Lanthanum chloride vs gfo????

miyags · Oct 10, 2012

I just read an article about the use of lanthanum chloride for removing phosphate , CORAL. the marine magazine,has the article about it. Can someone post it here???. I see UNIQUE CORAL mentioned they use it to. Its cheaper to use than GFO. And we all need cheaper products if they work. Please post any INFO here. THANK YOU MIYAGS!!!!

Fieroguy19 · Oct 10, 2012

Well, IMO this thread has the most info on using lanthanum. It is really useful on large tanks where GFO would be way too expensive.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1474839

miyags · Oct 10, 2012

The article is Foiling phosphate/ CORAL MAGAZINE. Sounds like it will be good for non photo coral tanks also.

Fieroguy19 · Oct 10, 2012

www.coralmagazine-us.com/content/foiling-phosphate

Is this what you are looking for? You can just download the pdf.

zemuss · Oct 10, 2012

I took away a few thoughts from the article Fieroguy posted.

1. Any type of GFO introduced to a tank should be done gradually. Meaning do not just add the whole recommended amount at once or it might be detrimental to your corals.

2. lanthanum is really only effective on removing high concentrates of Po4 but should be done over time. This brings me back to point 1.

Sure it might be a cheaper alternative, however, at this point why kill species of corals in your tank? I believe it is too new of a process / concept to introduce into my tank which has high end corals.

My PO4 the last time I checked was .003 and if I had high readings I would resort to a series of water changes before I ever used a chemical to reduce the readings.

This is just my opinion.

MBSL55 · Oct 10, 2012

I used LC instead for preparing rock for a new tank. The LC was used to get phosphate out of rock that I had acid washed but was still leaching phosphate into the water. Rinsed everything off before adding some live rock to the acid washed rock and then did some more LC treatments. Once I was done, I used the rock in a new tank and am hoping the GFO will last longer as I have reduced or eliminated at least one source of PO4.