Carbon & ATS

[crashmushroom]

Hi all i started an ATS and fazed out my skimmer biopellets & gfo. I ran into problems lost my torch coral and all my other corals even inc leather closed up. Water was good i monitored everything

Alk 9
Calcium 430
Mag 1500 bit high
sal 1.025
temp 78
phos showing under 0.08 on D&D low range kit
nitrate showing zero on salifert
nitrite & A 0

In 4 months I was loosing my mind algae overtook my tank glass & rock, & cyano all over the sand. I lost my torch coral and malu anemone. I had to try something and the only thing i could think of was DOC as everything else was in check water wise so i added a carbon reactor alongside my ATS. overnight i could see a difference in the corals very minor but an improvement, day 2 corals starting to open, now day 7 corals are fully open again algae has decreased in DT hugely.

My question I cannot understand why carbon fixed all this i dont believe it could be coincidence. I dont see how high DOC could affect corals or algae growth like that. Can anyone shed any light please. By the way my scrubber worked great from day one until now i would never go back, I couldnt get phos down in my tank no matter what i tried 2 weeks with the scrubber and my test kit couldnt read phos :-)

[Garf]

Perhaps the carbon has removed a toxin from the water column.

[crashmushroom]

Good thinking garf never thought of that cheers :-)

[SantaMonica]

If you could ever get your DOC vitamins, DOC amino acids, DOC carbohydrates, and other DOC foods as high as the average amounts in the ocean, you'd be lucky.

It could be a poison, but that would mean you had a constant poison for 4 months.

[crashmushroom]

Yes i am confident that doc cannot harm coral as it is food this has just confused me somewhat all i can think is that algae was feeding on doc maybe, and the algae caused the damage to the corals? Wild guess

[Garf]

Softies do give off low amounts of toxins, affecting the most delicate first. I have always used carbon intermittently. I thought it was standard procedure with soft corals. If anyone can prove you don't need it, I'll gladly ditch it.

[kerry]

I have never used carbon in my SW tanks. Not saying you should or should not but, I do not at all.

[SantaMonica]

Algae does not eat DOC; it creates it.

[Garf]

Like I say, I thought it was procedural to use carbon with softies. I don't use carbon all the time, just when the water has "gelbstoff", whatever that's supposed to mean. Perhaps I won't get that if this scrubber works as intended. Thanks for the info.

[SantaMonica]

Just remember that yellowing is caused by roots dying (not enough light for too long).

[Garf]

Just remember that yellowing is caused by roots dying (not enough light for too long).

That's now embedded into my memory.

[crashmushroom]

SM i have just thought i another thing about a week before i added the carbon i changed my screen sized from gallons to feeding size this halved my screen size as i dont have many fish in my 90g. Before i done this my old screen kept growing yellow algae now my new screen is growing green hair with smaller screen and bulbs maybe my pump was not strong enough for the bigger screen and bulbs. My point being maybe the growth of green hair algae in a smaller screen is more powerul than yellow on a much larger screen and thats what cured my algae in DT not the carbon?

[SantaMonica]

Possible. Green photosynthesizes (filters) much more, because chlorophyll does the filtering, and it is green.