Dealing with high phosphate

[bondno9]

I have a new tank. About 10 weeks old now and I have a raja rampage chalice that’s starting to turn brown. I did some research and it said its either low light or high phosphates.

I ran some tests and my pH is 7.95, nitrate is .04, phosphate 0.33. Couldn’t test for alkalinity since my reagent went bad. I also do have some algae issues I’m dealing with so I’m guessing it’s related with the phosphate.

I have a pair of clowns, royal gramma, fire shrimp, 2 nassarius snails, 3 trochus, about 4 scarlet hermit crabs, 4 turbo snails and an emerald crab. For corals I got some zoas, euphyllia, candy cane, rainbow bta, favia and chalice. For filtration I’m using my sand, rock, filter floss and I’m carbon (chemi pure). I plan on picking up a skimmer.

I believe the culprit is me over feeding. My clowns swim to the top of my tank and beg for food so I sprinkle a little piece of nutramar in the tank for them to enjoy. Going to stop that and just try to feed every other day for now and see if that helps with the phosphate. My fish also love to eat the copepods all day long. I see them going up to the glass and just pecking away so I’m sure they can skip a day of me feeding.

Would appreciate any helpful tips.

 

[robinm]

Do you run any nutrient export strategy at the moment i.e. refugium, carbon dosing etc? It's strange that your nitrates are that low and your phosphates that high but long term you need a nutrient export mechanism to keep your parameters stable. Every time you feed your fish you are adding nutrients into your tank, not all will be utilised by corals etc. so you need some way to export them out again.

 

[bondno9]

Do you run any nutrient export strategy at the moment i.e. refugium, carbon dosing etc? It's strange that your nitrates are that low and your phosphates that high but long term you need a nutrient export mechanism to keep your parameters stable. Every time you feed your fish you are adding nutrients into your tank, not all will be utilised by corals etc. so you need some way to export them out again.

Sorry I forgot to include in the original post. For filtration I’m using my sand, rock, filter floss and I’m carbon (chemi pure). I plan on picking up a skimmer.

Also I don’t feed to crazy. I usually grab half a pellet of nutramar and crush it up into the tank. But I’ll do that twice a day and it’s unnecessary so I’m going to stop doing that.

 

[robinm]

Sorry I forgot to include in the original post. For filtration I’m using my sand, rock, filter floss and I’m carbon (chemi pure). I plan on picking up a skimmer.

Also I don’t feed to crazy. I usually grab half a pellet of nutramar and crush it up into the tank. But I’ll do that twice a day and it’s unnecessary so I’m going to stop doing that.

None of the above will remove PO4 so aside from water changes every time you feed you are adding PO4 to the tank (some foods are worse than others). Is it an AIO aquarium or sumped? If you have the room for it a refugium has many benefits but if you're space limited and you're already looking to get a skimmer you may want to look into carbon dosing. Either way until you get something up and running water changes to bring PO4 down are the way to go.

 

[Solo McReefer]

Media bag of GFO?

 

[Garf]

I have a new tank. About 10 weeks old now and I have a raja rampage chalice that’s starting to turn brown. I did some research and it said its either low light or high phosphates.

I ran some tests and my pH is 7.95, nitrate is .04, phosphate 0.33. Couldn’t test for alkalinity since my reagent went bad. I also do have some algae issues I’m dealing with so I’m guessing it’s related with the phosphate.

I have a pair of clowns, royal gramma, fire shrimp, 2 nassarius snails, 3 trochus, about 4 scarlet hermit crabs, 4 turbo snails and an emerald crab. For corals I got some zoas, euphyllia, candy cane, rainbow bta, favia and chalice. For filtration I’m using my sand, rock, filter floss and I’m carbon (chemi pure). I plan on picking up a skimmer.

I believe the culprit is me over feeding. My clowns swim to the top of my tank and beg for food so I sprinkle a little piece of nutramar in the tank for them to enjoy. Going to stop that and just try to feed every other day for now and see if that helps with the phosphate. My fish also love to eat the copepods all day long. I see them going up to the glass and just pecking away so I’m sure they can skip a day of me feeding.

Would appreciate any helpful tips.

Not necessarily phosphate related at 0.3ish, more likely the ten week old tank with not testing Alk.