Is there phosphate in vinegar?

[Empress]

Why am I dosing vinegar if there’s phosphate in it? I’m trying to LOWER my phosphates, not raise them.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

lol

Distilled white vinegar is not a significant source of phosphate. Did someone tell you it was?

 

[Empress]

lol

Distilled white vinegar is not a significant source of phosphate. Did someone tell you it was? If they did, ignore their advice.

I used my salifert test kit just to see what would happen and the regent turn blue. Indicating high phosphate. Go figure. Time to throw out that test kit I guess.

 

[Fritzhamer]

Did you test full strength vinegar or say a sample taken from a gallon of saltwater with a few drops of vinegar added?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I used my salifert test kit just to see what would happen and the regent turn blue. Indicating high phosphate. Go figure. Time to throw out that test kit I guess.

I'm not sure it works in straight vinegar, but even if it was accurate, you need to interpret the contribution to the tank and not just the color looking bad.

Suppose it really was 0.3 ppm phosphate in the vinegar. That's insignificant.

You need to consider the dilution factor. A typical high dose of vinegar might be 0.5 mL per gallon of tank water.

With 0.3 ppm phosphate of 0.5 mL added to a gallon, the boost to phosphate is only 0.00004 ppm. Since you likely add 0.02 to 0.3 ppm of phosphate each day in foods, that amount in the vinegar (whether real or test error) is meaningless.

 

[Empress]

Did you test full strength vinegar or say a sample taken from a gallon of saltwater with a few drops of vinegar added?

I put in one drop of pure vinegar from the jug it comes in into a vial then I added 10 ml of fresh rodi water. The rodi water has zero phosphates.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I put in one drop of pure vinegar from the jug it comes in into a vial then I added 10 ml of fresh rodi water. The rodi water has zero phosphates.

If it is distilled white vinegar, it's not going to have an amount that needs to be worried about.

Other types of vinegar (cider, wine, etc.) will have some phosphate (0-200 ppm P):

http://notulaebotanicae.ro/index.php/nbha/article/download/4618/5072

 

[Empress]

If it is distilled white vinegar, it's not going to have an amount that needs to be worried about.

Other types of vinegar (cider, wine, etc.) will have some phosphate (0-200 ppm P):

http://notulaebotanicae.ro/index.php/nbha/article/download/4618/5072

Gotcha. Thanks Randy for taking the "worry" away. It was the white stuff. [emoji886]

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Just curious, how high did the number come out with the Salifert kit?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

If someone has some distilled white vinegar, I’d be interested to see what phosphate we can detect by adding 1 mL to a liter of ro/di or tank water.

I can’t find any reliable phosphate data in the literature for distilled white vinegar. [emoji3]

FWIW, I had always assumed that distilled white vinegar was actually distilled. Remarkably, some references say it is not, but is made by fermenting distilled ethanol, so the product may have more phosphate in it than distillation would allow (which would be none).