I’m dumbfounded, hopefully someone can help me figure this out. I’m providing as much necessary detail as possible so please bear with me.
I had high phosphate and nitrate for a long time, I bought a sulfur denitrator and started dosing lanthanum into a reactor. Phosphate was bound to the live rock, so I started high with lanthanum and slowly started lowering it until it stabilized. I had been running 5-15 nitrates and .02-.05 phosphate consistently (Hanna tests) for over a year now.
Suddenly, phosphate has dropped to 0 and nitrate now dropping under 1ppm. I’m seeing the expected loss of color and STN on my LPS.
- I’m still running my sulfur denitrator with the effluent wide open. Could this be causing the low phosphate? Should I turn it off?
- I’m also running the lanthanum reactor (a reactor that filters the flocculant) but not dosing any more lanthanum. The reactor is full of flocculant. Could this be binding more phosphate? Just turned it off since it’s not necessary.
- I tripled my feeding (2x cubes of frozen) and started feeding pellets 2x/day on my auto feeder, but can barely go over 0.
- Skimmer is running without a cup.
- Redsea reef mat has been running for a long time, I’m turning it off today but this can’t be the culprit.
The only change that perfectly matches this timeline is the plumbing of a 15g AIO tank to the same system. Nutrients started dropping 1 month after installing it. This tank is SUPER low flow as it has jellyfish. I drilled the back AIO compartment as an overflow (picture attached) and I noticed when I stir the bottom of the overflow it smells like decaying matter (not as strong as the sulfur denitrator, but similar). Could this be the culprit? It’s hard to believe that this small system is doing more denitrifying and phosphate reduction than the denitrator + high Lanthanun dosing could handle.
I’m going to have to start dosing nitrate and phosphate, but I’d really like to avoid this. Finding the culprit and going back to my old setup would be easier. Any ideas?
I had high phosphate and nitrate for a long time, I bought a sulfur denitrator and started dosing lanthanum into a reactor. Phosphate was bound to the live rock, so I started high with lanthanum and slowly started lowering it until it stabilized. I had been running 5-15 nitrates and .02-.05 phosphate consistently (Hanna tests) for over a year now.
Suddenly, phosphate has dropped to 0 and nitrate now dropping under 1ppm. I’m seeing the expected loss of color and STN on my LPS.
- I’m still running my sulfur denitrator with the effluent wide open. Could this be causing the low phosphate? Should I turn it off?
- I’m also running the lanthanum reactor (a reactor that filters the flocculant) but not dosing any more lanthanum. The reactor is full of flocculant. Could this be binding more phosphate? Just turned it off since it’s not necessary.
- I tripled my feeding (2x cubes of frozen) and started feeding pellets 2x/day on my auto feeder, but can barely go over 0.
- Skimmer is running without a cup.
- Redsea reef mat has been running for a long time, I’m turning it off today but this can’t be the culprit.
The only change that perfectly matches this timeline is the plumbing of a 15g AIO tank to the same system. Nutrients started dropping 1 month after installing it. This tank is SUPER low flow as it has jellyfish. I drilled the back AIO compartment as an overflow (picture attached) and I noticed when I stir the bottom of the overflow it smells like decaying matter (not as strong as the sulfur denitrator, but similar). Could this be the culprit? It’s hard to believe that this small system is doing more denitrifying and phosphate reduction than the denitrator + high Lanthanun dosing could handle.
I’m going to have to start dosing nitrate and phosphate, but I’d really like to avoid this. Finding the culprit and going back to my old setup would be easier. Any ideas?