Phosphate RX (or similar products) vs. GFO

[FishTruck]

Back to the original question… IMO LC is not more aggressive and both gfo and LC largely are dosed with trial and error adjustments. Since LC is fast… you can dial in your effective / safe dose in a matter of days, where gfo requires much more labor ( waiting days or weeks to see what outcome happens, needing to recharge the reactor etc…). Most reefers who use LC have no concern with dropping phosphates rapidly -so long as they don’t hit zero at any time…

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Is there any worry about residual lanthium remaining in the water column? I dosed it to lower my phosphates successfully into my skimmer, but it seems like a lot remains left behind according to ICP. I've seen no ill effects of this to my corals or fish.

Lanthanum is not very toxic. I do not know if your values are correct, but the lowest toxic effect data I see for marine species in this paper is nearly 10 times higher than yours:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014765131530110X/pdfft?md5=be7fc3681c95e472a2a4b7e7d09d5c07&pid=1-s2.0-S014765131530110X-main.pdf

 

[bakbay]

FWIW I’ve been dosing PhosphateRX (Lanthanum) into the filter floss for more than 2 years now with no issues. Some said that yellow tangs may have an adverse effect due to Lanthanum but mine has been fine. My last PO4 reading was 0.10 and I don’t knock it down unless I go over 0.20.

I’ve found this method to be waaay less work and zero mess (just count number of drops) vs gfo inside a reactor. I hate reactors that I have to change out every week/two!

Good luck and like everything else here, start small and start slow!