Is it necessary to dose phosphates in a stable manner?

[paulsz]

Hi all,

I've had to dose phosphates in my tank to keep them from bottoming out. I actually need to dose 0.2ppm daily to maintain it at 0.03-0.05 ppm 24 hours later.

My question is, am I okay to dose 0.2ppm in one shot? As with everything, it is obviously better if I could dose 0.01 ppm twenty times a day. But what I am wondering is if dosing 0.2ppm in one shot hurts corals.

I've heard sps be "shocked" from quickly stripping nutrients (e.g. using gfo). But can they be shocked by a quick rise in phosphates?

 

[DirtMcGurt]

I've been dumping it in all at once. I have a 75 gallon tank with a 25 gallon sump and I'm dosing 10 mils of neophos a day. I've heard raising it too quickly can aggravate corals but I don't think raising it 0.2 ppm will hurt anything. On my bottle instructions it says to not raise more than 0.4 ppm in a day.

 

[paulsz]

Great, thanks!

 

[LRT]

In my experience it takes alot longer to get phosphates to stabilize when dosing.
I believe through much research that its your rock and substrate that absorbs and holds it.
For me I dosed .02 a day for a few weeks to keep it registerable on my salifert kit.
Somewhere around week 3 it leveled out around .15 and hasnt moved.
I'd go lightly until you get it to stabilize it is eventually going to saturate your system and your not going to want to over dose.
Thats my 2 cents anyway.

 

[paulsz]

In my experience it takes alot longer to get phosphates to stabilize when dosing.
I believe through much research that its your rock and substrate that absorbs and holds it.
For me I dosed .02 a day for a few weeks to keep it registerable on my salifert kit.
Somewhere around week 3 it leveled out around .15 and hasnt moved.
I'd go lightly until you get it to stabilize it is eventually going to saturate your system and your not going to want to over dose.
Thats my 2 cents anyway.

I think similarly as well. In my old tank I had to dose heavily. And I mean heavily, but for a good 3-4 months before it finally held up on it's own.

I have been dosing mine this tank for about 2 months now. At one i had to dose closer to 0.3ppm daily to get it to stay registerable 24 hours later. Now we're down to 0.2ppm. I do hope it settles eventually and doesn't need any crazy dosing. I test twice a week with Hanna ULR and should it ever stop needing dosing suddenly mid week, I would get a nice little spike for a few days.

The reason I brought this up is because i have a frag of monti that hasn't done well since it got into the tank about 1.5 months ago. It had faded to more of a pastel colour, but it is alive. Just not growing. I was wondering whether it may be becuase of the phosphate dosing. I read in a few books that higher phosphates can inhibit calcification. And so i thought that maybe earlier in the day (where phosphates would be 0.25-0.20 right after dosing), the phosphates may be affecting the monti.

 

[LRT]

I think similarly as well. In my old tank I had to dose heavily. And I mean heavily, but for a good 3-4 months before it finally held up on it's own.

I have been dosing mine this tank for about 2 months now. At one i had to dose closer to 0.3ppm daily to get it to stay registerable 24 hours later. Now we're down to 0.2ppm. I do hope it settles eventually and doesn't need any crazy dosing. I test twice a week with Hanna ULR and should it ever stop needing dosing suddenly mid week, I would get a nice little spike for a few days.

The reason I brought this up is because i have a frag of monti that hasn't done well since it got into the tank about 1.5 months ago. It had faded to more of a pastel colour, but it is alive. Just not growing. I was wondering whether it may be becuase of the phosphate dosing. I read in a few books that higher phosphates can inhibit calcification. And so i thought that maybe earlier in the day (where phosphates would be 0.25-0.20 right after dosing), the phosphates may be affecting the monti.

Funny you mention that because I have a Wwc grafted cap that's been in my system for about 6 months. Went through an unregisterable Nitrate OD and alot getting my Nitrates to stabilze now for the last cpl months.
During my N overdose it completely bottomed out my Phosphates which I why I had to dose them back up to where they are now.
That being said it wasn't until I got my phosphates stabile out at .15 that it started to take off.
I thought this thing was toast. Even turned brown on me. Then all of sudden it started looking like this.