How deadly is 0 phosphates?

[Reefahholic]

If phosphate is truly zero…completely zero. Very deadly. Everything needs it to function and thrive. If you really want to mess up a system, just let the phosphate bottom out and sit there for several days. Then watch all of your animals, and watch how the tank spirals into a hot mess.

For those who think phosphate is unimportant, just let me know when you’re ready, and I’ll swing by with a bottle of Seaklear Commercial.

 

[Reefahholic]

No, I think neophos is just inorganic phosphate, as noted above.

I bet it’s potassium phosphate. Definitely a simple cheap product that is being sold for 50% more than it would cost to make it.

DIY for the win.

 

[Aquariumaddictuk]

I can see how TRULY zero po4 could cause serious issues fast.
ZEOVIT for me combined with strong skimmer has made phosphate zero on the Hanna & when I dose some ZEOFOOD, amino & reefroids daily everything looks great.
I slacked off on dosing these for two days this week & noticed issues with LPS, SPS & softies.

 

[djf91]

I can see how TRULY zero po4 could cause serious issues fast.
ZEOVIT for me combined with strong skimmer has made phosphate zero on the Hanna & when I dose some ZEOFOOD, amino & reefroids daily everything looks great.
I slacked off on dosing these for two days this week & noticed issues with LPS, SPS & softies.

Riding the razors edge can produce incredible results. Just takes effort, can’t be lazy. The closer we move to replicating the ocean the better the results, the further we move away from it the worse

 

[Reefahholic]

Riding the razors edge can produce incredible results. Just takes effort, can’t be lazy. The closer we move to replicating the ocean the better the results, the further we move away from it the worse

I disagree. The ocean has a thousand times more resources available than our starving over-filtered aquariums. Quality feeds are available 24/7.

I’ve seen more corals die, and have issue after issue, because Joe Reefer heard keeping his P at .01-.03 like Ocean values was an excellent idea.

I do not think most new reefers realize just how low .03 ppm is. The corals are basically starving especially if the system is under a couple years old, and started with dry rock which seems like the majority of systems today.

If you have a 3-5 yr system, and the right feeds and nutrition are going in, then you can get away with ULN doing something like ZEOvit. Otherwise….good luck with that. Skirting the border is too dangerous.

 

[djf91]

I disagree. The ocean has a thousand times more resources available than our starving over-filtered aquariums. Quality feeds are available 24/7.

I’ve seen more corals die, and have issue after issue, because Joe Reefer heard keeping his P at .01-.03 like Ocean values was an excellent idea.

I do not think most new reefers realize just how low .03 ppm is. The corals are basically starving especially if the system is under a couple years old, and started with dry rock which seems like the majority of systems today.

If you have a 3-5 yr system, and the right feeds and nutrition are going in, then you can get away with ULN doing something like ZEOvit. Otherwise….good luck with that. Skirting the border is too dangerous.

3-5 years should be common! There is nothing more important in this hobby than patience! This used to be the norm. Let your system mature for a year before you add Acropora.

Nowadays everybody wants an instant SPS reef using dry rock and bottle bacteria (lord knows what’s in there, freshwater bacteria?).

As I said earlier, people used to rarely check their phosphates and nitrates levels, and when they did they got 0’s! And then they just kept on going about their day, they didn’t care. And you know what we had? Aquariums wall to wall with colonies growing out of the water, not the aquariums today full of 1 inch frags that barely grow under the 100 par of blue LED. The SPS forum is a shell of what it once was.

 

[Reefahholic]

3-5 years should be common! There is nothing more important in this hobby than patience! This used to be the norm. Let your system mature for a year before you add Acropora.

Nowadays everybody wants an instant SPS reef using dry rock and bottle bacteria (lord knows what’s in there, freshwater bacteria?).

As I said earlier, people used to rarely check their phosphates and nitrates levels, and when they did they got 0’s! And then they just kept on going about their day, they didn’t care. And you know what we had? Aquariums wall to wall with colonies growing out of the water, not the aquariums today full of 1 inch frags that barely grow under the 100 par of blue LED. The SPS forum is a shell of what it once was.

