[.Marshall]

Originally Posted by Reefin' Dude

kevensquint- during your research did you also note how long the TOTM had been setup and the depth of the substrate?

phosphates in food is a whole lot different than water soluble phosphates. we can only test for the latter. in general the more you feed, the more water soluble phosphates that will eventually get in the water column. SPS corals need organically bound phosphates, and not water soluble phosphates. if you feed your fish more, more organically bound phosphates will be taken up by the corals, better color, better growth. those that have problems tend to not feed enough and not export enough. it is easy to starve corals when worrying about phosphates. we all look at our test kits, or see the algae, so we feed less thinking that we are lowering the phosphates. we are just lowering the amount of phosphates going into the coral animal, feeding it. we are still maintaining the phosphates going into the zoax (those that show up on our test kits), which does not help the corals themselves.

G~

So in essence, you are saying in this situation you would need to export more?

(I love this thread already, but I would like to hear more about the relationships between alk/light/and P & N levels.)