Too much to manually remove. Tangs is all I can use. Porcupine puffer will eat snails and I’m guessing the urchin as well.
Use multiple fistfulls, a toothbrush and a sock, some elbow grease, there is never too much to manually remove.
I agree but when this tank is constantly not shining and needs continual "elbow grease" to get it clean...I'm no longer enjoying it. I did see the earlier comment regarding carbon and definitely will add that. Thank you for your help.
Not sure if that is the best picture of the tank. I am running the dark blue and blue at a higher percentage than the white. All down in percentage, 35%, 30% and 18% respectively. (and before anyone asks, the tank was lit at this level when I first started running the LED's and the elephants and mushrooms were very happy. Heck, I even had a tomato clown and an anemone in there.)
I think you need a soft reset of your tank. Have you looked into using Fluconazole? I’ve used it on a 180g before and it works like magic. Repeated the process twice in a row since the problem was out of hand similar to your situation. Within a month your GHA will be gone. You’ll need to run Chemiclean afterwards to get rid of the red slime algae and do a couple big 50% water changes but it’s a sure way to get rid of the GHA. You’ll still need to find out what the underlying issue that’s causing your high PO4 but at least this will reset your tank to zero GHA.
www.bulkreefsupply.com
Thank you. This is helpful.
I don't think I can do an urchin with my porcupine puffer. Agreed? My two tangs are: Tomini and Purple.
One thing I didn't share was that these were dead rocks when I started the tank. I added a few live rocks from my other tank to seed this one. I didn't measure PO4 out of the gate because the tank and corals were doing so well. Not sure if any of those "dead" rocks are the source of PO4.
My phosphate would be sky high if I wasn’t dosing lanthanum. And my tank would be covered in algae if I didn’t have a bunch of tangs, urchins, and snails. I can’t imagine how high my PO4 would be if I didn’t have any corals to consume it, as in your case.
I agree with you completely. Thank you. I suppose I'd add more mushroom corals if the current ones were thriving. I can however, add more elephant corals from my 100 gallon tank. I have a whole bunch in there I can move.No I don’t necessarily agree - depends on the fish, and how much you feed him. If he’s ever had urchins to eat, and so on. Fish are all individuals, who knows until you try. I’m not super experienced with puffers.
Your problem here is that you have algae and nothing to eat it. Urchins do a fantastic job of that!
Your PO4 is high because you’re feeding your fish and they poop a lot.
Again - no mystery here, IMO. No coral load to help manage nutrients, algae is growing, and nothing to eat the algae.
Thank you so much. I truly appreciate you suggestions. You are all helping me form a plan of attack.
Mushrooms never do great for me, either, for whatever reason. Maybe that’s all it is in your case too as opposed to something more sinister. Good luck with the urchins!!
Your salinity is low. And you added Lanth - how did you add that BTW?
My head scratching moment is looking at the same parameters in my 100 gallon tank and seeing large fluffy mushrooms, and then my 180 in contrast with them all closed.
I added into my filter sock in my sump. Initially I dripped it slow into the sump to minimize cloudiness, but found the filer socks are well above the 10 microns specified so in the full amount went into the sock and viola, no cloudiness.