So you think zero phosphate is good.?

Let me know when I can come over with a gallon of Seaklear Commercial. We’ll get the value down to absolute 0, and see how the system looks in week or two.

 

[djf91]

So you think zero phosphate is good.?

Let me know when I can come over with a gallon of Seaklear Commercial. We’ll get the value down to absolute 0, and see how the system looks in week or two.

Read my post! 0 on a phosphate test kit, not 0 total phosphorous in a system. You should be feeding your system plenty, heavy in —> heavy out. Residual nutrient levels don’t mean much in my opinion. Where’s @jda when you need him.

And there could be nothing worse than dropping nutrient levels rapidly, that is a recipe for disaster. If you are trying to bring down nutrient levels, you should do so very slowly. Giving the corals, algae, bacteria and the rest of the ecosystem plenty of time to adapt.

 

[VintageReefer]

20+ years experience here. I was around when ulns was a new thing. Same for deep sand beds. Both of which I did for several years

Here’s my current tanks phosphate history. I ran no detectable phosphate or very low phosphate for over a year as you can see in the attached logs. The spike to .34 in February last year was due to a reef roid spill.

I photograph my tank and corals habitually. Comparing photos from these date stamps I can say that my tank corals look best April - June of this year. Plump, colorful, healthy. That was when I increased phosphate from 0-.04 to a range of .06-.16

That small increase had good results. However, the prior year when I was running very low numbers, things still looked good and were growing fine. Nothing was starving or dying at all. The tank is well established with rock and sand that have been in active systems of mine for at least 10 years. I target feed everything.

I don’t feel the old advice of ulns is necessarily dangerous in established aquaria. New systems should avoid it.

What happened from June 2024 to present ? Well, I made a few changes and wanted to target higher phosphate, and stay around .1 - .2, however the changes I was making were changes in feeding, to support my growing anthias and my tomini tang.

I installed a plank feeder which uses freeze dried food that I was inexperienced with, I also tried some homemade coral food I bought called CRT v3, I reduced frozen, I increased nori. A lot of change was done between June 24 and my next test July 28. When I did a phosphate test on July 28 I got a shocking .98. I didn’t even believe it. I double checked. Got almost identical number.

Discontinued CRT v3 immediately. Reduced plank from 3min /day to 2 min / day. Wasn’t sure what exactly was the primary contributor to the spike, but knew it was one or both of these things.

Aug 1 I retested and was down to .55
Aug 3 I was down to .44

And currently I’m at .38

And how does the coral color and health compare now to a few months ago? Well I would say it depends. My acantho’s, all 3, suffered. It seems they do not tolerate high phosphate at all. I lost one. The other two still aren’t happy. Not sure if it’s related, but I have no other changes. Other corals are all doing well. My sps frags might have lost a slight bit of vibrance due to elevated phosphate. Gonis and torches are definitely happy

I currently am slowly reducing down to a target of .05 - .15. I think this is a happy middle ground for all the corals and will be my target range.

Bottom line
I don’t think zero phosphates is deadly on established systems that are being well fed and supplemented. But, why bother? Corals will do better with some phosphates. Too much or too little (of anything really) can have negative results.


Low phosphates doesn’t = death
Higher phosphates doesn’t = algae
I see no reason not to target the realm of .1 and have some measurable numbers


phosphate .38
Nitrate 6.5

 

[rhaetuluscrenatus]

I have 2 friends, one keeping very nice full sps tanks during 10 years and follows his strategy NO3 =0, PO4 =0 for every of his tank except the soft and LPS tank, he has never met any problem with diseases, his sps are so nice and have good growth, his system is normal as everyone, only different is Metal halide lighting.


Another has NO3 at 1, PO4 at 0 during his start 2 years ago, still no dino, cyano etc but this guy is using zeolite method.

And in the case of my tank, phosphate is stable at 0,5 and corals still good to compare with the recommendation of "masters is keeping at 0.03 to 0.1".

To resume, each tank as each limit, differently, so i'm not sure if phosphate is zero is bad or not, but i'm follow the advises of some coral farms: avoid bacter 7 and tropic marine salt.

