Kato
Active Member
You guys are good. And a number of you guessed it. However, as others mentioned it could be a combination of things, but I did revert most of them with no effect, except one.
Let me walk you through it. I find its a very good example of why this hobby is so hard. It's obviously 100% my own fault.
I bought a product that claims to:
Color enhancement by supporting the biology!
Enhances cleaning effecs of bacteria and promotes biology in salt
water tanks. A good and important bio bilm is created within short time.
After a few days the corals react with wonderful coloration!
This is KZ Zeofood. Now there's nothing 'wrong' with this product, but it's a good example of doing something that has an indirect effect that is not immediately obvious and will vary with your setup. And multiple stars have to align for things to go wrong
1) Zeofood is an Amino acid
2) It will eventually turn into Nitrate
3) Prior to this point, my system was Nitrate limited. Meaning low nitrate and a good amount of PO4 (0.08 or so IIRC)
4) Chaeto would grow a bit every night, then stop when Nitrate was too low. Little to no algae (I don't believe in nitrate, but I do believe in available nitrogen through out the day (where chaeto lights are off)
5) Adding Zeofood caused the tables to turn and I became PO4 limited. Now nitrate went up
6) This allowed my Chaeto to grow faster, consuming all PO4 (well down to 0.03, we will get to thatin a sec)
7) My Chaeto then stopped growing again as there was not enough PO4, with Nitrate roughly 2-4 and PO4 0.03
8) But 0.03 should be ok. Lower end for sure, but not STN (at least I haven't had that before)
So why?
Well I use a hobby grade Hanna Ultra Low Phosphate tester. What if it's not accurate. Ok ICP in and PO4 came back at 0.02. In the past, my older testers may also have been inaccurate, but perhaps they measured a bit too low so things were fine as the actual levels would be higher.
So me spending 50 bucks buying an amino acid had the indirect effect of starving my corals of PO4 but was disguised by less than accurate PO4 tester. Trying to do something good did something very bad and cost me 2K in losses. Thats reefing for you
So stopped ZeoFood, and wow I keep PO4 at 0.1 and let nitrate stay low (but feed well to have available nitrogen throughout the day). At the end of the day, Nitrate is very low and chato grows just enough to keep PO4 at the 0.08 - 0.1 levels. I test PO4 much more often now and will use PO4 levels as an indicator of available nitrate. If PO4 gets too low, there's too much nitrate. Or vice versa.
Lesson learned: When you add a new product, sit down for 30min and think through both direct and indirect effects. What does one substance turn into over time and how does that affect other parts of your tank.
Let me walk you through it. I find its a very good example of why this hobby is so hard. It's obviously 100% my own fault.
I bought a product that claims to:
Color enhancement by supporting the biology!
Enhances cleaning effecs of bacteria and promotes biology in salt
water tanks. A good and important bio bilm is created within short time.
After a few days the corals react with wonderful coloration!
This is KZ Zeofood. Now there's nothing 'wrong' with this product, but it's a good example of doing something that has an indirect effect that is not immediately obvious and will vary with your setup. And multiple stars have to align for things to go wrong
1) Zeofood is an Amino acid
2) It will eventually turn into Nitrate
3) Prior to this point, my system was Nitrate limited. Meaning low nitrate and a good amount of PO4 (0.08 or so IIRC)
4) Chaeto would grow a bit every night, then stop when Nitrate was too low. Little to no algae (I don't believe in nitrate, but I do believe in available nitrogen through out the day (where chaeto lights are off)
5) Adding Zeofood caused the tables to turn and I became PO4 limited. Now nitrate went up
6) This allowed my Chaeto to grow faster, consuming all PO4 (well down to 0.03, we will get to thatin a sec)
7) My Chaeto then stopped growing again as there was not enough PO4, with Nitrate roughly 2-4 and PO4 0.03
8) But 0.03 should be ok. Lower end for sure, but not STN (at least I haven't had that before)
So why?
Well I use a hobby grade Hanna Ultra Low Phosphate tester. What if it's not accurate. Ok ICP in and PO4 came back at 0.02. In the past, my older testers may also have been inaccurate, but perhaps they measured a bit too low so things were fine as the actual levels would be higher.
So me spending 50 bucks buying an amino acid had the indirect effect of starving my corals of PO4 but was disguised by less than accurate PO4 tester. Trying to do something good did something very bad and cost me 2K in losses. Thats reefing for you
So stopped ZeoFood, and wow I keep PO4 at 0.1 and let nitrate stay low (but feed well to have available nitrogen throughout the day). At the end of the day, Nitrate is very low and chato grows just enough to keep PO4 at the 0.08 - 0.1 levels. I test PO4 much more often now and will use PO4 levels as an indicator of available nitrate. If PO4 gets too low, there's too much nitrate. Or vice versa.
Lesson learned: When you add a new product, sit down for 30min and think through both direct and indirect effects. What does one substance turn into over time and how does that affect other parts of your tank.
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