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Finally checked my phosphate levels after 6 months of ignoring it...
I bought one of those Hannah checkers during a sale back in March but never actually used it until last night. Figured my tank was doing fine, everything looked okay... then I tested and got 0.38 ppm, which is apparently stupid high for soft corals. Read on Reef2Reef that anything over 0.1 starts stressing LPS and I have a bunch of hammers and frogspawn. I've been wondering why my torch coral looked droopy for weeks and now I'm wondering what other basic stuff I've been sleeping on. Has anyone else put off testing something obvious and regretted it later?
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abbyk101mo ago
Read somewhere that phosphates can bind calcium and mess up alkalinity too, so even if your levels look fine they could be off. Found out the hard way when my frogspawn started shrinking and I had been blaming flow for weeks. Now I test everything monthly and it saves me from guessing what's actually wrong.
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jake_hall881mo ago
Consider @abbyk10, phosphates messing with your alk test readings could be why your numbers looked fine but your coral still suffered.
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skyler_kim1mo ago
Yeah I had that exact same thing happen with a hammer coral. Was messing with powerheads for a month. Turned out my test kit was just old. Swapped it out and problem gone.
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