Can someone tell me whats causing phosphates in my New 33g tank, it stayed stable & reef ready for over a month while rock was IN the tank, cured reef bone NOT live rock. i do not over feed, no filter feeding corals, not adding plankton or marine snow, doing water changes, skimming aggressivly, then after a water change with R/O water i got brown hair alge & phosphates went up, everything else is testing perfect.
How old are the filters on the RO, and have you been testing for phosphates the whole time or did you just start now, dry base rock has phos in it did oyu cook/cure any of the rock?
im using R/O water that i buy locally, its processed by reverse osmosis & ozonation & distillation, ive been using this water for 4 years with no problems. the rock has been sitting in my yard DRY for over 15 years, i tested for heavy metals & chlorine solutions & then added it to the tank, no i did not cook it.
i would try and get a hold of a TDS meter. that way you can be sure you are adding water that is 0.
your rocks could very well still have phosphates in it. how much detritus do you see at the bottom of the tank in a week? this is a good indicator of the amount of phosphates in the LR.
i used live sand, well after almost 2 months theres a build of of stuff on the sand, but not much, mainly algae, brown stringy stuff, ive never had this stuff before.
phosphates leaching from the rocks is my guess . the bacteria are probably just now setting up shop in the rocks helping to push out the phosphates and whatever else via bacterial tuggor . as suggested try running one of the gfo' s and change it out frequently. your gonna just have to ride it out - on the brightside once the micro algae and cyno die off ,you know your making progress .
as far as a tds meter , i perfer to use a conductivity meter . i cost a little more but more accurate .
i have....Pulsing Xenia, Toadstool, Yellow Porites, Montipora Confusa, Purple Mushrooms, Green Striped Mushrooms, Zoanthids, (Some Different Types of Sea Weeds), Cabbage Leather, Favia, & Branching Hammer.. all of these are 1 inch frags. they have been under 150w 10k MH for almost a month, along with direct un-filtered sunlight for 7 hours a day for over a month.
so far the only thing that has grown has been one of the sea weeds... i dont expect the SPS corals to be growing THAT fast, but what about the ''Xenia Take-over'' ive been hearing about ?
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