Wow that’s a huge huge drop
Torch coral disintegrating before my eyes with
- Thread starter JayFish4004
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- phosguard torch recession
When People say gradual they drop .2.3 over that same period of time
This says it right here only a few months ago the tank was at zero then it shut up to 1 PM which is insanely high phosphates now he’s got it back down to .3 few weeks later
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I have a pistol shrimp pinkbar goby pair and a fighting conch but neither really kick up sand.
I do kick it up when Im cleaning the glass to get rid of some of the gunk that builds up between the sides of the glass and the sand bed, and part of me is wondering if this is ticking the hammers and torches off. Am I better off just not touching the sand bed?
I have to agree with you when you tie in that timeline of "starving" to "way too much" then back down to "dirty". I assume this was a dry rock setup. I had to dose PO4 daily in my tank for the first year and now I'm exporting it.
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Where do I go from here is my main question - Im stopping water changes and Phosguard for the time being to see if I cant get my torches happy again.
At some point the phosphates are gonna go back up, seems like it raises about .5ppm per month. None of the corals were unhappy at 2.1ppm, I was mainly dropping them because everybody was freaking out when I told them that number.
Oddly enough had no algae to speak of which I assumed would be the opposite with levels that high. I do have algae (coraline, bubble, macro, green) but nothing on a nuisance level.
Long term exposure to high po4 will limit growth and eventually lead to death in most corals. How long....not sure.
There are tanks that I've seen happy around .3-.5 but 2.0 is really high for long term.
You will have to choose a way to export your po4 until the tank settles and even then you will most likely need to continue the export of nutrients somehow.
There are many choices, we went with an algea scrubber as we feed heavy.
I found rowa worked better for us than phosgaurd as we were getting some alluminum release from the phosgaurd. Vary rare but we were the exception.
I killed about 3 or 4 torch’s before I figured out they absolutely hate sand being on them
Your export methods are obviously not working. This is what should be looked at
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I am curious if that’s the case here - although I run polyfilter in my chamber so not quite as afraid of the metals.
My LFS told me to drop the phos with Phosguard and then maintain it with Rowa. I’ve got it on hand.
Should I halt all water changes and efforts to remove phos until my green torch stops being angry? I am starting to formulate a longterm plan but between now and then is where Im stuck on what to do.
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Yep Im not doing phosguard again - it’s a difficult thing to do gradually. Often times I put in a bag and saw no drop at all, then I’d put a different bag in at the same quantity and it dropped quite a bit.
I think at the heart of it is not catching it earlier though, Id be hardpressed to think anyone would’ve done it more gradual than I did given the circumstances. 48 days is a good amount of time in anybody’s book.
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Finally someone! Ive been wondering this - I honestly think this is at the heart of my issue with my euphyllia. While the phosphate is a problem I doubt its ticking them off like sand might be doing.
What did you end up doing? My challenge is I have a full tank and have to keep the torches and hammers isolated. Been thinking about finding a smaller rock to mount them to so their still in their spot but not in the sand.
I have a 20 gallon nano so my options are limited
I have taken 1/2inch pvc pipe and cut them multiple lengths about 4-8 inch long and insert them into my 3 inch sand bed so they stick out and then extended the frag plug end with another frag plug end I broke off then glued to torch so it’s more stable in the pvc and can’t get knocked out. You can see 3 in this pic only center one is being used right now
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That is pretty slick - so as a result do you have a different way you clean the sand now too? Im starting to wonder if its even worth cleaning if its gonna cause havoc.
I have over 1,000 gallons of saltwater between 7 tanks in my house and I’ve never vacuumed a sand bed in 10 years and won’t…….
Do you wanna know what I do do. Hahahah I said do do
anyways I dose 250ml of live phyto daily to my systems for nutrient control.
Well my goby was very curious on what was on the other side of the glass and the problem fixed itself. He ended up dying but on the bright side I haven’t lost a torch or hammer since.
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Good to know - lot of YouTube videos led me astray there talking about the need to clean the sand bed. Essentially every Sunday I do a water change and before I do that I would stir up the sand bed quite a bit and I think that might be my main culprit of unhappy euphyllia. Just never even crossed my mind I was doing more harm than good grrr.
Not to say Im not also experiencing issues due to the phos swing - but really only my green torch is super ticked. I haven’t seen much further in the recession department but what used to be a torch that was always always always fully out now only comes out halfway for the last week or so.
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