still got PO4

[Curtswearing]

I won't be able to check back on this thread until tonight. I'm just trying to do a little troubleshooting for the people who respond today and for when I check back in.

Hakuna Mattatta my friend. (It means no worries) We'll get this figured out. Live Rock usually comes with more than one species of coralline and those different species react differently to different levels of lighting. When it gets added to our tanks the different species either thrive or temporarily die back. This is normal (and temporary). It is very possible that the coralline problems are not from PO4 at all. However, we do want to solve the PO4 problem before you get hair algae or cyanobacteria.

LR is sometimes collected from a nutrient rich area (due to fertilizer runoff) and can be saturated with PO4. Luckily, the bacteria in/on it is fairly efficient at cleaning it out and throwing it into the water column to be removed by water changes or phosphate sponges. I personally find the iron-based phosphate sponges to be much better than the aluminum based ones. (I.E. Phosban or Rowaphos and there are a couple others. However, an aluminum based sponge will also work). There is a possibility that this is happening but there are other possibilities.

Most municipalities add chlorine or chloramines and phosphates to their water supplies on purpose to solve their problems. Unfortunately, their problem solving is bad for reefers. That's why I recommend RO/DI units. It's highly unlikely that it is coming from your water supply unless your DI cartridge is spent. How old is it? Do you have a TDS meter? Take some of the water from it...mix it with your salt mix...then test for phosphates. If it's positive, then either your water or your salt mix is the source.

What do you feed your fish? You wouldn't believe the quantities of phosphates in some prepared foods. Sometimes you can even look on the ingredient list and see that there are phosphates but it is usually hidden from the customer. If you have done the RO/DI water test in the prior paragraph and have zero from the water or salt, you can soak your normal fish food in this brand new water for an hour and then do a phosphate test on the water. You will likely get a reading as fish foods contain inorganic phosphates always. I'm just curious how high the reading is.

If you are feeding a homemade blender mush to your fish, soak the raw fish, nori, etc. in RO/DI water for a while prior to putting the seafood in the blender. Water is the universal solvent. It will act like a magnet and suck a lot of the phosphates out of the seafood. Just like the water company, the seafood industry adds phosphates to seafood to solve their problems. Unfortunately, their solution is bad for reefers but can be overcome.

I see by your pic you have a DSB. Sometimes DSB's get saturated to the point that no more bacteria can inhabit them. When that happens, the bacteria start dieing and release the bound phosphates into the water.

(There are even more areas we can explore.....however this is a good start. However, this problem is most certainly solveable. We just have to do a little Sherlock Holmesing to figure out where the problem is coming from).

Read this thread

[mwrager]

I was thinking about getting a test kit to find out how hi my PO4 is. But from what I read is it may be lower than the test kit can check and you would still have a problem. I did a water change this week end. Pulled the 3 rocks out of my tank, put them in the water that I just pulled off my tank and cleaned the hair algae off of them. We will see how long it take to grow back.

[Cougra]

I hope you can get the problem sorted out. There is some great info here and soaking the food in RO water really does help out.

As for it coming out of the LR, I think it's possible if the rock came from areas of high pollution.

Also remember that you can only test for inorganic phosphates and your readings wont tell you exactly what you have in your tank.

[mojoreef]

Hi DPdsny, no problem we will get this one sorted out. Your readings are telling us that you have a saturated content of organic phosphate, a reading of inorganic phosphate means that the tank can no long bind any more to organics, so it full, no biggie we just have to start to empty it a bit. Your going to have three sources in your tank, one is from input of water/food/additives and saltmixes. by the sounds of this your practicing good husbandry and are controlling the input (food cleaning, ro/di unit) what is your salt mix and what additives to you put in, also do use phytoplankton at all.
The next is your sand. The sand is already at the point of phosphate saturation before you take it out of the bag so dont be fooled. It will remain in the sand particles as long aas the sand stays at a high ph (normal tank water ph) what is probibly happenin now is that your sandbed has developed an anaerobic zone (this is a natural process) in this anaerobic zone the ph is much lower and will unbind the phosphates that are locked in the sand particles, through the movement of critters the phosphate slowly creeps up into the water column, where it is taken up by bacteria (good food source for them) however they have short lifespans and die off and thus release the P back into the water. Now if you add this to the ammount you input it can be a substancial ammount and can be hard for the biochemical nature of the bed to deal with. I beleive this is where you are at right now.but lets talk abouot the roack and then come back to it.
Yes the rock also has phosphates in it, but most are bound. What LR will do is to shed detritus, which is a good thing as it does not allow it to be a sink or a time bomb.
So here is the summery of IMHO your at in relation to your problem. You have a phosphate cycle occuring in your sand it is being feed by the sand itself, the nutrients locked in the bed, the sheding detritus of the rocks and the natural ammount your put in to feed your fish. What we need to do is to give the tank a break. adding a phoaphate remover will hep a bit but more of a bandade. Lets get it where it lives. Right now the top inch of your bed is probibly saturated with organics (which are directly associated with P and N) so lets do some export here right away. get your self a syphon and set it up. on the output end of the syphon put it in a 5 gaallon bucket but have it go through a 5 micron sock or simular to filter the crud. on the suck end put it down about 2 inches of the sand bed, now slowly start stiring the bed but only go about an inch deep and make sure you suck all the crud that is coming out of of the bed. do this until you have covered all the exposed sand.
What you will be doing is taking alot of the unprocessed nutrients out of the loop and allowing the system to catch up. You must look at your sand as a sponge, it will filter a little but mostly is it designed to lock in nutrients and cycle them, it will not remove them.

