Phosphate levels

[Mujul79]

What is going on. Our tanks are all full of Phosphates. At first we thought it was just the tap water in our freshwater test and yes the tap was reading high so we just kept phosguard in bags in the filters and they seemed to help and no fish died so I did not stress about it. But now we are doing salt tanks. The RO/DI water test 0 with the API test but yet in our saltwater tanks are testing high too with the Hanna testers 2.5 today. We have a sump, a skimmer, a refugium with algae in it and a refractor with phoseguard it in and yet it keeps going up. I started at .25 and now is 2.5 do you think Phosebond will work better?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

What is going on. Our tanks are all full of Phosphates. At first we thought it was just the tap water in our freshwater test and yes the tap was reading high so we just kept phosguard in bags in the filters and they seemed to help and no fish died so I did not stress about it. But now we are doing salt tanks. The RO/DI water test 0 with the API test but yet in our saltwater tanks are testing high too with the Hanna testers 2.5 today. We have a sump, a skimmer, a refugium with algae in it and a refractor with phoseguard it in and yet it keeps going up. I started at .25 and now is 2.5 do you think Phosebond will work better?

All foods contain a lot of phosphate. As much as 0.4 ppm per day.

Any binder will deplete very fast at that level. Certainly less than a day, I expect. You can check the effluent to know.

 

[Spare time]

The API phosphate test doesn't read low enough. Get a different test. Also, you should stop using tap water.