Please help

[stefanie]

I am new to this group, and have a question about phosphate levels. Ours is apparently sky high. Honestly, we can't figure out where it is coming from. The staff at our local tank store can't seem to tell either. We've done a ton of partial water changes, and one 50% water change in the past month to try to correct this problem, but it isn't going down. We had really high calcium levels too, but those are back down to normal finally. We've got a metal halide lighting system and an algae turf scrubber for filtration. We also have a biowheel that we added Pora PhosLock to. We noticed that where we once had algae, we no longer have algae, in fact, the tank is bare. No algae anywhere. We don't overfeed our fish, and we take good care of it. We have another tank and no problems with it. Anything we are overlooking? Our fish seem fine, but our corals (hard and soft) seem to be suffering. Thanks so much. Stefanie

[cuttingras]

Are you using tap water? Bottled water? RO/DI? and Welcome to 3reef btw...

[Jason McKenzie]

yes the water source could be the root of your problem. Also what are your Nitrate levels?

J

[omard]

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Odd, sounds like you are doing all the right things. My thought would be change water source, change test kit, change kind of food you are using.

Good Luck, let us know how goes.

[stefanie]

We are making our own ro/di filter unit that leaves about zero to two ppm of dissolved solid particles in our water. We have tested our water with all tests, except magnesium, which our lfs guy is taking home to test for us today, but all levels are good, including nitrates and nitrites. We bought 22 extra pounds of live rock today for our 75 gallon tank with 30+ lbs of live rock already in hopes that the algae will "eat up" the phosphate. Very strange... oh yeah, we tested our salt water (we make our own using instant ocean- phosphate free) just in case it wasn't phosphate free, and it is. Hope the rock helps... we're out of ideas. Thanks for the comments.

[cuttingras]

Tell us everything down from lighting to the sand/gravel/fuge? you have in it and how big is the tank...etc...everything..inhabitants inclused pics would help too maybe...

[stefanie]

Its a 75 gallon tank, with about 65 gallons of water in it. The substrate is sand(coarse and then fine), there is also a level of live sand in there as well. We have a bio-wheel on filtering the water as well as a Algae Turf Scruber. We are using a Current Outer Orbit HQI lighting system, which I believe is a 10,000 K system. In the tank we have a pair of clownfish, 1 hippo tang, 1 coral beauty angel, 4 green chromis, 1 neon gobbie, a few hermit crabs, 3 stony corals, 1 frogspawn, 1 BTA. So far the water changes we are doing seem to be helping bring our levels down. But we don't know where they could be coming from. Pictures will be posted later.

[geekdafied]

what kind of sand did you use?

[geekdafied]

have you tested your RO/DI for phosphates too?

[stefanie]

Yes, we've tested the RO/DI water, and it is fine. Our sand was live sand purchased from the LFS. It is in both tanks, so that isn't the source.