No More Phyto

[lestregus]

steveweast's posts in the BB_BS thread has really gotten me thinking.. i have been dosing my tank with small doses of phyto, and since i have been doing this i have noticed an increase in my population of pods, sessile snails, and q tip sponges, all of which are supposed to be a sing of good water conditions. in reality they are a sign of poor water conditions - we are essentially only adding excess nutrients to our tanks when dosing phyto, and this is what "skims" out the excess nutrients. it's almost similar to using tap water in your tank and then adding plants (pods/sessile snails in the phyto analogy) to filter your water. what do you guys think about this??
steve's posts have also confirmed that i will be changing from CC to bare bottom.
guys i think steve gave us some really valuable information and it is being looked over because of all of the BB_BS.
does anyone else have any thoughts on this??

 

[viper_930]

Well, if dosing phyto is making your water seem great and helping the pod population etc. go up, then it probably is helping the other animals, inverts, and stuff too. I'd just keep dosing the phyto if I were you.

 

[lestregus]

but see, if you had pristine water quality (no excess nutrients) pods, sessile snails, etc would starve...
wouldn't pristine water be more important to the reef than pod larvae?

 

[007]

I agree . . . I am stopping the use of phytoplankton . . . .I see no need to continue its use.

 

[rwhite]

I've been wondering about this for a long time, also. We have been adding phyto to the system for about a year and havent really noticed any kind of difference. We dont dose often, but an LFS keeps trying to sell me some DTs, but I just dont know if it will do anything special for the system. A qwik list of corals: toadstool, GSP, bubble, zoos and shrooms reg. and hairy. Do we save our $ and see what happens if we dont dose or continue what we are doing? I am a firm believer in "If its not broken, dont fix it." So, at this point, we're almost done with our bottle and ready to buy a new one. I could guinea pig the tank and post results after a month or so. Theres just so much going on on the board, not sure what to do anymore

 

[007]

I am in the same boat you are and don't feel that its really doing much except growing unwanted algae. I think that I am done with it. THe only coralt that I have that I see benefitting from it is my capnella, but this is secondary to photosynthesis.

 

[viper_930]

Huh? So you want the pods and stuff to starve?

 

[rwhite]

Is phyto the only thing keeping the pods alive? In all honesty, we haven't seen a whole lot of pods for a while. I know theyre in there, but pretty sure there isnt a large pop. And everything seems to be fine without them. The only fish that seems to be picky is a neon dotty. As far as coral go, photosynthesis seems to be the best choice and occasional spot feeding. The bubble catches mysis no problem as well as the BTA. Feed the H. shrooms and rics some shrimp/silverside pcs about once a week. GSP, blue shrooms, zoos (unless they catch some passing food) and toadstool seem to be fine with their particular flow and lighting requirements.
Granted all of the above corals are the "easy to keep" cream of the crop, but that was my goal=low maintenance/hardy system. We dont want to kill anything, quite the opposite. We want them to grow and thrive, but as long as they dont shrivel and waste away, I'll consider it a success, even if they grow slowly. A lot of people say that thier shrooms, zoos, gsp spread rapidly, IME each of those seem to grow slowly for us. They are spreading, but maybe not to the same degree as some have expd. Or I just dont have a clue as to what the meaning of "rapid" is in terms of coral growth.
I have no idea why I rambled on like that...

 

[ty_05_f]

Almost all of my corals look better after I dose Dt's. Steve makes a great point and has made me rethink most of my setup, but I'm just not sure anymore.:notsure:

 

[steveweast]

Guys... it really depends on what you're trying to keep. If you had a bunch of filter feeders...like sponges, tube worms, etc... then the phyto will be of some benefit...the side effect will be decreased water quality and algae problems that other inhabitants might not tolerate. I decided long ago to have a primarily SPS dominated reef with a few LPS and gorgonians. These creatures demand pristine water quality and a phyto regiment will be counter productive to achieving this. As a result, I don't try to keep specimens that might require phyto.... I make sure that anything that I keep can survive on a particle size of cyclopp-eeze or greater.
If you're unsure of phyto's benefit (or not) in your tank.... stop using it and observe carefully the results...most folks tend to see no difference in their tanks (other than less algae) because most folks aren't keeping specimens that require phyto.
As for pods...there will always be pods...their population is proportional to the food supply. The real question is...how many things in your tank require pods to survive? and is the trade off in water quality worth the increased pod population ? Everyones' answer to this will be different...you have to decide what's best for your situation...I know that I wanted to keep specimens that required a high water quality...and because of that...I can't keep things that require a nutrient rich environment.

 

[debbie]

This is an interesting topic. My LFS said that if I start using Phyto that I would have things growing on my live rock in no time?
Has anyone had this happen to them?
Deb :jumping:

 

[csrobe02]

Alot of coral and fish actually prefer slightly "dirty" water. The corals feed off of it just as pods and anything else does.
Though I cant argue with steve, cause he obviously knows what he is doing. IMO though, there are pros and cons for using DTs, just as there are pros and cons for not using DTs.

 

[007]

Originally posted by Debbie
This is an interesting topic. My LFS said that if I start using Phyto that I would have things growing on my live rock in no time?
Has anyone had this happen to them?
Deb :jumping:
Yes, this will happen . . . you wil notice feather dusters and other filter feeders appear rather quickly . . . in feeding them, you are also going to be feeding the unwanted algaes and what not. You have to decide what is more important to you.