 

[Reefahholic]

I don’t feel the old advice of ulns is necessarily dangerous in established aquaria. New systems should avoid it.

I agree. If the system is established it can handle lower numbers.

I have 2 friends, one keeping very nice full sps tanks during 10 years and follows his strategy NO3 =0, PO4 =0 for every of his tank except the soft and LPS tank, he has never met any problem with diseases, his sps are so nice and have good growth, his system is normal as everyone,

This is just crazy. He has residual P and N. That is a fact. There is no way he has absolute zero values on ICP-MS with growing and thriving SPS. They 100% need Phosphate or they will die. Period. N is not as important, but not too far behind either.

 

[Reefahholic]

And in the case of my tank, phosphate is stable at 0,5 and corals still good to compare with the recommendation of "masters is keeping at 0.03 to 0.1".

If you’re referring to Mike Paletta’s article of the master’s…the averages were close to the below:

Alk was 8.19, Ca 419. Mg 1361, NO3 18.77, PO4 .18, Sr 8.6 and temp 77.

Not many running at .03-.05 P.

 

[Reefahholic]

Bottom line
I don’t think zero phosphates is deadly on established systems that are being well fed and supplemented. But, why bother? Corals will do better with some phosphates

Then it’s not truly zero phosphate. The feed just hasn’t had time to break down yet and yield numbers, but the corals are benefiting from the feeds already.

Like you said, what’s the point if we know they’re doing much better with phosphate.

I had a guy reach out last year for troubleshooting his dying SPS system. He had been working with several people and nobody could figure out what was killing his SPS. Very large system with thousands of dollars in SPS death. I took a look at his ICP and phosphate was very low. P was like .02-.03 ppm. I had him bump it up to .08-0.15. The guy never lost another coral after that. I can have him come testify about it too. The guy was doing everything right, but that one thing. It obviously depends on each individual system, but when it comes to true absolute zero phosphate…SPS cannot survive long. They have to have it or some other form of bacteria or nutrition like ZEOvit provides in order to stay alive and thrive.

 

[rhaetuluscrenatus]

I agree. If the system is established it can handle lower numbers.




This is just crazy. He has residual P and N. That is a fact. There is no way he has absolute zero values on ICP-MS with growing and thriving SPS. They 100% need Phosphate or they will die. Period. N is not as important, but not too far behind either.

Yes theorically it's no way, but he has keeping his reef like this more than 10 years, continously no reset, corals grown from frags to be a huge colony, even faster in my tank with same species, he'd test frequently by Hana phosphorus/ nitrate checker to have more precise zero is. So i'm thinking the tank has P in sometimes feeding or fishes popping but be absorbed by ferride oxide after then, (he doesn't use any coral foods as well) so it's zero only at the time he check.

 

[Reefahholic]

And there could be nothing worse than dropping nutrient levels rapidly, that is a recipe for disaster. If you are trying to bring down nutrient levels, you should do so very slowly. Giving the corals, algae, bacteria and the rest of the ecosystem plenty of time to adapt.

Agreed. Both dropping or increasing rapidly can cause significant issues.

 

[Reefahholic]

Yes theorically it's no way, but he has keeping his reef like this more than 10 years, continously no reset, corals grown from frags to be a huge colony, even faster in my tank with same species, he'd test frequently by Hana phosphorus/ nitrate checker to have more precise zero is. So i'm thinking the tank has P in sometimes feeding or fishes popping but be absorbed by ferride oxide after then, (he doesn't use any coral foods as well) so it's zero only at the time he check.

On a quality ICP it would probably result at .01-.03 ppm.

Hanna can only detect inorganic phosphate. ICP can detect the Atom P which includes organic forms.

There’s basically 3 kinds of phosphates. Orthophosphate, inorganic polyphosphate (or pyrophosphates), and organic phosphates. Hanna is only showing a partial piece or the puzzle.

