Po4 0.33 with nopox

[Camaro Show Corals]

help my po4 was going down I had it down to 0.04 and now it’s reading 0.33. I started dosing nopox and that helped since the gfo wasn’t helping. I do 3 5 gallon water changes a week and I just can’t seem to win this battle. I only feed the fish 2x a week and the coral 2x a week. I use RODI water from my aquatic life RODI Machine. Any ideas. I’m also lowering my alk from 11 to 8 hoping to have less acros stn. My alk is now at 9.6 with doing 3 water changes per week.i just can’t figure out where these po4 are coming from I haven’t dosed nopox since Monday because I dosed it and the power went out for about 2 hours and I had a bacterial bloom and that has now cleared up. I will say my water out of the tap is absolutely garbage if you fill a water bottle up it’s straight white and it’s so hard. But my RODI machine should take that all out right?

 

[Bayareareefer18]

Have you tested your rodi water?

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

No I have not

 

[leepink23]

Phosphate Rx will get phosphate down quickly but for long term management I decided to stop use anything like nopox, gfo, vibrant or the phosphate rx but rather go simple, skimmer, scrubber and water exchanges. Seemed like the more things I used the worse my tank got.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

I already have a algae scrubber and a skimmer so filtration isn’t a issue

 

[leepink23]

I already have a algae scrubber and a skimmer so filtration isn’t a issue

The phosphate rx for me worked much better than gfo or nopox for phosphate reduction.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

I’ll give that a try

 

[leepink23]

I’ll give that a try

Melevs Reef has an informative video on it. Probably worth watching.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/video-how-to-dose-phosphate-rx.294928/

 

[SPR1968]

The first thing I would do is test the water coming out of your RODI system and make sure it is reading 0 TDS and if it isn’t then you need to change the filters/resin. If the water quality is poor and your doing 3 water changes a week, that could be the problem.

GFO cant not work if used correctly, ideally in a reactor and changed over as soon as it’s spent. It may need changing regularly for the first period until the Phosphate comes down. If you don’t change it it won’t work properly. For the first few weeks/month you need to test the phosphate level and change the GFO when it starts to rise again. I use Rhowaphos in a reactor myself along with NoPox for Nitrate control.

NoPox is very good for Nitrate but less so for phosphate control so you may struggle with NoPox on it’s own.

From what you’ve said is sounds like it could well be poor water quality.

 

[DSC reef]

+1 on the above. Also, give what your doing time to work and stop chasing numbers. Give your tank time to balance out. GFO will work and it's better if the numbers come down slowly.

 

[DSC reef]

On your other thread your saying you don't have a TDS meter for your RODI? I'd look into that, it's important to know your filtration is working properly. I'd seriously stop looking into things to dose and stay consistent with what your already using and keep up the water changes.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

they dont make a tds meter for my rodi machine, i cant do a reactor on a biocube 29, the gfo would just clump together

 

[ajhudson15]

I have phosphate e on a doser and it keeps my phosphate in check and reads about the same every week.

 

[ajhudson15]

they dont make a tds meter for my rodi machine, i cant do a reactor on a biocube 29, the gfo would just clump together

They make handheld tds testers that you just dip into the water when you catch it. fairly cheap. mine was only $20

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

oh okay good to know

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

FWIW, organic carbon dosing appears to be skewed to more nitrate reduction than phosphate (perhaps due to denitrification which uses nitrate and organics, but not phosphate), and reefers dosing organic carbon often have excess phosphate remaining when nitrate is largely depleted.

 

[leepink23]

they dont make a tds meter for my rodi machine, i cant do a reactor on a biocube 29, the gfo would just clump together

They sale handheld tds meters that work great.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

So what’s your method to lower them, dosing phosphate rx?

 

[11f150]

Thats surprising to me that you dont have luck with GFO. I use high capacity GFO from BRS and I have to be careful with that stuff or it will strip my tank clean in no time.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

I had it in a media bag in the first chamber and it would just bunch up together and I never noticed it remove very much, I always heard for gfo you need it tumble a lot for it to work