Lanthanum Chloride

[drawman]

Well I think it's finally time for me to throw my hat in the lanthanum chloride dosing ring. I have pukani rock in one of my displays that I believe to be a PO4 sink. I am debating either dosing in the overflow and running a 10 micron filter sock or removing the rock and dosing in a curing bin.

For those that have done in a curing bin do you find the resulting precipitate stays at the top or the bottom of the curing bin? How are you going about removing it? I can see it start to get messy for cleanup and the sock almost sounds like an easier solution. Only thing that makes me cautious is my yellow tang.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Well I think it's finally time for me to throw my hat in the lanthanum chloride dosing ring. I have pukani rock in one of my displays that I believe to be a PO4 sink. I am debating either dosing in the overflow and running a 10 micron filter sock or removing the rock and dosing in a curing bin.

For those that have done in a curing bin do you find the resulting precipitate stays at the top or the bottom of the curing bin? How are you going about removing it? I can see it start to get messy for cleanup and the sock almost sounds like an easier solution. Only thing that makes me cautious is my yellow tang.

It is definitely heavier than seawater and will settle out, if that is the question.

 

[drawman]

It is definitely heavier than seawater and will settle out, if that is the question.

Yes thanks Randy. I guess I'm also curious if it would be a pain to get off the rock from the experience of others. I can see the precipitate settling all over it making if difficult to remove...

Maybe I am just overly concerned I'm not sure.

 

[rkpetersen]

I'll be dosing a bunch of pukani and other rocks in a brute in about a week. Previously I've only used live rock for setups, this'll be my first time with dry. My understanding is that most of the lanthanum phosphate will settle in the bottom, off the rocks, as precipitate, and most of the rest can be rinsed off. We'll see how it goes. After the LC treatment I'm going to start cycling the rocks in the brute, maybe with more LC if the phosphate rises again.

Not to hijack the thread, but one additional question about LC that maybe Randy or someone else can answer - Is it just as effective in freshwater as saltwater? If I treat the rocks in fresh RODI water rather than salt, will this still work?

 

[Cory]

Have you tried growing macroalgae with a high powered light yet to control po4?

 

[drawman]

Have you tried growing macroalgae with a high powered light yet to control po4?

Yes I've actually previously built and installed a chaeto reactor. Unfortunately, the GHA in my display was so aggressive that it choked out and outcompeted chaeto in the reactor so I took it down. If I can get my rocks to stop leaching phosphate I will likely reinstall the reactor as I think cheato is a great long term solution. In the short term unfortunately I need a hammer.

 

[Cory]

Yes I've actually previously built and installed a chaeto reactor. Unfortunately, the GHA in my display was so aggressive that it choked out and outcompeted chaeto in the reactor so I took it down. If I can get my rocks to stop leaching phosphate I will likely reinstall the reactor as I think cheato is a great long term solution. In the short term unfortunately I need a hammer.

Yes leaching po4 would give the algae nearby an advantage. Try and build a waterffall ats. Once i had one no3 and po4 were always zero. Really effective with red leds.

 

[Cory]

What are your no3 and po4?

 

[drawman]

@Randy Holmes-Farley do you think there is any difference in the rxn at varying levels of alkalinity? Ie would it favor PO4 precipitation at a lower alkalinity over a higher one or do you think this is inconsequential?

The reason I am asking is I am planning on doing this in a curing bin and I have a higher alkalinity salt that I'm not using for my tank sitting around.

Also the only reason I'm not using freshwater over saltwater for this rxn is because it has been reported that the ULR Hanna Phosphorus checker is not suitable for freshwater.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

@Randy Holmes-Farley do you think there is any difference in the rxn at varying levels of alkalinity? Ie would it favor PO4 precipitation at a lower alkalinity over a higher one or do you think this is inconsequential?

The reason I am asking is I am planning on doing this in a curing bin and I have a higher alkalinity salt that I'm not using for my tank sitting around.

Also the only reason I'm not using freshwater over saltwater for this rxn is because it has been reported that the ULR Hanna Phosphorus checker is not suitable for freshwater.

I expect that higher alk (and probably higher pH) leads to more lanthanum carbonate precipitation than lower alk does, but in a bin, this is not likely an issue since you can easily add as much lanthanum as you want and don't care much about alk.

