Phosphates keep increasing

[bellasdad0911]

Well there is my reading tonight. 2 weeks ago it was .26, then I dosed caribsea phosphate remover in 2 stages and got it down to .04 today after a week we are at .16 I run media above. It’s 140 gallons total volume and I use about 1/2 cup maybe a little more. I just replaced it tonight. I strain all my food( mysis, krill, mega marine etc ) under water before I actually feed. What else can be adding phosphate at this rate? Now I did rescape some this past weekend and moved 20lbs of rock down into the sump. Could that have caused such a swing? I just say my sps seems to look it’s happiest when the phosphates creep up to this level however my growth is completely halted. Any help
Would be great. Tank is approaching 1 year old.

 

[Ryan T.L.]

Food especially pellets will add lots. Dry rocks can leach phosphates. GFO does deplete at various rates. In my early days I wasted lots of gfo trying to “cure” my dry rocks...

 

[erky]

do you skim a lot? If feeding a lot of food, it could be causing this issue.

careful lowering your po4 too fast. If you are not mechanically filtering out the flocculant it will get back into the water column eventually. you can drip into a skimmer, or into a 5 micron filter sock.

 

[mtraylor]

Have you checked your RO DI source water to see what it is? The auto top off water and the mixed water

 

[jsker]

How old is the system, and what type of rock are you using?

New setups tend to run high in phosphate as I discovered when I set up my current system. When using dry rock I tend to read that there are higher than normal phosphates. You can try dosing Lanthanum Chloride to pull down your phosphates and then go back on line with the GFO.

 

[erky]

How old is the system, and what type of rock are you using?

New setups tend to run high in phosphate as I discovered when I set up my current system. When using dry rock I tend to read that there are higher than normal phosphates. You can try dosing Lanthanum Chloride to pull down your phosphates and then go back on line with the GFO.

i imagine that is what he is using but called the caribsea po4 remover

 

[jda]

The phosphate is probably bound in your rocks and maybe your sand. I just did an experiment where over 57ppm of phosphate put into the water yielded about .1594ppm after the aragonite absorbed it in a ratio of about 1lb of aragonite to 5g of water. The aragonite can hold a LOT of phosphate.

When you use a remover, the water column level will go down. Then the rocks will unbind some more over the next day or two to bring it back to a slightly lower equilibrium. Then the tank water is nearly right back up to where it was. Then, you repeat this a bunch.

Rock from the ocean is mostly phosphate free since the environment is so devoid of phosphate. Dry rock can have massive amounts of terrestrial phosphate that got bound over the decades. Dry, from-the-ocean, is also full of them since the stuff died that was inside of the rock.

 

[bellasdad0911]

i imagine that is what he is using but called the caribsea po4 remover

Yes that is what I am using. Tank is close to 1 year old and I used the BRS reef saver rock. Shouldn’t the media however keep it in check? I did a 1/4 dose of the phosphate remover last night. Believe me I am well aware of the effects doing this too quickly. I learned the hard way [emoji6] sand is live sand. Honestly I loved saving the $$ on rock but I feel I am paying for it now. I will test tonight to see where it is at. I do skim, and plenty of it. Should I skim a bit wetter for the removal?

 

[jda]

The media becomes saturated too quickly - oft overnight. There can be massive amounts in the rocks... enough to need gallons of GFO. The rocks can release it quite quickly from the surface when the tank water level lowers. They only way to get it down is to keep on changing the media, but go slowly (you are on this).

When I was treating some rock from a VERY neglected tank, I could fill a Phsoban 550 reactor totally full with Aluminum Oxide and it would be full in less than 12 hours. After a few dozen treatments (and most of a 5g bucket), it would take a few days to fill up. You are right...dry rock is no bargain and an acid bath does not help enough... but BRS leaves this out of their videos. I had a friend need 6+ gallons of GFO to rid his BRS reef saver from phosphates... and he acid bathed them.

.16 is not the end of the world. I would get it lower, but it is not like you have a ton, or anything, and need to rush.

Read through this thread and see how much phosphate just a bit of aragonite can hold... and I quit before it was even saturated.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/phosphate-absorption-rates-in-aragonite.352405/page-4#post-4501532

 

[AnalogKid]

you say you're running about 1/2 cup of gfo. I entered your 140 gallon water volume into BRS's calcuator and recommends 2.19 cups of gfo.

 

[bellasdad0911]

Pretty sure the back of the bottle said use a whole lot less that 1/4 cup. I will verify this for sure

 

[bellasdad0911]

Well, looks like I will be going home to dump the entire bottle in

 

[Scorpius]

Run at most half of whatever rate the gfo manufacturer says. I have about 1/4 of what the manufacturer says. 2 tbls. of BRS HC gfo in my 70 gal system.

 

[jda]

Got slow, use less and change it more often. This is safer than soaking up too much at once.

 

[bellasdad0911]

So this is where we are at this morning after 48 hours. Dropped .06 worth. Coral looks super happy today. Colors have slightly increased. I did add zeolite to the sump which could have helped for the hard metals but that’s unknown.

 

[jda]

If you are going to be in that kind of range, consider getting the Hannah Ultra Low... which is more accurate at low levels than that one is.

Pay attention to when it starts to rise again... this is your saturated media point. If you never get near .00 on this meter, then you are going slow enough.

 

[bellasdad0911]

So here is today reading. Hasn’t gone up any. Slightly lower. Alk is at 8.5 and calcium was at 420. Mag is at 1350 and nitrates around 7.5ppm. A good observation is when phosphates go lower algae bloom goes wild all over my glass and some on liverock. You see traces of red slime on power heads and rock surfaces. I would assume this is a imbalance. However coral looks amazing and popping and I even see signs of growth.

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

You seem to be in a sweet spot for your tank with PO4 And NO3. I use cheato for my removal, when I have undetectable NO3 my PO4 starts to creep up. It's always a balancing act. I'm personally done with GFO. For whatever reason I always triggered a Dino outbreak when I used it. Not saying this will happen to everyone as all tanks are different.