Interesting Phosphate Issue

[goat585]

I have a reef system that has 5 tanks connected to a common 120 gallon sump. The tanks are my 240 display, three 30 gallon clown fish tanks and a 30 gallon refugium. In two of the 30 gallon clownfish tanks I am having tons of algae issues and have no algae issues in the main display or the other 30 gallon. So I decided to check each tank for their phosphate levels checked by a Hanna Checker.

I found the sump to be .02, the main display .04, the two 30's with algae were .11 and .14 and the other 30 was .04.

I would have assumed since all the tanks were on the same system the levels would all have come in fairly close. Each tank has a similar turnover rate back to the sump.

Can anyone help me understand what is going on or something to check? I am getting tired of cleaning all the algae.

I do vodka dose and run the entire thirty breeder filled with macro algae.

 

[BADGUS]

Hmm,let's see:
Is there anything different in the displays?i.e rock density?substrate diff?What type of lighting in the higher phos .vs. lower phos tanks?

 

[marty]

Maybe the other tank is becoming like Algae Turf Scrubber of the other systems IMO

 

[ColaAddict]

what's the flow of all the tanks, especially the ones with high phosphates? Maybe they are not getting enough circulation and some of the high nutrient water is not being taken out.

 

[marty]

Similar thing happen to my system before I had a hair algea in the sump but not in the DT which is good and I place the PBT 4" from my DT to the sump to clean up with the help of a sea urchin they did the job in two weeks then I put more cheatos.

 

[goat585]

I would say the 30 gallon tanks each have at least 300pgh going through them and 1200 or so through the display. The live rock is all about the same age that I have had in various systems throughout the years. The 30's have maybe 4-5 pieces of rock in each tank (maybe 15lbs or so). The sand was all added at the same time and there is a 1-2" sandbed in all the tanks.

Lighting on 3 of the 30's is T-5, one of the 30's is a 250 14k phoenix, and the main display is a 400 watt 20K with LED supplemental. One of the problem tanks has 4 39 watt T-5s the other one has a 250 watt halide

I was thinking it was a flow thing but I am turning over the water volume through the tank to the sump at a minimum of 10X. There is also a tunze or a vortech in each 30's except the fuge.