Uglies and high phosphate??

[BAMslam93]

I'm just past my second month with my 15 gallon cube and getting through the uglies right now with some bryopsis and gha on my rockwork and diatoms on the sand bed.

To help clean up the uglies, I stocked my tank with 5-6 blue leg hermits (hard to tell what's an empty shell and a tiny hermit lol), 5 trochus snails, a pencil urchin, 3 nassarius snails, and a cleaner shrimp who are doing a decent job cleaning up the detritus and gha/diatoms. Bryopsis will be dealt with using Reef Flux.

I also bought Hanna's Nitrate HR and Phosphate LR to check on those parameters and I was shocked to find that my nitrate was 21 ppm and phosphate 0.92?? I thought the algae was supposed to consume some of these nutrients or the CUC would help eat the leftover food that would fuel these high numbers. It also didn't help that two of my newer nassarius snails died and were eaten by the hermits and shrimp (going to remove the leftover shells in case of remaining decomposing flesh).

I keep up with weekly 10% water changes, vacuum the sandbed once a month, replace my filter sock every four days, and even added a nano skimmer to help with nutrient export (Bubble Magus MiniQ). I have been a little heavy on the dinner feeding recently since I have been getting up early for work and I don't want to feed while my clownfish pair are asleep.

I'm considering some options to help reduce the nutrients but I'm not sure which path to choose. Here are my strategies:

-Reduce feedings to once a day or a smaller amount twice a day
-Do larger 20% water changes per week
-Add more copepods and phytoplankton (considering Reef Nutrition or Algae Barn)
-Adding codium, botryocladia, or some other easy macroalgae to the DT (no refugium)
-Using a chemical solution like NoPox (last resort)

Since my tank is pretty new, would my parameters be normal and eventually stabilize with continued maintenance or is biological/chemical intervention needed? I'm attaching my most recent tests below; magnesium was 1260 ppm a few days ago. Also, this a FOWLR tank for now.

 

[Lavey29]

You’re entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts…think anyone that reads this thread can now come to their own opinion based on the facts.

I did believe you initially wanted to help but that turned into wanting to be right.

I apologise to the OP for the diversion on their thread.

I'm sorry, I missed the part where you posted facts instead of just your opinion about a product you appear to know nothing about but you are right, we deviated from the OP which is impolite.

OP - your new tank is going to have ups and downs the first year with difficulties maintaining stability however with each month the tank matures things get better if you do your part. If you are concerned about phosphate climbing there are multiple ways to deal with it such as less import and more export or a number of different chemical media that will lower. I personally use chemipure blue along with lanthium chloride or phosguard. Others to try are chemipure elite or just straight GFO which should be run in a reactor for optimal results. Phosguard can be put in a bag in your sump or media basket. I like phosguard because it walks the phosphate number down slowly so it doesn't shock the system. Weekly water changes are essential with new tanks but they do very little to lower phosphates because it binds in your rocks and leaches out as quick as you remove the water.

 

[BAMslam93]

Got an update after running phosguard these past few days. Phosphate peaked at 1.23 ppm on Sunday right before my water change and is now at 0.35 ppm today!

I’ll also grab some Chemi-pure blue or elite and codium from a fellow member this weekend to see if I can keep my nutrients down a bit

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I’ll also grab some Chemi-pure blue or elite and codium from a fellow member this weekend to see if I can keep my nutrients down a bit

If you want chemipure to do anything useful about phosphate, it would have to be the elite with GFO in it, and I would not expect any type of chemipure to do much for nitrate. The polymer resins in the various chemipure products won't noticeably bind nitrate or phosphate from seawater.