Chronic Phosphate problems

[Engloid]

On the onset of using them it binds quite a bit of phosphate together quickly, and unless you have a huge skimmer and possibly a mechanical filter also, it can leave behind some stringy stuff. You can just blow it off the rocks or vacuum it up. Its bound phosphate and can't be released, so your testing should read true.
You can knock the phosphates down rather quickly with this stuff. I use the SeaKlear myself, on a weekly basis, you don't need alot for it to do its job.

I have a MRC-3 beckett style skimmer. It will skim a lot of stuff. It's about 3ft tall. Would you suggest using the this stuff according to directions and doseage on the bottle?

Here is what I would do...

Start changing your filter socks every 2-3 days, if you need to get more in order to do this or if the socks are the least bit suspect get 100-200 micron socks. I clean mine in the washer, no soap, HOT WATER and Hydrogen Peroxide. Let air dry and you can be sure they are clean and not contaminated...

I wash in the washer. Not sure about soap or not. Wife does them. Might be a good idea to tell her not to use soap anymore. What do you think about bleach? Probably a bad idea, as it could add chlorine..but shouldn't the chlorine come out as a gas as the socks are drying?

Test your fully mixed (and aged) new salt water for Phosphates, there are several potential sources in making up new water. RO filter issues, salt mix issues, mixing/storage container issues. Lets be sure we know you are actually diluting the phosphates in the water when you do a water change.

Once you see your phosphates <= 5ppm, switch back to GFO, I would recommend the HC stuff in the beginning until we are sure you really have it under control.

Let us know what changes you decide on and how your testing goes...

I mix salt in plastic garbage cans that have never been used for anything else.

Hmmm. Considering to have no algae, you have a reef and frag tanks and seem to have no ill affected corals, no chemical filtration will affect your numbers and neither do water changes, maybe you just have a bad test kit? To me it sounds like there's no phosphate in the water to begin with.
How many other test kits have you verified it with?

Coral growth seems to be very slow for me. Chalices and acans don't do well. Zoas are slow, but palys seem to go nuts in my frag tank. I probably average about 2 paly growth a day, if not more.

Have you considered carbon dosing? Check out the Redsea videos on using nopox. Red Sea providing complete solutions for coral reef & marine hobbyists by developing complite Aquarium systems & chemistry solutions.

I did for a while, but really didn't see any difference. I tried vodka and bio pellets.

When you say that the tank is FULL of live rock, does that mean it is just a huge pile of rocks all the way across the tank and stacked to the top? How much flow can get in between your rocks on the bottom? And can you siphon the sand at all? You might be surprised how much detritus can build up under and around the LR. I understand the thought process of having lots of surface area for bacteria, but when it is simply too much rock for there to be any flow in and around them, you can start to have issues.

The tank isn't full all the way to the top. It's a standard 220g, and I have probably 350lbs of rock in it. Something to mention... I once had power go out for 6hrs. I had fish die that quickly. What I think happened is that I have so much rock that the bacteria consume oxygen very quickly...and starved out the fish.

 

[gtbarsi]

I wash in the washer. Not sure about soap or not. Wife does them. Might be a good idea to tell her not to use soap anymore. What do you think about bleach? Probably a bad idea, as it could add chlorine..but shouldn't the chlorine come out as a gas as the socks are drying?


I mix salt in plastic garbage cans that have never been used for anything else.

I do not like the idea of bleach, that is why I use hydrogen peroxide. H2O2 cleans really well and when it breaks down it is just water... The suff is cheep, and will definitely not damage your washer, or your tank!

As to the the mixed salt water, a lot of plastic containers leach phosphate... It is worth checking to insure you do not have a problem there...

 

[Engloid]

Swap out your GFO for Phosguard (get a large jar of it), it will strip much more phosphate much faster. Start testing phosphates daily and if it stops dropping and stays that way for 3 days, swap it out for fresh. Some people say you can re-generate it but I would not.

What do you think of this stuff? I think it's same as phosGuard, but I can actually get refills of it at the LFS.

 

[Engloid]

I do not like the idea of bleach, that is why I use hydrogen peroxide. H2O2 cleans really well and when it breaks down it is just water... The suff is cheep, and will definitely not damage your washer, or your tank!

As to the the mixed salt water, a lot of plastic containers leach phosphate... It is worth checking to insure you do not have a problem there...

I'm using Brute garbage cans. Do you know if anybody has had problems with them?

 

[Reefing Madness]

There is a thread about the phosphates and brute cans. I'll get it. Here
You can use Phosgard, no problem there.

 

[Jimbo662]

You said "I use the fine brown GFO from BRS. I put in probably a quart or so at a time...about all I can fit in my reactor." Are you filling the reactor completlely full? If so, the media won't have enough room to tumble which will help pull out more of the phosphates. I don't think it should be more than 2/3 full or so at most.

 

[Engloid]

You said "I use the fine brown GFO from BRS. I put in probably a quart or so at a time...about all I can fit in my reactor." Are you filling the reactor completlely full? If so, the media won't have enough room to tumble which will help pull out more of the phosphates. I don't think it should be more than 2/3 full or so at most.

I put in about 2/3, and even at that, it doesn't tumble. Only the granules on the top layer move. If I'm not mistaken, that's the way BRS says it should do...not a complete tumble like biopellets would.

 

[gtbarsi]

Everything I know says a gentle tumble so all the media moves around throughout the day. If your GFO is clumping then you need more movement.

 

[Engloid]

Everything I know says a gentle tumble so all the media moves around throughout the day. If your GFO is clumping then you need more movement.

