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Your findings are in total agreement with mine. It always is very difficult to adapt scleractinian corals to lower phosphate concentrations, no matter how high the phosphate concentrations have been previously.Hi @Hans-Werner .
I would like to pick your brain about my situation with higher PO4 levels relative to 0 Nitrate levels.
As with our previous discussions, we do not care about Nitrate levels and should really be looking at PO4 levels.
Initially, I carbon dosed with Elimini NP to bring PO4 levels down to below 0.1. Many of my LPS and SPS were not happy and eventually slowly experienced tissue contraction on my LPS or tissue sloughing on SPS. I had been dosing Elimini NP for over 1 year at the time and eventually switched over to Bacto Balance. I remained using NP Bacto Balance for 8 months keeping my PO4 levels around .05 to 0.1 levels. However I still saw slow deaths of my LPS through polyp contraction. Sadly during all this time I did not see much growth on my SPS or LPS.
For the past two months now, I have completely stopped dosing any carbon source. I have only been using Tropic Marin All for Reef. Last month my PO4 levels were 0.21 and today it was measured at 0.4. My LPS are much happier with fuller polyp expansion. SPS has polyp extensions. LPS colors are richer. However the SPS colors are brownish in color.
Should I try dosing with Tropic Marin Amino Organic to increase Nitrogen source to try to bring more colors?
I think if I use plus NP it would increase the PO4 level too much since it contains both PO4 and Nitrogen?
Any suggestion is greatly appreciated!
Also, I am curious when you can share your findings on higher levels of PO4 for coral growth.
Corals adapt to higher phosphate concentrations easily and rapidly but the don't adapt well to sinking or lower phosphate concentrations. It is also in full agreement with my observations that SPS stop to grow for a long time when exposed to lower phosphate concentrations and the chance is high that they will die during adaptation.
I frequently had problems with newly bought Acropora corals. I don't know where they have been exposed to high phosphate concentrations but mainly bred Acropora import frags very often showed the same symptoms I know from transfer to lower phosphate concentrations, which are exactly the symptoms you describe.
In talks I asked whether bred corals are kept in phosphate loaden water in Bali and the referents always denied inferior water qualities. I haven't resolved this mystery yet.
I always want to transport my knowledge and experience to other aquarists and of course to the users of our products, but it is difficult for me to find the balance between new and innovative and seeming ridiculous. I am quite happy that I have convinced a part of the "community" that phosphate is necessary and 0.1 ppm is a very good concentration. However, sinking phosphate concentrations remain a problem that is even harder to explain.
With Amino-Organic it is easier to lower phosphate concentration and get corals adapted because the reduced nitrogen compounds improve adaptability of corals and help reduce phosphate concentrations at the same time. I have to say it is still not easy to get the corals adapted but they have a better chance to survive.
If you want to avoid all this just keept them at the phosphate concentration at which they do well. In my experience also SPS will gain back their colors after just some weeks.