Controlling Phosphates

c4haskett · May 10, 2021

Good Morning, New reefer here. I've done extensive research before I hopped into this hobby about 4 months ago. My tank is 4 months old. 85 gallon total, 65 display. I have been able to maintain fairly stable parameters except for phosphates. The first time I tested phosphates they were somewhere near .4 so I decided it was time to run some GFO to get them down. I ran my reactor for about 12 hours and retested.... undetectable. This imbalanced caused a dino outbreak which I've nearly got beat now. Ever since I bottomed out Phos, using GFO I switched to using Phosphate-E by brightwell so I can bring down phos slowly and maintain them a little better. Well tank was acting weird using it and realized that Phosphate-E drops ALK like crazy. It doesn't seem to matter what I feed, phosphates seem to be elevated, even more so after i added the reef roid phosphate bomb. I was thinking about running very small amounts of gfo all the time. Will running small amounts reduce phosphates more slowly or will it still strip phosphates fast but exhaust the gfo more quickly? Any ideas?

Joshcom · May 10, 2021

Your phosphate drop may have caused alk to precipitate out, I would continue to use Phosphate-E gfo is incontrollable while phos e is controllable

Randy Holmes-Farley · May 10, 2021

What phosphate levels are we talking about?

c4haskett · May 10, 2021

Joshcom said:
Your phosphate drop may have caused alk to precipitate out, I would continue to use Phosphate-E gfo is incontrollable while phos e is controllable

You don't think it was due to the Phosphate-E itself, rather it was due to the phosphates dropping too quickly?

c4haskett · May 10, 2021

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
What phosphate levels are we talking about?

Not sure what you mean? I try keeping my phosphates between .03 and 1. When they go higher than that I usually run into problems bringing them down whether it be from GFO or Phosphate-E.

Randy Holmes-Farley · May 10, 2021

c4haskett said:
Not sure what you mean? I try keeping my phosphates between .03 and 1. When they go higher than that I usually run into problems bringing them down whether it be from GFO or Phosphate-E.

That's what I mean. You didn't say what level we were discussing. People have widely divergent views on what levels of phosphate are needed and/or desirable.