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Evidence of phosphates / nitrates too low?


ceastman

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What would the evidence be of phosphates / nitrates being too low? my acan / lord and about half of my palys are not as puffy as they usually are.

Yet I still have some brown algae on my sand bed..

my hanna checker says 0.00 but I am dosing vodka which I believe is / or should be consuming all the phosphates before the algae can get to it.

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I thought I remember you mentioning you had dinos? Or I may just be remembering wrong. If you do, they can irritate corals.

If the brown algae is dust-like, then that's diatoms and will go away after all the silicates in your system are used up. If its cyano, then you have a nutrient issue.

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What would the evidence be of phosphates / nitrates being too low? my acan / lord and about half of my palys are not as puffy as they usually are.

Yet I still have some brown algae on my sand bed..

my hanna checker says 0.00 but I am dosing vodka which I believe is / or should be consuming all the phosphates before the algae can get to it.

The vodka dosing most likely won't facilitate the full transport of PO4. For the most part, I've never seen a tank using a carbon dosing method that didn't end up with needing to use some form of PO4 removal after a period of time. In my experience it is usually 4 - 8 weeks before the PO4 buildup surpasses the bacteria's ability to remove it, but once that point is hit, it doesn't seem possible to get back to an equivalent export of both NO3 and PO4.

As far as the 0 reading goes, PO4 is actually a bit of an existential problem. There's technically 2 main types of PO4 in a tank, inorganic and organic, the later being PO4 bound to other compounds that release it into the tank. Organic PO4 will not register on PO4 tests however it still is usable by algaes, cyano, dino, etc. It also breaks down into inorganic PO4. The real trick here is that organic PO4 is what's actually exported via skimming, whereas inorganic is not. So, we test for inorganic PO4 and actually remove organic PO4, kind of makes PO4 control more of a watch, observe, and adjust than actually scientific...

As far as the actual question, too low PO4 will normally result it coral that aren't growing, and possibly STN depending on the coral. In my experience LPS usually fare the worst. My acans, chalices, and wall euphyllias typically retract and don't inflate well. If I drop PO4 too quickly, they do it even worse but generally LPS and softies don't like being down near zero. You could probably even say that no coral except certain SPS like a very low amount of PO4. The easiest to spot for me is that you'll typically have very little algae growth in the tank at the same time. Film algae on the glass is usually the easiest to keep track of since you know how often you clean it. When I get my PO4 near zero I can go 6 weeks without cleaning the front glass, otherwise it needs it weekly.

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+1 to what Jestep said.

From what I have experienced, deflated or fading color on acans could either mean that your phosphate or nitrates are too high or that the water is too clean. If you started vodka dosing at a high dose then the nutrients could be stripped from the water causing the LPS to react.

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