Can an algae scrubber strip phosphate too low? And how long can a tank run on low phosphate? Currently 0.015.

[Beachbilly]

Randy what is ats?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Randy what is ats?

Algal turf scrubber.

 

[Beachbilly]

LOL all these acros, no pun intended, I figured it out.

 

[Beachbilly]

I thought you meant automatic timer setting LOL SMH

 

[vdubers]

There are many ways to boost phosphate. If you think creatures need more food or nitrate is not too high, feeding more is a fine plan (but more expensive than dosing).

Less light time on the ats will raise both N and P, if that is a goal. Same for reduced particulate filtration.

Thanks I appreciate there might be many ways to solve this and dosing phosphate is potentially the simplest solution however do you think it would be a bad idea to reduce the amount of water in my water changes?

I guess it might not solve the phosphate issue but is it likely to cause any harm if I reduce it from 1% a day to 0.75 or even 0.50% a day?

 

[vdubers]

Just reduce scrubber lighting period by 1 hour at the beginning of the week and then at the end of the week measure phosphates. Continue reducing 1 hr a week and you should see the numbers start to creep up. Then fine tune the hours as needed

Yeah I think I will be giving that a go in the future to find a balance once I have tried a few other things. It sounds like a good reduction schedule.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks I appreciate there might be many ways to solve this and dosing phosphate is potentially the simplest solution however do you think it would be a bad idea to reduce the amount of water in my water changes?

I guess it might not solve the phosphate issue but is it likely to cause any harm if I reduce it from 1% a day to 0.75 or even 0.50% a day?

I don't know, but IMO its unlikely to make much difference. Phosphate doesn't drop as fast as one expects from simple dilution due the reservoir on rock and sand, and when the level is already low (say, 0.01 ppm), a 1% water change is removing a trivially small amount (0.0001 ppm per change) relative to daily foods (about 0.02 to 0.3 ppm per day).

Aquarium Chemistry: Phosphate And Math: Yes You Need To Understand Both

Foods are by far the most important source of phosphate in most aquariums. In considering whether sources of phosphate other than foods are important, one must carefully look to the actual amounts involved to determine whether other sources are even worth trying to minimize.

reefs.com

 

[vdubers]

I don't know, but IMO its unlikely to make much difference. Phosphate doesn't drop as fast as one expects from simple dilution due the reservoir on rock and sand, and when the level is already low (say, 0.01 ppm), a 1% water change is removing a trivially small amount (0.0001 ppm per change) relative to daily foods (about 0.02 to 0.3 ppm per day).

Aquarium Chemistry: Phosphate And Math: Yes You Need To Understand Both

Foods are by far the most important source of phosphate in most aquariums. In considering whether sources of phosphate other than foods are important, one must carefully look to the actual amounts involved to determine whether other sources are even worth trying to minimize.

reefs.com

Fair enough if it doesn’t make much difference I might just reduce it slightly to 0.75% daily and work on other things to increase the phosphate I.e feeding more, reducing the ats photo period and ultimately dosing phosphate if needed.

Thank you to everyone for your help. I will keep the thread updated as I find the balance and let you all know what ends up working best for me.

 

[Daniel Doherty]

I’ve been trying to get my nutrients to a decent level for a while. Initially I had high phosphate and used gfo to keep this in check. I’ve used some form of diy algae scrubber alongside this. While gfo and diy algae scrubber worked for phosphate my nitrates were still higher than I wanted.

I upgraded my scrubber and the light and since then it’s really been working well. Both nitrate and phosphate coming down nicely so stopped gfo also reduced algae scrubber photoperiod to 12 hours.

However my recent test with Hanna ULR puts phosphate at 0.015.

I’ve removed my filter floss in the hopes to bring phosphate up a bit and save the baby snails it traps.

However can my scrubber actually reduce phosphate so low that it starves the corals or would algae growth just slow down before that happens?

I’d prefer to have my phosphate around 0.05-0.1. I appreciate I could do a number of things to increase nutrients. I’m more just curious if a scrubber can be so effective that it becomes harmful to coral?

I’d like to feed more so assuming my next test shows that removing the filter floss didn’t cause nutrients to skyrocket this will be my next step.

Pictures attached of recent parameters and my scrubber harvest at the 2 week mark. I upgraded the skimmer on 23rd October. I completely removed GFO on 1st November but hadn’t added fresh since 11th October.

Thanks for reading and any advice / comments .

Sesperate to the phosphates, but what snails do you have breeding?

 

[vdubers]

Sesperate to the phosphates, but what snails do you have breeding?

It appears to be trochus snails. I’ve often seen them releasing into the water column but assumed nothing survived until I was finding tiny baby snails in my sump and filter floss. The filter floss ones are super small but I try my best to add them to the sump to grow bigger before adding them back to the main tank.

 

[Faurek]

Yes it can when you combine it with medias, did this on my pico, fed heavy and had an algae reactor, was doing fine, then I wanted to lower phos to hobby levels and put gfo, killed my Pikachu acro.
I think many people will jump straight to more filtration and I am all for algae as filter, but when you have that don't add medias to do the same stuff, take gfo out and use the scrubber only, if you have too little phos then add more fish, don't start stripping nitrate while your phos is super low or you might see coral going away.

 

[rishma]

Yes it can when you combine it with medias, did this on my pico, fed heavy and had an algae reactor, was doing fine, then I wanted to lower phos to hobby levels and put gfo, killed my Pikachu acro.
I think many people will jump straight to more filtration and I am all for algae as filter, but when you have that don't add medias to do the same stuff, take gfo out and use the scrubber only, if you have too little phos then add more fish, don't start stripping nitrate while your phos is super low or you might see coral going away.

Given how careful I have to be with GFO in my 100L tank, I cannot imagine trying it in a pico. If I use anything more than a fraction of the recommend GFO, things go badly rather quick. That’s without an algae filter. I never had this problem in larger tanks.

 

[Faurek]

Given how careful I have to be with GFO in my 100L tank, I cannot imagine trying it in a pico. If I use anything more than a fraction of the recommend GFO, things go badly rather quick. That’s without an algae filter. I never had this problem in larger tanks.

Yeah, I'm crazy so this type of stuff is kinda usual for me, and I just wanted better color on my Pikachu.