P04 undetectable with salifert...

[RudeDawg]

Hello,

I've been running a deskmate for about 3 months now. Currently housing only inverts and corals. I did start the tank with both dry and live rock (50/50). I've been adding 3 drops of phyto feast daily as well as 2 drops of polyp booster and a pinch of reef roids 2xweek. I've been doing 1 gal water changes once a week and everything looks decent. I have been growing a bit of cyano in the filter floss cup (only place I see it growing). My question is, how bad is it if my P04 remains undetectable with salifert test, or is salifert not sensitive enough to detect p04 in my Pico?

Salifert test kits

Dkh 6.7
Ph 8.0
N03 2ppm
P04 0ppm

 

[SchrutesReefs]

Off topic, but your alk is a tad low. Maybe your cyano is consuming the PO4 and giving you that zero reading.

 

[rc8t6353]

I've went thru and am going thru something similar now. Your water is too clean. I know when my P04 is low because I start seeing patches of cyano. It always starts when my phosphate measures 0.00 on the hanna checker. It may sound counter productive, but, start dosing PO4 slowly until you get a reading and stop the water changes for a little while but keep replacing the filter sock.

 

[RudeDawg]

Off topic, but your alk is a tad low. Maybe your cyano is consuming the PO4 and giving you that zero reading.







Are you familiar with the salifert p04 test kit?

I'm honestly not sure if I'm doing it correctly. The instructions state to use the 1ml syringe with pink tip attachment, and draw reagent till plunger is at 1ml mark. It also states that there will be air between plunger and reagent, but how much? From the way I'm doing it, there seems to be too much of an air bubble. Could that be affecting my test results?

 

[Lavey29]

Since you have no fish in the tank your phosphate and nitrates are very low which means the corals in your tank are starving. You may want to dose aminos and reef roids more to raise levels or dose neophos and neonitro.

 

[Reef.]

With salifert, in my experience anything below 0.1 will show as zero, you really need a Hanna checker to test accurately below 0.1.
Alk at 6.7 is fine, if you are aiming for 7 as a little below or over that is normal, if aiming for 8 then 6.7 is an issue.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I'd feed more as a first step, but that may not bring enough phosphate without excessive nitrate, in which case I'd dose.