 

[User1]

Dry Pukani user here. Pressure washed it first, then in a bin with bleach for a day, drain, more bleach, 24 hours and rinse again, then refill and add lanthanum chloride and sit for 24 hours. Drain, more water, more lanthanum chloride, 24 hours, then pressure wash and in my display it went. Cycle has started. Tested with Hannah checker for phosphates and it said 0. No way I believe that since this stuff leaches out of Pukani from everything I've read. Going to retest tomorrow morning and see if it was user error. Has to be. In any case was wondering if people dose this stuff in the display? I read a couple posts whereas people said it isn't a good idea with low iron glass (which I have).

 

[Greenstreet.1]

I don’t dose it directly into my display I dose into my skimmer or filter sock.

 

[User1]

I don’t dose it directly into my display I dose into my skimmer or filter sock.

Ok - this is going to sound dumb, but it is liquid. So won't it disperse has water flows through the system?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Ok - this is going to sound dumb, but it is liquid. So won't it disperse has water flows through the system?

The lanthanum dissolved in it fairly rapidly precipitates as lanthanum phosphate and possibly lanthanum carbonate.

 

[kecked]

You just gave me a good idea. I have been trying to raise phosphates for a Dino problem. I’m going add some dry rock to my sump left over from when I set it up. Was dumping 0.2ppm phosphate for a year!

 

[drawman]

Dry Pukani user here. Pressure washed it first, then in a bin with bleach for a day, drain, more bleach, 24 hours and rinse again, then refill and add lanthanum chloride and sit for 24 hours. Drain, more water, more lanthanum chloride, 24 hours, then pressure wash and in my display it went. Cycle has started. Tested with Hannah checker for phosphates and it said 0. No way I believe that since this stuff leaches out of Pukani from everything I've read. Going to retest tomorrow morning and see if it was user error. Has to be. In any case was wondering if people dose this stuff in the display? I read a couple posts whereas people said it isn't a good idea with low iron glass (which I have).

Yes a lot of people do use it in their display. It is better practice to use it with a 5-10 micron filter sock to catch the precipitates and go very slow. Some people use IV bags and drip diluted LaCl over the course of several hours. Do a youtube search and you'll see their videos. Zebrasoma tangs for one have been reported to die after swimming through the precipitates so you want to be careful with this stuff. I have a yellow tang so I will not use it in my display. That said, a lot of people have used diluted products such as phosphate Rx without issue but I still think it would be wise to use the filter sock.

 

[drawman]

So I set up my curing bin with about 10-15 gallons of water and one very large piece of pukani rock that had been in storage for a couple of years after an acid bath. This was from the same batch of rock that I used to setup my 60 gallon. Two hours later I tested PO4 to use as a baseline and it was 0.3ppm already . I didn't expect it to be that high that quick. I will be placing an order for seaklear and filter socks to get this moving.

 

[drawman]

For anyone following I modified my curing vat and added a place to drip diluted SeaKlear lanthanum chloride which then runs into a very large 10 micron filter sock. It is super DIY but works well. Today I added 0.5mL of SeaKlear that was diluted in about 500mL of RODI water via a gravity IV bag.

My previous measurement was at the max range of 200ppb (0.613ppm) via my Hanna Checker. It certainly could have been much higher than that. With this dose it knocked it back to 32ppb (0.098ppm) so a pretty steep decline. I'll be curious to see how much the PO4 will creep up and I will try to keep this thread updated for anyone interested.

 

[rkpetersen]

I read a couple posts whereas people said it isn't a good idea with low iron glass

What is the issue that people are concerned about? What's supposed to happen to the glass?

 

[FirstContact]

Using a plastic Kent dosing container to drip SeaKlear RODI into a 10 micron sock. I use RO tubing and one of Julian Sprung’s little control valves to vary the drip rate. I’m fish only in my DT now, so I’m using about 20 mls of SeaKlear to about 1,000 mls of RODI every now and then. I specifically don’t dose in my overflow, even though I read people do, because they write the precipitate is sticky and I don’t want that stuff stuck in my system inside my pvc pipes. Not sure if that is a real issue or not, but it’s why I drip into a sock; so, the precipitate can be removed.