 

[Aquariumaddictuk]

Riding the razors edge can produce incredible results. Just takes effort, can’t be lazy. The closer we move to replicating the ocean the better the results, the further we move away from it the worse

I think it was a very necessary learning curve for me.
I'd spent many hours researching the system but focussed too much on the no3 reducing capabilities & took my eye off the ball with the aggressive po4 stripping.
The BRS zeovit on zeo summed it up fairly well
"Heavy nutrition in, heavy nutrients out"
I'll be looking at auto dosing some of these nutritional elements over the weekend

 

[Aquariumaddictuk]

I disagree. The ocean has a thousand times more resources available than our starving over-filtered aquariums. Quality feeds are available 24/7.

I’ve seen more corals die, and have issue after issue, because Joe Reefer heard keeping his P at .01-.03 like Ocean values was an excellent idea.

I do not think most new reefers realize just how low .03 ppm is. The corals are basically starving especially if the system is under a couple years old, and started with dry rock which seems like the majority of systems today.

If you have a 3-5 yr system, and the right feeds and nutrition are going in, then you can get away with ULN doing something like ZEOvit. Otherwise….good luck with that. Skirting the border is too dangerous.

I think it's horses for courses.
I have friends in the hobby who spend very little time truly observing their corals outside of glass cleaning & general evening "viewing"
I'd never advocate zeovit or any other type of ULNS system to them.
I'm someone who likes to spend an hour or even longer observing, testing & tweaking daily.
It's my relaxation after work.
It's definitely not a system for everyone & it's hard work admittedly but I enjoy the puzzles

 

[jayteerq]

20+ years experience here. I was around when ulns was a new thing. Same for deep sand beds. Both of which I did for several years

Here’s my current tanks phosphate history. I ran no detectable phosphate or very low phosphate for over a year as you can see in the attached logs. The spike to .34 in February last year was due to a reef roid spill.

I photograph my tank and corals habitually. Comparing photos from these date stamps I can say that my tank corals look best April - June of this year. Plump, colorful, healthy. That was when I increased phosphate from 0-.04 to a range of .06-.16

That small increase had good results. However, the prior year when I was running very low numbers, things still looked good and were growing fine. Nothing was starving or dying at all. The tank is well established with rock and sand that have been in active systems of mine for at least 10 years. I target feed everything.

I don’t feel the old advice of ulns is necessarily dangerous in established aquaria. New systems should avoid it.

What happened from June 2024 to present ? Well, I made a few changes and wanted to target higher phosphate, and stay around .1 - .2, however the changes I was making were changes in feeding, to support my growing anthias and my tomini tang.

I installed a plank feeder which uses freeze dried food that I was inexperienced with, I also tried some homemade coral food I bought called CRT v3, I reduced frozen, I increased nori. A lot of change was done between June 24 and my next test July 28. When I did a phosphate test on July 28 I got a shocking .98. I didn’t even believe it. I double checked. Got almost identical number.

Discontinued CRT v3 immediately. Reduced plank from 3min /day to 2 min / day. Wasn’t sure what exactly was the primary contributor to the spike, but knew it was one or both of these things.

Aug 1 I retested and was down to .55
Aug 3 I was down to .44

And currently I’m at .38

And how does the coral color and health compare now to a few months ago? Well I would say it depends. My acantho’s, all 3, suffered. It seems they do not tolerate high phosphate at all. I lost one. The other two still aren’t happy. Not sure if it’s related, but I have no other changes. Other corals are all doing well. My sps frags might have lost a slight bit of vibrance due to elevated phosphate. Gonis and torches are definitely happy

I currently am slowly reducing down to a target of .05 - .15. I think this is a happy middle ground for all the corals and will be my target range.

Bottom line
I don’t think zero phosphates is deadly on established systems that are being well fed and supplemented. But, why bother? Corals will do better with some phosphates. Too much or too little (of anything really) can have negative results.


Low phosphates doesn’t = death
Higher phosphates doesn’t = algae
I see no reason not to target the realm of .1 and have some measurable numbers


phosphate .38
Nitrate 6.5

What app did you use to track your parameter history? I love the layout lol. Also you have very nice corals!!

 

[VintageReefer]

What app did you use to track your parameter history? I love the layout lol. Also you have very nice corals!!

Thank you!

I use Aquarium Manager. It also lets me take dated notes to refer back to later. It’s been really helpful for me