Dosing Phosphates

Jameseywayney · Dec 24, 2018

Hi everyone, tank is 4 months old. Immediately after it cycled my nitrates were 160ppm and phosphates were 0. I continued to do water changes and brought my nitrates down to 15-20ppm. I've been heavy feeding and adding lots of nori to try to get my phosphates up, to no avail. Unfortunately, i didn't act fast enough and now have dinos.

In order to combat dinos i've started dosing Recochem TSP. I started dosing 0.03 ppm per day, and it po4 never showed up(Salifert). Lately i've been dosing 0.12ppm per day, and it still has been reading 0 ppm. I've read that its likely due to starting with dry rock, as the rock absorbs po4. Therefore, should i continue to increase dosing? Any advice would be appreciated!

Flippers4pups · Dec 24, 2018

Jameseywayney said:
Hi everyone, tank is 4 months old. Immediately after it cycled my nitrates were 160ppm and phosphates were 0. I continued to do water changes and brought my nitrates down to 15-20ppm. I've been heavy feeding and adding lots of nori to try to get my phosphates up, to no avail. Unfortunately, i didn't act fast enough and now have dinos.

In order to combat dinos i've started dosing Recochem TSP. I started dosing 0.03 ppm per day, and it po4 never showed up(Salifert). Lately i've been dosing 0.12ppm per day, and it still has been reading 0 ppm. I've read that its likely due to starting with dry rock, as the rock absorbs po4. Therefore, should i continue to increase dosing? Any advice would be appreciated!

Dino's in a new system is expected. Adding phosphate will do little in combating Dino's, may even fuel them.

In my experience, out competing them with macro algae helped. Chaetomorpha.

Jameseywayney · Dec 24, 2018

Flippers4pups said:
Dino's in a new system is expected. Adding phosphate will do little in combating Dino's, may even fuel them.

In my experience, out competing them with macro algae helped. Chaetomorpha.

Since i began dosing phosphates i've noticed the dino growth slow down by 50-75% from day 1 dosing to now. My nitrates have always been in the 20 range and phosphates have been 0 ppm. From what I understand is dino is usually caused by too high nutrients, imbalance, or too low nutrients. I've never had any algae growth up until i began dosing phosphates, my chaeto growth has been extremely slow considering my nitrates are in the 20ppm range. I agree i need to outcompete the Dinos, but based on my understanding you can't outcompete without phosphates, as other algae need phosphates.