Cant fight algae in dt

[hart24601]

I have a non scrubber biocube loaded with SPS that is almost always at 0.00ppm PO4 (hanna colorimeter keeping in mind there is 0.04ppm accuracy range) and 0-2ppm NO3 (salifert), I just have to feed them quite a bit. If I miss a feeding (every few days) they don't look as healthy. You can test 0 phosphate but feeding still adds it, the coral/bacteria/algae utilizes it before or shortly after it enters the water column so you can't see it with tests. My cube isn’t really a ULNS, but it's still amazing to me to see SPS grow like weeds by my LPS growth has really slowed from when I had higher nutrients even with spot feeding them. My shrooms and zoas have not grown much, if any, in the past 4-6 months with the lower nutrients. Point being that you can have decent phosphate in the system but it appears undetectable via test kits.

I fear that I don’t have a good theory about why your tank is having such a large bloom, but I can say the most nitrogen utilizing organisms prefer ammonia to nitrate, the oxidation of nitrate isn’t even all that well known from a molecular mechanism point of view.

[kotlec]

Last few days I see some improvement, if onlt its not my wishful thinking,
Algae decreased on the gravel and some rocks are showing bald spots too.
What I did last days :
1. Dosed more trace minerals than usual, after measuring them and finding Iron, Iodine, Strontium and Potassium too low.
2. Leave only blue lights on for few days. Now whites are back on , but I thing may be I should repeat that action.
3. Dosed some vinegar , but really not much.

[SantaMonica]

bald spots on the rocks is the key indicator.

[kotlec]

[M I N I O N]

I understand where you go . But how it can be p=0.00 , when my sponge (rocks) cant take P anymore ? It should have been rocketed to the milky way. But no - it droped from 0.02 to 0.00. You probably will say that algae now is consuming all P , but then algae should be growing more and more everyday. It is receding every day instead. But not at the rate I would like to see. It will take another year to disappear finally at this tempo. But it took only one week to appear !

I feed 0.3gr (weighted on jewelers weights to be sure) daily and my screen is roughly 20sq inch one sided . It grows algae nicely only when I double or triple on feeding and P rises to 0.04. But I has done it only few times to check what effect it will have(It was year ago as I can recall). At the moment screen looks very week and it has weakening tendencies over last few month.

My scrubber parameters are unchanged and feeding is unchanged. Before I didnt have algae in DT. Only few occasional patches that were removed manually.

Lastly - SPS require some P to be present . Guys that tell you their P is zero dont have SPS or they use test instead of Hanna meter. If they really had 0.00 phosphate their corals would be extremely pale or dead. Mine are really pale and dont look the way I want them. There I make conclusion that I dont have excess P and my problem probably is ammonia related. Sure I can be wrong.

Check out this guys reef.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2301583
He is DOSING phosphates to keep them stable at 0.04-0.08 !!! Mine imagination is not that powerfull to see how my tank would look with 0.08. Most probably it would look like one big sink floating scrubber if P is reason for algae bloom. So how ones dont have algae problems with high P and I have with zero. P flow ? Or however its called. Why that guy dont have P flowing , when his meter is constantly shows 0.04-0.08 ? Othervice he urgently doses P to reach that reading. And his tank is awesome - I would like one like his.

I would like to hear practical advises at some point . Theoretical brain exercises are nice but its time for action.

0.00ppm phosphate here:


You have to remember that phosphate has both an inorganic and an organic state which it can be found in. When we measure phosphate with out test kits, we measure for inorganic phosphate. Inorganic phosphate binds to calcium ions and inhibits calcification. The tissue of corals needs organic phosphate to grow. In nature, organic and inorganic phosphate go hand-in hand. In our controlled systems, that doesn't have to be the case. The exchange of organic to inorganic phosphate and back to organic can be lightning fast. It is going to be there but constantly changing stages. Our goal should be to maintain an average available inorganic phosphate level which is undetectable by any hobbyist test kit while maintaining as much available organic phosphate as possible.

