Four months scrubber and nitrate and phosphate at same level

[elveloz]

I installed my scrubber 02/07/2013. Just recently I started collecting 5.2 oz algae every two weeks because I'm alternating scrubber sides for cleaning. The tank is doing wonderful the water can't be more clear and no nuisance algae at all but my phosphates is at .10 and nitrate at 3ppt. Only phosphate went down a little bit.Should I worry?

[Garf]

As long as your tank is happy, you should be happy :)
Algae screen pic would be good. May be some simple improvements to increase yield and reduce nitrate if needed.

[Ace25]

As long as those readings are stable I would not worry about them at all. They are perfectly acceptable IMO.

[elveloz]

The readings are stable. I'm going to ask my son to post pictures. Thank you for replies.

[alum]

Sometime I feel using scrubber only tranfer all microalgae which attach to glass tank and liverocks to screen, just for better look.
I am not hoping too much for nitrat lower, I rely on liverocks to do it. CMIIW.

[Floyd R Turbo]

N and P will take a while to pull all the way down. My tank conditions went down over the last year while testing the UAS and now that my waterfall scrubber is on it the conditions are steadily improving, N & P still not zero, but corals are recovering/opening and coralline is growing all over the place.

[elveloz]

I up grated from a 55gls to 185 seven months a go. I used new sand (DSB) and it took me like four months to introduce all remaining live rocks. I was focus on eliminating another cycle witch I accomplished but had issues with nuisance algae. Right now, I have 200 lbs live rocks in the main tank plus 20 lbs in refugium. My nitrates level are 3ptt steady since day one. Scrubber brought down phosphate a little bit and eliminated my algae problem. I believe new rocks were in the process of curing when I bought them and still releasing nitrates?

[elveloz]

I'm amazed on the results of a scrubber. I have all kind of coraline colors in my tank. Thank you all of you who takes the time and effort to make this work, giving us the options of buying from you or DIY.

[SantaMonica]

IF LR had a lot of life in it, when the life dies is will put some nitrate and phosphate into the water. But more phosphate can be stored in LR if it was in high-phosphate water; if this was the case, then phosphate will continue to come out for months.

[elveloz]

So, if store where I'm buying LR is buying from local people that's not transporting LR properly that will be the case your talking about? My son met a guy where he works that go reefing collecting live stocks illegally from ocean and admit he sells them to local stores. This is very common here in Florida.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Nice. Someone should turn him in. It's people like him that are the reason this whole NOAA reclassification thing is being shoved down everyone's throats without rational consideration.

[elveloz]

Those people don't care what's going on, but just consider the person who own the store, they support themselves from people on this hobby, I wonder if they ever stop to think about the cause of their actions.

[Ace25]

Just turn them in to Fish and Wildlife. I would in a second if I knew of something like that going on. That type of blatant illegal activity gives everyone/entire hobby a bad name and gives fuel to the anti-aquarium crowd to push more legislation based on emotion rather than facts.

http://myfwc.com/contact/wildlife-alert/

[SantaMonica]

Local rock is probably better because it did not travel as far.

[elveloz]

I don't know the idiot. He was at a Midas as a client and over heard my son that works there talking about our tank, when he informed my son what he's selling to the LFS on the area. Now I'm concern of what I'm buying at the LFS. Good to know Santa Monica that the steady nitrate level have nothing to do with this.

[Floyd R Turbo]

If you have both N and P after 4 months of scrubbing, as long as it's not going up, just stay on course. Increase flow if you can. Re-reading your OP it looks like you have more P than N (P=0.10 is considered high by some, N=3ppm is considered low by most) then I would check Potassium (Salifert test kit) and start dosing that if you are low. You want K at 380 minimum. If you boost that up, you will probably see a drop in P.

[elveloz]

Thank you Floyd, I will try that.