Should I Dose Phosphates

[BrunoMatavelli]

Hello,

I am a new reef keeper, I have a red sea 250 reefer (55g display) that has been running for about 3 months now. Everything seems to be going well, but about a week ago my nitrates reached about 10ppm (API Test Kit), and a lot of brown spots (possibly diatoms) and some green spots started to appear on the rocks.

I did not have a phosphate test kit, so I assumed that my phosphates were getting high as well. Today, I received my Salifert phosphate test kit and to my surprise, my phosphate is testing zero.

I have Cheato in my refugium running for about a month now with little to no growth.

I feed frozen Mysis and new life spectrum pellets.

I am doing weekly water changes of 5 gallons using Tropic Marin Salt.

Now I am questioning to slowly start dosing Phosphates to get the chaeto to grow and reduce my nitrates, but I am also afraid of giving fuel to my current algae in the tank.

I will post a couple of photos to show the brown and green dots.

Thanks

 

[watty21]

A new reef will grow algae and that is totally ok! It's a good sign actually, shows your tank is healthy. That will eventually turn to coralline. So I wouldn't worry about fueling it. There are other algaes that you will have to worry about, thought, potentially in the future.

Your chaeto actually pulls nitrates more than phosphates. Assuming it has everything else it wants (mainly light) it will start to take off as your bioload increases. What is your refugium light and how long is it running?

Another quick note, your test kits are a little difficult. API is never recommended and salifert is really difficult to tell zero from close to zero. The best option for phosphates is the hanna test but it is a little pricey up front and totally not necessary unless you're bad with colors like me.

If you're super worried about phosphates, you can overfeed once and they'll raise. Do you have corals? Feed them and you'll see em raise a bit. I always overfeed just a smidge so my cleanup crew has something to munch on!

 

[BrunoMatavelli]

Hi Watty,

I have INNOVATIVE MARINE AUQA GADGET CHAETOMAX 2-IN-1 REFUGIUM LIGHT running for about 12h a day.

I think the Chaeto is not growing for lack of phosphates or because it has been in the tank for just a month and is possibly acclimating.

I know about the algae, but I am trying to keep it under control for as long as I can to avoid hair algae and other nasty stuff.