Bringing down phosphates?

[IHaveADegreeInMarineBioBut]

Hey everyone,

 

I've been fighting with GHA for a few months now in my 10 gallon, and I've traced it back to phosphates. I baster the rocks, siphon the gravel, don't overfeed, made sure the new water (with salt) doesn't contain phosphates, and still I have phosphates around 0.25. I do weekly ~20% water changes.

 

I was wondering if phosguard would be overkill? I've heard that it can strip tanks, but I really don't know what could be causing this?

 

Thank you. 

 

[mcarroll]

[In Ahnold Voice]: It's not your phosphates.

 

It might help if you post a pic and a little more on the tank's history, but for now....

 

All you should have to do is pull out the long algae by hand, and boost up your cleanup crew.

 

And by cleanup crew I do not mean scavengers...if you need them, you should clean up your feeding routine.

 

What I mean is herbivores like Turbo snails, Trochus snails, Margarita snails, Astrea snails, Nerite snails, Cerith snails.  Hermit crabs and the rest of the popular/typical cleanup crew recommendations are scavengers.

 

If you add them in small batches after you do a cleaning, you'll know if there's enough by whether you see algae still growing long around the tank.  If you do see that, clean it again by hand, and add another small batch of herbivores.  Repeat that cycle every few weeks until the herbivores win.  It can take some work, but it's predictable.  Coralline will start taking over at the same time.

[IHaveADegreeInMarineBioBut]

23 hours ago, mcarroll said:

[In Ahnold Voice]: It's not your phosphates.

 

It might help if you post a pic and a little more on the tank's history, but for now....

 

All you should have to do is pull out the long algae by hand, and boost up your cleanup crew.

 

And by cleanup crew I do not mean scavengers...if you need them, you should clean up your feeding routine.

 

What I mean is herbivores like Turbo snails, Trochus snails, Margarita snails, Astrea snails, Nerite snails, Cerith snails.  Hermit crabs and the rest of the popular/typical cleanup crew recommendations are scavengers.

 

If you add them in small batches after you do a cleaning, you'll know if there's enough by whether you see algae still growing long around the tank.  If you do see that, clean it again by hand, and add another small batch of herbivores.  Repeat that cycle every few weeks until the herbivores win.  It can take some work, but it's predictable.  Coralline will start taking over at the same time.

Thank you for responding 🙂. Sorry I didn't include the other things.. here is my journal: 

 

but TLDR: I have a small CUC but could probably add more herbivores.. is a turbo snail too much for a 10 gallon?

[mcarroll]

On 3/15/2020 at 7:29 PM, IHaveADegreeInMarineBioBut said:

is a turbo snail too much for a 10 gallon?

Should be fine if there's algae to eat.   But don't add more than one at a time, and try to get them as small as possible.

 

Wouldn't be bad to prefer Trochus or Astrea in a smaller tank if they are also available. Or even Ceriths.   Thing is it takes A LOT of snails like Ceriths to do the work of a single Turbo snail.  Going with a blend where you have one "king snail" Turbo and a few medium sized or smaller snails to back him up could be a good way to go, depending on the actual algae load.

[mcarroll]

If there's a lot of standing algae, remember that you'll have to pull it out by hand to make it ready for the snails to take over.  They can't eat anything big....no teeth/no chewing action....so they need the algae to be SMALL.