discuspro
Thu, 11th Jan 2007, 12:50 PM
Okay, I'm probably bringing up an old topic but is there a possibility I could have too little phosphates?
Here is the story. I got a new Phosban reactor with ROWAphos media a week or two ago. Before I threw the reactor on my system I tested for phosphates with my new Salifert Phos test kit. I got a reading <0.03ppm, although it was hard to exactly make out the color. It pretty much looked completely clear. This was on the normal test not the super high resolution test they say you can do on it. So, I install the reactor anyway to see what it does. Well, just in the past few days I've noticed any hair type algae patches that I had are turning clear and grey looking, like they are dead or dying, which is what I wanted for them to go away. Well another thing that I noticed was my coralline algae was turning more white as well and I think there has been some significant die back of my coralline.
Another thing to note is I'm still tweaking my Ca reactor. I've got a American Marine pH controller on it. The media inside the reactor is not ARM but it looks like a very similar composition of shells and aragonite just larger pieces of them. When I first really noticed my coralline bleaching I found my alkalinity had went from a dKH of 8.15 to 11.80 in 2 days. I've heard that coralline can be sensitive to high amount of CO2 in the water, I'm wondering if that is also a cause since I'm sure more CO2 was accidently dosed to the system during that alk spike.
Something else, the coralline in shaded reagions look fine. Like under rock ledges and stuff like that. Not all coralline subject to strong lighting is dead but it does look whiter. My lighting hasn't changed as far as I know. I've got a 250W SE Hamilton 14000K that I've had since probably July, which I'm looking at replacing very soon. The bulb is not cracked and my acros and other sps and lps are doing great.
The test date of the 11.80dKH was on the 7th and my most recent set of readings was on the 9th and here they are:
2:50pm
Salinity 34.2ppt, still raising slowly
Alk 8.8dKH
Mg 1275ppm
pH 8.03
Ca 435ppm
Haven't tested phosphates because I'm positive it's the same or less than when I first tested it. I do not have any fish and I feed my sps & lps very sparingly. This is my 37gal I'm talking about. I've also got a Nautilus TE skimmer running on this system as well.
Here is the story. I got a new Phosban reactor with ROWAphos media a week or two ago. Before I threw the reactor on my system I tested for phosphates with my new Salifert Phos test kit. I got a reading <0.03ppm, although it was hard to exactly make out the color. It pretty much looked completely clear. This was on the normal test not the super high resolution test they say you can do on it. So, I install the reactor anyway to see what it does. Well, just in the past few days I've noticed any hair type algae patches that I had are turning clear and grey looking, like they are dead or dying, which is what I wanted for them to go away. Well another thing that I noticed was my coralline algae was turning more white as well and I think there has been some significant die back of my coralline.
Another thing to note is I'm still tweaking my Ca reactor. I've got a American Marine pH controller on it. The media inside the reactor is not ARM but it looks like a very similar composition of shells and aragonite just larger pieces of them. When I first really noticed my coralline bleaching I found my alkalinity had went from a dKH of 8.15 to 11.80 in 2 days. I've heard that coralline can be sensitive to high amount of CO2 in the water, I'm wondering if that is also a cause since I'm sure more CO2 was accidently dosed to the system during that alk spike.
Something else, the coralline in shaded reagions look fine. Like under rock ledges and stuff like that. Not all coralline subject to strong lighting is dead but it does look whiter. My lighting hasn't changed as far as I know. I've got a 250W SE Hamilton 14000K that I've had since probably July, which I'm looking at replacing very soon. The bulb is not cracked and my acros and other sps and lps are doing great.
The test date of the 11.80dKH was on the 7th and my most recent set of readings was on the 9th and here they are:
2:50pm
Salinity 34.2ppt, still raising slowly
Alk 8.8dKH
Mg 1275ppm
pH 8.03
Ca 435ppm
Haven't tested phosphates because I'm positive it's the same or less than when I first tested it. I do not have any fish and I feed my sps & lps very sparingly. This is my 37gal I'm talking about. I've also got a Nautilus TE skimmer running on this system as well.