GFO Alongside Lanthanum Chloride?

[Gchan888]

Hi all,
I've been using GFO (Rowaphos) recently to get my phosphates down but recently have been researching LaCl as a possible avenue to reduce phosphates. I wanted to see if it was possible to lower the phosphates down a bit further from current levels more quickly using LaCl (currently at ~0.25ppm) to <0.1ppm.

My questions are :
1) Is it a good idea to switch methods? I do have livestock / coral in the tank.
2) If I currently have Rowaphos in my tank (new batch in there about a week), do you recommend removing that Rowaphos and then dosing LaCl? From my understanding, the Rowaphos should have a relatively immediate impact on lowering phosphate and then stay relatively constant, right?
3) Is there any negative reaction from having both LaCl and Rowaphos in the tank at the same time?
4) My thought was to use LaCl to get to lower phosphates, then use GFO to maintain at that level. However, let's say that I drop to 0.06ppm using LaCl, from that level would you slowly add GFO and simply monitor such that Phosphates stay constant? Has anyone tried this method and advise on how much GFO you add back after you've dropped to target levels?

Understand that you should skim + use high quality filtration to remove precipitate from the LaCl.

Thank you all!

 

[Kyl]

Fair warning, many corals do not react well to "quickly" lowering PO4.

 

[ScottB]

Aside from a test result, is there a problem you are trying to solve in the tank? Big GHA or something?

I will second @Kyl about quick changes. Quick changes invite cyano. Cyano invites Chemiclean. Chemiclean invites you to join us over in the dinoflagellate thread along with a thousand other reefers.

I will add another warning: too little PO4 is much more dangerous than too much. Add to that this recent discovery: My Hanna consistently shows PO4 .09 to .13. My ICP tests consistently show .04 to .05. Error margin on Hanna is +-.02.

There can be very valid reasons to manage PO4 down no doubt. Just do it at a glacial pace.

 

[galantra]

I would have to agree about lowering too quickly specially if you been around a level for a while. In regards too GFO and dosing, I actually use both. I couldn’t keep a Refugium healthy no matter how many tries. I run BRS GFO with with under a mil of phosphate E dosed into the skimmer every other day . To be honest I feed heavy specially with the amount of tangs I have in the tank. My corals are still growing and still get a film of algae growing on the glass

 

[John08007]

I've used lanthanum, used the phosphate remover from home depot's pool section verified its pure by looking at the msds sheet. There are articles on the doseage, think i use about 10ml added to 1 L rodi water on a 75G tank and drip it into a super fine filter sock. I use a medical feeding bag from ebay, it looks like an iv bag without a needle on the end.

 

[Gchan888]

Thanks for the quick replies. Sounds like you could use both, which is helpful. I am aware of it being too low and certainly don't want to do that; however I was hoping that LaCl would be more precise as I do feel like I'm flying a bit blind on how much additional Rowaphos to add each time and concerned that pushing too hard on that might have a negative effect too. I’ve only had the tank up for 3 months ish and livestock for the past 6-7 weeks so hopefully that's not at a point where the corals are too sensitive to high phosphates. Algae has been popping up a bit more - my glass gets near full glass of algae on it almost every other day and there's some on my sand/rock so I think it is causing some excess growth.

I was going to do a small dose to try and lower it a few ppm. I think getting it down just enough to test for significance (say 0.05ppm) is what I'm going to try to do and then stop for a while to see where the levels go from there; while not trying to chase numbers to the absolute, per se, my hope is to stay within what seems to be most people's success being in the ~0.2ppm or lower.