xenia and phosphate

[kendra]

dose any one know if xenia eats, or uses allot phosphate,? or if any corals do?
my tanks got another 2 weeks of cycling, then i can add all my corals and what not and the tank is 120gals so i wanna go the best way to avoid any brown algea, illl take anyother kinds, but not brown. i already have lots of macro in the tank, but at times i wish i had a 24/7 lit up refugium to be constantly working. any good suggestions?
also i will have a skimmer set up in 2 weeks " once i purches one"

[wil0311]

The only thing phosphate is good for is the kind of algae you dont want in your tank. Brown diatom algae is unavoidable with new tank setups. It will come but with time benificial organisms will clear this up.

[Asmodeus]

dose any one know if xenia eats, or uses allot phosphate,? or if any corals do?
my tanks got another 2 weeks of cycling, then i can add all my corals and what not and the tank is 120gals so i wanna go the best way to avoid any brown algea, illl take anyother kinds, but not brown. i already have lots of macro in the tank, but at times i wish i had a 24/7 lit up refugium to be constantly working. any good suggestions?
also i will have a skimmer set up in 2 weeks " once i purches one"

Well I would wait before adding any corals. your tank is to new its gotta go thur its stages in life. I would give it a few weeks more maybe 1 month or too.
THe marco will work you need to give it time to consume the extra nutrients in the tank.
I would go with reverse lighting on the Refugium. When the lights are on the main tank . the refugium is light is off and when the refugium light is on the main tank is off.


HtH

[jody]

what happens if all you have is macro in the tank



is that still fine?

[Asmodeus]

Marco in the tank will do nothing just consume the nutrients in the tank instead of being in the sump. Do you have any rock in the tank? Usually people are sticking this stuff in there sumps to work against the excess nutrients, or leave it in the main display tank for their tangs to eat may be they ahve a huge amount and this is how they prune it ..

But no its ok to leave it in there. for the time being lots of people are running marco algae in the main display tank as filteration and they like the look of it too.

and to your question lots of corals eat they eat the plankton in the water, they filter feed from the water too. Corals like Red chilli sponge they have polyops that stick out to catch the remaining food floating in the water.

LPS's feed out of the floating food in the water. there are lots of corals that feed off the water looking to find food.

You have to watch out of some Marco algae there are some that will go sexual meaning that it will start polluting the tank with its stuff from the algae. There are many algae's out there, Halmedia, caulpera, grape,Cheato, ttthis are some of them that you might hear.


HTH