Algae and high po4

Hi as some of you know from previous posts i had high po4 levels last week.

I did a 20% water change and changed my GFO media (rowaphos)

I did this on monday this week, i tested the water today again for po4 and there is no change?? its still above 10 mg/l!!??

and today i came home to find the sand covered in dark algae and oxygen bubbles!! (see attached photos!)

Im also getting a kind of furry purple algae on my rocks, you can see it in one of the photos, its not coralline its like hair algea but a dark purple colour!!??

Also skimmer not producing as much waste as it was a few weeks ago.

Any Advice on what to do ould be greatly appreciated!!

colin.

 

The purple, brown and bubble algae is definitely a result of high phosphates.
If I could recall correctly, the GFO doesn't remove po4 very quickly. You may begin to see a decrease in levels in about a week or so. Also, are you running the GFO in a media bag or reactor?
With regard to the skimmer not producing as much waste as it should, did you check to see if the intake is clogged with algae? Also, if there is algae build up in the skimmer itself, then that would also decrease it's productivity. clean out the pump for the skimmer and see if that helps any.

 

Im running it in a media bag at the moment but am looking into buying a po4 reactor in the next few weeks.

 

The reactor would definitely help the GFO to absorb the phosphates in the water column more efficiently. I'd definitely look into one. The sooner the better. An expensive reactor to run GFO isn't necessary you can just get a cheap one for the time being. They're pretty simple to make one up out of PVC too but the only problem with the PVC is that it's not transparent.

 

I use a bulkreefsupply dual chamber reactor for my gfo and carbon. It's only like 50 bucks. You need a pump (they sell maxijets) and the media on top of that.

 

are you using enough media or a little more than as instructed by the manufacture?

I noticed that my phosphate didn't go down when I was following Phosban and it could've been a bad batch. WHen I switched over to BRS, my phosphate went from .25 to .13 in 6 hours.