This type of media, you don't want to tumble. Since it absorbs phosphates, you don't want it to tumble and wear down, putting that phosphate back into the water column. With something like biopellets, the pupose is to slowly wear the pellets and introduce that carbon into the water column. In short, if it's something you throw away, it absorbs bad stuff...and you don't want to tumble it.

 

[gtbarsi]

If you are running BRS GFO, then I would differ to the directions provided by the manufacturer. They recommend that you run it in a reactor loose (no filter pads) with enough flow to gently tumble it to prevent clumping and channeling, but to too hard that it breaks down. Conversely BRS recommends running carbon tight with filter pads insuring there is no tumbling as the media is relatively soft and will break down easily.

BRS Media Reactors for Carbon and GFO video BRS Media Reactors for Carbon and GFO - YouTube

 

[Ddavis]

What is your ph?

Do you monitor it regularly or do you test for it? If you test buy a ph probe and post the cycle. I guess that two things you have mentioned are related if we can fix one of them the other will fall in line.


For your high phosphates why do you want to lower it if everything seems alright other than a high phosphate level?


If you dose lanthium per some of the earlier comments you can drive phosphates to zero for sure.


My overall thought though is that something is off in alk, calcium or most suspect is magnesium which is leading first to the macro algae erosion. Once you fix that your nitrates and phosphates will come into alignment.

 

[Engloid]

For your high phosphates why do you want to lower it if everything seems alright other than a high phosphate level?


If you dose lanthium per some of the earlier comments you can drive phosphates to zero for sure.


My overall thought though is that something is off in alk, calcium or most suspect is magnesium which is leading first to the macro algae erosion. Once you fix that your nitrates and phosphates will come into alignment.

Coral growth is nearly nothing. For example, some zoas I bought about a year ago, have gone from 3 to 8. Chalices and acans...no growth, and slow die off. Candy Canes...slowly die also. Frogspawn is going well though.

I'm thinking I will try some kind of lanthium. I actually just ordered some of this: CaribSea PhosBuster Pro Instant Phosphate Remover for Marine & Freshwater Aquariums

 

[tyler1503]

I'm still thinking there's no phos to begin with. Maybe your lack of coral growth lays elsewhere?

 

[Engloid]

Nitrate is 10.
Alk is 7.0
Magnesium is 1350

What do you all think about using live sulpher media? I have a jug of it.
I know it makes my skimmer go nuts.

 

[Engloid]

Ive used a couple test kits. I use salifert at home. Lfs checked it too.

 

[Ddavis]

Your alk is a little low I try to keep mine around 9. I have not used live sulphur. What brand of salt do you use?

How often do you do water changes and have you used a hand held TDS meter to check for dissolved solids in the rodi water?

 

[Engloid]

Your alk is a little low I try to keep mine around 9. I have not used live sulphur. What brand of salt do you use?

How often do you do water changes and have you used a hand held TDS meter to check for dissolved solids in the rodi water?

I uave two inline tds meters....one after RO and one after DI. I use instant ocean salt. Used reef reef crystals till my calcium got higher than it should and have since used IO.

 

[Ddavis]

A pen TDS meter will be much more accurate and in this case it might show you something that we can go from with the increased phosphates.

Here are my thoughts on an approach for the phosphates:
1. If possible move your animals to a temporary location (even a plastic container will due temporarily) with the liverock from your system and remove the sand bed from the aquarium. If you move the animals they will still need the basics- good water, air (water circulation), heat. If not possible go with removing it section by section understanding that you most likely will not get everything out. Note: I had old tank syndrome and changing my sand bed helped but I shifted from fowlr to mixed reef with all of the same substrates. I did the plastic container method with close observation of my water parameters mentioned above.

2. The disappearing macro and die off of corals most likely has something to do with the water and the ph. If you do not have a digital meter it is worth buying one. If you cannot afford a good one or a reef controller you can find them on ebay cheap. The cheap ones may need to be calibrated more often but you are looking for the difference over time in most cases with ph and even the cheap ones can be a good indicator. I wonder if your ph is in the 7's because I have seen low 7's and 6's kill softies in tanks. Also your ph throughout the day should not drift significantly. Guys that can maintain ph seem to see the best growth.

3. Getting macro algae started can be a challenge. In my opinion you will need an area of moderate flow where it will not get shredded and die off that way. I use a cheap shop light clamp from Home Depot to hold a cfl bulb that looks like a spotlight. I only use the daylight bulbs (6500 K) and they were hard to find but are available online if you cannot find them at a local store. The last bit that worked for me was to get as much macro algae as possible and stuff your refugium as full as you can. I tried starting with the little ball of it and kept having what you described happen.


I hope this helps get things fixed for you. Please keep us updated.

 

[Engloid]

I had to order some salt, so while I was at it, I ordered some PhosBuster. I got the 8oz bottle, which says it's good for 472 gallons, and can remove 1ppm. I put in about 3/4 of the bottle. Most of that was put in last night. I put a little bit of it in this morning. About an hour later, I figured I would check phosphate. Should have checked again before dosing any at all, but I've been hoding a pretty consistent 1ppm for a long time. Today's check showed .5ppm. I will probably check again tomorrow. The directions say it takes up to 72hrs to work.

The bottle also says something about issues if you add it in a low flow area, or cloudiness. I've not gotten any hint of cloudiness or anything out of the ordinary. Nothing. If this works, I may make PhosBuster or another brand a regular maintenance thing, possibly once a month or as needed.