the bed + cyano is working great vs coaxing it out, for months. Plus, out method is way more coral friendly, we aren't losing corals in our cyano work threads.

We are not using chems

Chems don't buzzsaw the sandbed they leave filth for alternation of generations / invaders capitalizing. Forcing a tank to become uninvaded is a great feeling.

 

[ReefLab]

That's the thing. They are not exchanging "chemicals". They might be processing and fighting off man made chemicals such as sun screen, oil, etc that are introduced to the oceans daily. That seems to be going well for them so far......
We don't have people dumping chemicals into the ocean to lower phosphates , nitrates, etc. Nature does this for the oceans in organisms that help export the waste and pollution.

Yes I’m saying 99% of the ocean is not coral and can be considered the “sump” of the ocean. So imagine your display tank being 100gallons and your sump/refugium totaling 10,000 gallons. Then I don’t think you’d need to worry about nutrient export but you would have to provide some other organisms to compensate for nutrient uptake.

 

[Tastee]

I’m all for the natural approach but I needed some chemical assistance to get my tank to the level of stability I needed to run it that way. Tank is 2 years old now and by month 3 I had GHA starting to take over. Over the next 12 months I learnt a lot about nutrients and finally beat the GHA with a dose of Fluconazole after getting the nutrients under control with PhosGuard, LC and then NoPoX. During that 12 months however I lost several corals to Algae.

For 7 months now I haven’t dosed anything except Alk, Mg and Ca and the tank is going great. The only exception to this was that I lost a Hammer to flatworms so dosed FW RX once 4 weeks ago to ensure I got rid of any I hadn’t manually removed - didn’t see any dead ones, so that exercise seemed to be redundant (but happy I did it to be on the safe side).

 

[JCOLE]

I’m all for the natural approach but I needed some chemical assistance to get my tank to the level of stability I needed to run it that way. Tank is 2 years old now and by month 3 I had GHA starting to take over. Over the next 12 months I learnt a lot about nutrients and finally beat the GHA with a dose of Fluconazole after getting the nutrients under control with PhosGuard, LC and then NoPoX. During that 12 months however I lost several corals to Algae.

For 7 months now I haven’t dosed anything except Alk, Mg and Ca and the tank is going great. The only exception to this was that I lost a Hammer to flatworms so dosed FW RX once 4 weeks ago to ensure I got rid of any I hadn’t manually removed - didn’t see any dead ones, so that exercise seemed to be redundant (but happy I did it to be on the safe side).

Thats good to hear everything cleared up and is doing a lot better. Do you have a refugium or did you have one prior to the treatments of Fluconazole?

 

[fish farmer]

I prefer the natural way....but the use chemicals interests me.

I have a 29 gallon tank with old rock/sand, chronic high PO4, the last few years if I skipped WC for a month GHA grew like mad. It is mostly softies with a couple of hammers. I turned my algae problem around this past year with new CUC crew, chaeto in the sump and routine WC. Most all my red and green algaes were kept in check. My nitrate were getting around 5 to 7ppm and staying there, phosphates were starting to get below .25pmm. I plumbed a reactor into my system to play with phosphate sponge, recently got some readings after a two day run around .05 ppm.

Of course my Mexican turbos which did some powerhouse cleaning didn't last too long and I also got off schedual with WC's. The GHA has started growing back FAST. I'm limited to the five fingered hand crab for algae removal in a small tank and the speediness of a turbo snail.

 

[Back where it all began]

Exactly. I remember REAL LIVE rock. The rocks I used to get were not pretty at all. They were teaming with life from every crevice. I think this is something that needs to be pushed. The reasoning more so now is that Dry Rock seems to be the norm. I know because my 150 is filled with dry rock. I was looking at my rock last night and thinking "wow it is starting to look like live rock". Again, if newer reefers are using dry rock from the start with no bacteria or natural nutrient export then that is going to be a recipe for disaster.

Hi, I purchased all of my live rock from Tampa Bay Saltwater and it is live. Everything you could hope for. Just shook it off and placed it I needed the tank. Live sand from them as well. I have a skimmer and that’s it. The rock has some Gha and a bit of turf algae, but lent you of coralline. The algae, rocks, and sand take care of everything for me. My fish and CUC provide the rest. I supplement with Saliferts all iN one and magnesium. I don’t have to watch for numbers as this blend mostly takes care of itself. Simple, but it works for me.

 

[Back where it all began]

Hi, I purchased all of my live rock from Tampa Bay Saltwater and it is live. Everything you could hope for. Just shook it off and placed it I needed the tank. Live sand from them as well. I have a skimmer and that’s it. The rock has some Gha and a bit of turf algae, but lent you of coralline. The algae, rocks, and sand take care of everything for me. My fish and CUC provide the rest. I supplement with Saliferts all iN one and magnesium. I don’t have to watch for numbers as this blend mostly takes care of itself. Simple, but it works for me.