When you have a situation where inorganic phosphate has already bound to your live rock, it can be extremely hard to take care of. The reason for this is that you must maintain those undetectable phosphate levels while phosphates continue to pour out of the rock. The process which phosphate comes out of the rock is a documented phenomenon which we refer to as bacterial cleaving. It can take a very long time for this to conclude because there is a constant import into the tank and a constant export which coincides with the redfield ratio, the ratio of nitrogen to phosphorus utilization with photosynthesis. As phosphate is bound to the rock, the correlating amount of ammonia becomes nitrite and nitrate. In areas of the tank depleted of oxygen, anaerobic bacteria are at work converting nitrate into nitrogen gas which bubbles away into the air causing an imbalance between nitrate and phosphate in the tank in regards to the redfield ratio; the phosphate is trapped, the nitrate is gone.

Your problem is phosphate. As the algae dies, it becomes more inorganic phosphate and nitrate for the remaining algae to feed off of. This is the reason why scrubbers work so well to rid a tank of an algae problem but it may not resolve the imbalance of nutrients. I like to run a small amount of GFO with my system to keep the balance of nutrients leaning towards phosphate limitation rather than the normal nitrate limitation. Nitrate limitation is probably the main reason why your algae bloom started. You can have phosphate saturating you rock without a bloom. When nitrate becomes available, it takes off and won't go away until the original problem is gone.

Your job in using a scrubber is to created the most absolutely ideal conditions possible for algae to thrive on the screen so that is starves out potential algae anywhere else in the tank, not by having first access to the nutrients but rather by ensuring that the nutrients which do become available are such minute in concentration that only the algae on your screen can utilize them. This means optimizing your ATS. Post it up with details so that people can help you determine where its faults are. Be proactive with detritus removal in your tank so that nutrients don't get stored in live rock. To beat the current imbalance utilizing the ATS, you may have to dose nitrate. The more logical solution would be to use GFO for the time being.

Hope that helps.

[SantaMonica]

Bacterial Cleavage was the term I was looking for a few month ago. Darn marketing, taking months away from the fun stuff

[M I N I O N]

Bacterial Cleavage was the term I was looking for a few month ago. Darn marketing, taking months away from the fun stuff

Bacterial cleavage, huh? Sounds sexy.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Minion, can you please expand on the concept of bacterial cleaving and how that process relates to the release of bound phosphate? I've asked this question in reef chemistry forums and gotten nowhere. This is the first time I've heard anything remotely concrete regarding this phenomenon

[M I N I O N]

Minion, can you please expand on the concept of bacterial cleaving and how that process relates to the release of bound phosphate? I've asked this question in reef chemistry forums and gotten nowhere. This is the first time I've heard anything remotely concrete regarding this phenomenon

I've done a lot of research on bacterial cleaving, both theoretical and proven. Unfortunately, for the most part, the factual evidence of this is usually not directly related to the marine aquaria hobby but rather the medical field, where calcium carbonate is used to bind phosphate in the human body to lower phosphate levels in dialysis patients and the botany field, where phosphate binders are used in fertilizers and bacteria are added to slowly release bound phosphate over time to maintain plant growth, though I have found a few very helpful marine-specific studies. This research in particular points to the conclusion that the localized PH theory is actually true. An extremely thin film of bacteria will produce organic acids and phosphatase enzymes to make the insoluble bonds soluble again. Turgor pressure amongst living bacteria would push dead bacteria out and away until it can be picked up into the water column where it would break down and become available as inorganic phosphate again.

"Bacterial cleaving" is a term coined by Boomer on RC so researching it by this name will only yield you results amongst hobbyist rather than researchers. In the existing fields of study, these bacterium are more prominently know as inorganic phosphate solubilizing bacteria (often called IPSB or PSB for short). The six genera of IPSB isolates identified by one study which I have found in a coral reef are Bacillus, Arthrobacter, Pseudomonas, Flavobacterium, Flavomonas and Micrococcus. Researching these bacterium in specific may help to expand definitive results for you if you wish to learn more.

[kotlec]

M I N I O N ,

Thanks a lot for your explanations. I found it very useful . Many more reef keepers will read it and will educate. All that ideas and unanswered questions were floating in air for some time already , but you put them together finally.

BTW what should I be looking for, while staring at your picture ?