So i checked phos tonight and its reading 0.02 the rowa hasnt been changed for ages either nor the pre filter sponge been cleaned for close to 3 months, i usually crack open the top of the reactor and dump more rowa in on top of the old stuff, well i had been lately and was wondering if this is maybe why my nitrates are so hard to get under control.
so i've removed the reactor the pre sponge was holding so much shit.... could be the source of my nitrate factory ?
on top of this i've added an eggcrate stand to my middle chamber on the sump to get the live rock that the macro's growing on off the bottom of the sump to try keep the detritus buildup to a min, i've also added a tunze nano power head from one of my old systems to where the the reactor once sat to try speed up the sump flow / turnover and again stop detritus buildup, I also gave the sump a good syphon out and tidy, along with a macro lamp hanging over it hoping to speed up the nitrate exports...
so far no pox isn't doing anything and my nitrates hover from 5 - 10ppm and are only slightly lower then before I did a mass water change about a month ago... currently dosing 6ml a day and taken it up 1ml per week and testing nearly daily... so maybe now the rowaphos is offline i might see some change as they dont recommend you run a phosphate remover whilst dosing, although a lot of people online have and had no issues but I may have made my self phosphate limited and need to wait for it to creep back up to see it level off with my nitrate readings then both drop together so I'll continue to dose but may drop the dosage down over the coming week incase the reactor has been masking any damage I could be causing from dosing higher amounts...