Sorry for the typos.

 

[Tastee]

Thats good to hear everything cleared up and is doing a lot better. Do you have a refugium or did you have one prior to the treatments of Fluconazole?

No, I don’t have a ’fuge in my system. I have a RSR 250 with Marine Pure balls in the first sump inlet chamber, filter mesh socks, skimmer and Poly Filter in the sump return. And a reasonable amount of live rock as you can see in the photo I posted.

 

[chefjpaul]

I currently don't need to, just utilize macroalgae and urchins, but I have in past and just created to much chaos to chase.
Understanding the needs of when and when not to is the key.

 

[Small triggers]

I purposely grew fern caulerpa in a spot in my DT... love it! Soak up the nutrients, cut it back when it got to big or lanky

 

[GainesvilleReef]

I have had successes and failures with both a refugium and carbon dosing. I can make a case that both are natural and one that both are unnatural.

But, I think we do tend to look for magic buttons to press for every issue.

I have found this hobby to be a lot easier and fun when you don't battle every filament of algae. We need to go with the tank sometimes.

 

[ZaneTer]

We may be using more chemicals but reefers, in general, are also achieving more success than ever before.

 

[Mastiffsrule]

Just thinking about this for a while now. Why are there so many chemicals used now on our reef tanks to eliminate nutrients, algae, etc? Isn't this part of the reef and ecosystem? I tried using Phosguard once and my corals never looked as poor as they did within the first 3 days of use. It looked as if the life was sucked out of the corals.

I thought about this while I snorkeled in the Bahamas a couple of weeks ago. All I could think about when I looked at the reef is that they didn't look perfect and clean. They were covered in Algae, sponges, etc......LIFE. I saw more algae and filter feeders than coral. To me, I thought naturally it was Awesome and Beautiful. While I love the look of clean beautiful eye-popping tanks, I feel that a lot of reefers strive to make their tanks look sterile. Whether it is with ultra-low nutrient systems, chemicals, mechanical filtration, etc I feel we are robbing what the ecosystem is.

I used Phosguard for 3 days about 8 months ago. After three days I pulled it out because my Monti's turned grey. Within a couple of days, my phosphates started to rise and my Monti's regained their color. I have never used a chemical before or since then. I only use filter socks now when I heavily clean my tank and sand. I run a skimmer and have mangroves/Chaeto in my refugium and my Phosphates are at 0.02-0.03 and I have to feed HEAVY to get my nitrates up to 5-10ppm.

So out of all this, I am trying to say...what is the big deal about algae and not so clean tanks? Is it just me or do others enjoy the look of GHA, Bubble Algae, etc to a minimum of course? I feel this is what the reef needs to help thrive. I believe in the all-natural way of eliminating excess nutrients, etc so this is why I am in the process of building a larger second fuge to hold a handful of various macro's.

Again, just thinking out loud here. Would love to hear what others have to say.

I totally agree, but i am a bit of a hypocrite since i just had to fight Dino and turf algae with FluxRX and vibrant. I had it for years and the natural way wasn’t working.

But (yes another but), if the tank is healthy the need for additives greatly diminishes. And when using the go to chemical it should be last resort not a quick fix.

Side note, I just read an article from Randy tonight. He linked phosguard and the release of Alumina.

Chemistry And The Aquarium: Aluminum In The Reef Aquarium

In this article I will give some details of aluminum in natural seawater, and will discuss the sparse literature on the toxicity of aluminum ions to marine organisms.

www.advancedaquarist.com

 

[JCOLE]

I totally agree, but i am a bit of a hypocrite since i just had to fight Dino and turf algae with FluxRX and vibrant. I had it for years and the natural way wasn’t working.

But (yes another but), if the tank is healthy the need for additives greatly diminishes. And when using the go to chemical it should be last resort not a quick fix.

Side note, I just read an article from Randy tonight. He linked phosguard and the release of Alumina.

Chemistry And The Aquarium: Aluminum In The Reef Aquarium

In this article I will give some details of aluminum in natural seawater, and will discuss the sparse literature on the toxicity of aluminum ions to marine organisms.

www.advancedaquarist.com

Agree 100%. I am all for using chemicals such as in your case. You did the natural approach and unfortunately wasnt enough so you had to go the other route. It might just be me but it seems that I see refugiums a lot less now and chemical nutrient export being the preferred method. Makes me wonder if 10 years from now we are going to look back and go uh oh......

How is the tank looking? Did the Dinos clear up 100%?