Give it a shot and let me know if I havent explained anything properly.

Mike

[mojoreef]

Cougra so you know it does not matter where the LR or sand came from, or even if it was taken from dry land or the ocean it is saturated with phosphates. This is thier nature, the good thing about LR is that the majority of the phosphates have been bound biologically already into organic phosphate. which means they can be exported. In the case of LR it will shed its detritus (thus organic phosphate) and allow you to export it through syphoning or skimming. If you have sand on the base (any type of sand/cc) it will take this shedding detritus as a gift from god (food falling from the sky) and lock it into its food web. Good for it, not so good for water quality.

Mike

[DPdsny]

mojoreef thank you for help ..just one Q.. you said
"get your self a syphon and set it up. on the output end of the syphon put it in a 5 gaallon bucket but have it go through a 5 micron sock or simular to filter the crud."
Now after im done.... im i saving the crud from the sock or saving the water. whats the sock for if im just getting rid of the crud and water.that was the only thing i was not clear on.

[mojoreef]

you can use a sock or even some cotton batten, anything fine enough to catch he crude, the concept is that you are trying to save the water. ALL saltmixes have either nitogen or phosphates in them, so at this point I dont want to add more P or N to the system, and if we discard the water you will have to use AS mixes. When I am saying sock I am also refering to a filter sock, not one out of the drawer, lol ...just thought about that.
Alot of folks think things are real complex and to a poin they are, BUT thier is a common denominator in all of it my friend and that is detritus, it is the root of all things evil in your tank. Phosphates and nitrogen compounds are 99.9% associated with it, and that means all its forms, algae, cyanos and as on. So remove it and you have removed the worst thing in your tank, dont remove it and you must play games to keep it in check.


Mike

[DPdsny]

OK now I got you. only thing that concerns my is what about all the life I got in the top layer of sand. I see lots of worms and things like that in there.

PS I wish you would have told me earlier that you meant a filter sock. I just got home from the gym and I used my sweet socks, I thought they would work better because they were premoistened (just kidding I knew what you meant)

[mojoreef]

Dont worry about the life in the top layer, view them as living phospahte absorbers. If you suck up a worm which i dought just through it back in.

Mike

[DPdsny]

cool thanks for the info man.
I was thinking of using one of my old Eheim pro canister filters filling it with cotton batten and just let the water run right back in to the tank. do you see any problems with doing this?

[mojoreef]

perfect, just check the out flow and make sure it is clean water.


Mike

[DPdsny]

ok. it look like its a go.i will try to do it some time this week. i let you know how it goes.

[DPdsny]

hay mojoreef
im still having trouble with the hair algae. I did every thing that we talked about in the last few posts but it still came back. im starting to get very frustrated with the hole thing. I ready to ditch the live rock and just go back to a FO tank. the hair algae is so bad that I don't even turn the lights on when people come over because it looks so bad.
thank you for any help.

[reefshadow]

Hi, DP-

I would recommend removing the live rock long enough to scrub it very well w/ a toothbrush, like MWrager did. The problem w/ hair algae is that it traps organics below and within it, which is plenty of food to keep it going. It is almost impossible to just make it die off in the tank. I would do this when you perform your next water change. You will be amazed at what comes out with the algae.

The idea of a kalk drip is a good one, even for a fowlr. Not only does it precipitate phosphates, it helps keep the alk and ca. within reasonable parameters which will keep you coralline thriving. It also will help boost and stabilize the PH, both things of benefit in controlling nuisance algae.

What type of current are you running in this tank. (Sorry if this was info already mentioned by you.) Getting the current really clipping along is beneficial because it helps keep detritus in suspension so the skimmer can catch it. Another good idea is to occasionally (I do it weekly) blast the LR with a power head to remove the detritus.

When I had my dinoflagellate problem I added twice the current to my tank, vaccumed the sand bed lightly, blasted the LR a couple times a day and ran po4 media. I had no luck in the past with the media because I was not getting that detritus and crap up into the water column where it could be caught.

Don't chuck you LR! But if you do, chuck in my direction!

HTH! -Becca

[reefshadow]

Oh, another benificial idea (if it is possible) would be for you to purchase hang on fuge, or partition off a small portion of the tank for this. Growing macro algae like caulerpa or chaetomorpha will help reduce nitrates and po4 without sacrificing the asthetics of your tank to hair algae!

I have even used one of those large plastic suction cup shower caddies within the tank as a removeable, very inexpensive fuge. I found a big one at walmart for 5 bucks or something. They get quickly covered in coralline so really don't look too bad, and the price is definately right. Plus you can laugh at your tangs frustration, wishing he could get a bite.