ARM Media for Calcium Reactor pushing .15 phosphate

[chicago]

so just refilled my calcium reactor with ARM coarse media.. of course the package says.. no phosphate. but as we know not true.. I just tested with a hanna and it is showing effluent at 20 ml per min has .15 phosphate. Thoughts... Concerned that to will be a significant amount to keep adding to the system.. 600 gallon system.. Thoughts...

 

[PBnJOnWheat]

so just refilled my calcium reactor with ARM coarse media.. of course the package says.. no phosphate. but as we know not true.. I just tested with a hanna and it is showing effluent at 20 ml per min has .15 phosphate. Thoughts... Concerned that to will be a significant amount to keep adding to the system.. 600 gallon system.. Thoughts...

How did you test for Phosphate? Sorry did you take 20mL of the calcium reactor juice and test that for .15? Or from your tank after a couple hours of dosing.

 

[chicago]

no.. let me be more clear, The tank water is testing at phosphate level of .02. The effluent is testing at .15 Hanna checker test kit. stated another way it seems my ARM media is adding .15-.02 = .13

 

[PBnJOnWheat]

no.. let me be more clear, The tank water is testing at phosphate level of .02. The effluent is testing at .15 Hanna checker test kit. stated another way it seems my ARM media is adding .15-.02 = .13

Hmm interesting, so

.15*60= 9.00/hour * 24= 216/day.

20 mL/min = 28.8L/day or 7.6 gal/day

so you’re adding 0.15 (Phosphate) 7.6 gal effluent per day. If your tank is 0.02 (Phosphate) for 600 gal. So I did some calculations and your final 600g tank volume (assuming 7.6gal of effluent evaporates) your ppm of phosphate will be 0.0219 instead of 0.0200. If you’d like the numbers I can do that also.

Needless to say, as long as you have something that consumes the phosphates and nitrates to keep the 16:1nitrate phosphate ratio you should be fine. 0.0019 phosphate is nothing but that’s per day increase so as long as you have chaeto or a large sum of corals which it seems you hve, they should hopefully keep the phosphate down.

 

[chicago]

Thought I would update after a week and more of being up and running I would like to add that there is no issues with phosphate.. testing at zero now.

 

[chicago]

While on the subject.. i am wondering... i have a bunch of old kent Ro systems here not in use.. has anyone on the end of the CalRX run the effluent water through a GFO prior to it going into the tank ?

 

[RVA REEF]

did you rinse the arm, you should be fine on a 600 gallon system.

 

[TX_Punisher]

I’ll be testing my effluent soon. I’ve had high po4 for a while now while also using arm.

 

[chicago]

Yep rinsed and rinsed.