Phosphates high
- Thread starter gashunk
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Shaddow_wolf169
Valuable Member
Cut back food and increase water change
Shaddow_wolf169
Valuable Member
Phosguard
nervousmonkey
LPS Lover, SPS Enabler
what shadow wolf said, those are the best two options. If you don't want to cut back on feedings, use phosguard to get it down where you want it (after adding it, if you are not at the level where you want to be, change it out and add more), then after phosguard, add GFO. And don't do it too fast, take your time lowering it.
Shaddow_wolf169
Valuable Member
As long as your sock does not over flow it will be fine
nervousmonkey
LPS Lover, SPS Enabler
yep, what shadowwolf said. but you just mentioned that you use GFO and have high phosphates? How often are you changing your GFO? How much are you using, what size tank and what kind? Strange that you have high PO4 with GFO. Quick tip, it's also not a good idea to keep GFO and carbon together, although a lot of folks here will disagree with me on that. Reason is that you want your GFO to have enough flow to tumble, and you do not want your carbon to tumble as it just breaks apart into dust which leaves your tank with a nice smathering of black charcoal dust. Remember: tumble GFO (it's iron, it's tough), don't tumble carbon. Anyway, measure the correct amount and put it in a new sock. PG should be changed starting around day 4, so check your PO4 levels, see where they are and if not low enough, pull the sock, put new one in with new PG... and change your GFO to fresh
yeah i changed out my bag about two weeks ago its a 55g tank and the bag my lfs makes and mixs and i get your reason for not mixing it uhh long story short on why my po4 is so high is cause i used different water from a different lfs and the water they use is from the "ocean"
nervousmonkey
LPS Lover, SPS Enabler
Oh, that sucks man. They probably collect it close to shore or near a runoff where phosphates are leaking from our overuse of them, then selling it for more money. Sucks dude, sorry about that.
And I didn't mean anything by the statement that GAC and GFO shouldn't be mixed, I guess that was a comment of "I don't practice what I preach", HAHA! I do that all the time because I can't find another Seachem The Bag. Doesn't hurt my tank, well once I got a bunch of carbon dust on stuff, but I just cleaned it out... Let us know how it goes man! I'm doing the exact same thing with a tank I have, got PO4 down to 0.5 from 1, and I just added GFO on top of a newly changed bag of Phosguard. Probably taking it too quickly, but I just want the PO4 down. I hadn't measured it in a long time, because it was fine forever, then noticed my corals having issues and lost a beautiful fungia and heliofungia, tested and decided to take it quickly down to where i want it. NO3 are fine, like yours. Funny, but another tank I have measures 0 NO3 and 0 PO4 with every test kit and method available. I know there are nutrients because I have awful hair algae (probably why they are 0). I am dosing nitrates and feeding frozen cubes straight in the tank to get the PO4 up, all to no avail, but the corals are fine and growing, almost all SPS in that tank anyway, so slowly bringing up nutrients is probably fine...
Cheers!
Lloyd
