Trisodium phosphate

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 21, 2017

CircleCityBill said:
According to the msds for the Savogran product, it contains 20-25% sodium sesquicarbonate.

Which product?

That should not hurt anything (a small boost to alk), but it does point out that folks need to check labels carefully.

CircleCityBill · Nov 21, 2017

Savogran is a brand name...pictured in the third post from the top next to Lucky Charms.

hatfielj · Nov 21, 2017

Funny you should wear gloves when handling TSP, but they put the stuff in food and we end up eating it. Nasty

Cory · Nov 22, 2017

I' wonder why the solution I'm dosing turns white when it enters the tank water?

I mixed 110 grams of it in 3 liters of water.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 22, 2017

Cory said:
I' wonder why the solution I'm dosing turns white when it enters the tank water?

I mixed 110 grams of it in 3 liters of water.

Likely the high pH of it locally and temporarily precipitates magnesium hydroxide from the tank water.

Cory · Nov 22, 2017

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Likely the high pH of it locally and temporarily precipitates magnesium hydroxide from the tank water.

Oh thats good i thought it was impurities, but also suspected high ph because in the msds it said something about a ph of 13.

Should I worry about boosting my tanks ph too much? Im only dosing 2ml in 200 ish gallons.

My acrylic dosing container wont get brittle from it?

Oh btw Hanna read 0.00 ppm po4 the next day, when the previous day read .08ppm. So its being used. I might up my dose since you said its 44% less potent in the dodeca version. Maybe I'll keeping increasing the dose until I can consistently read .01ppm po4.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 22, 2017

The overall pH boost will be small.

Cory · Nov 22, 2017

Sorry last question. Can I mix in stump remover for no3 in the same container?

So potassium nitrate and trisodium phosphate together are Okay?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 22, 2017

Yes, that's fine.

Potatohead · Aug 2, 2018

Hi Randy, I am bumping this up because I started dosing some TSP solution a few days ago. In another thread I found a formula that 1.88g of TSP mixed into one liter of RO will bring up phosphate .01 ppm per 1 ml of solution. My system is about 250 litres, and I have been dosing 7.5 ml daily to dose about .03 ppm to the system. However I am not seeing my phosphate rise in testing. I have only been dosing for five days so it's possible it is getting used up quickly. Should I increase the dose or wait for perhaps a couple weeks first?

Thank you

Randy Holmes-Farley · Aug 2, 2018

Potatohead said:
Hi Randy, I am bumping this up because I started dosing some TSP solution a few days ago. In another thread I found a formula that 1.88g of TSP mixed into one liter of RO will bring up phosphate .01 ppm per 1 ml of solution. My system is about 250 litres, and I have been dosing 7.5 ml daily to dose about .03 ppm to the system. However I am not seeing my phosphate rise in testing. I have only been dosing for five days so it's possible it is getting used up quickly. Should I increase the dose or wait for perhaps a couple weeks first?

Thank you

You should not expect to see the predicted rise because some to most to nearly all may get bound to rock and sand.

A fellow Reef2Reef member did a test on some raw florida dead rock and found that even after adding 50+ ppm, only 0.16 ppm remained in solution.

The moral is: if it doesn't rise enough, dose more.

ZaneTer · Aug 2, 2018

@jda
Performed the test on aragonite. It made for some very interesting reading. It is a long thread but it does go a long way into explaining what you are seeing.

jda · Aug 3, 2018

If you keep adding it, then the aragonite will fill up and the in-tank level will rise. There might be a day when you are dying to remove the P from the aragonite.

Keep in mind that throughput is more important than a level on a test kit. I still firmly subscribe to the research that show elevated levels of N and P to inhibit calcification and zoox development, but having a reasonable amount in a tank is better than zero. However, IMO, having heavy feedings and also heavy export is the best with low ambient levels. For example, I have 15 fish in my tank and feed about 8 cubes of frozen and 4x pellets (autofeeder) a day - my N is .1 (need IC to test this) and P is 1-3 ppb on hannah or .005 to .01. Both of these are low, but everything thrives with the throughput. If your tank levels were this low and you fed 1 fish, then this could be a problem.

Potatohead · Aug 7, 2018

So, here is my problem.

I changed my tank from carbon dosing to a chaeto fuge at the beginning of the year because I just couldn’t get over cyano problems. I lost a bunch of coral but by about April/May the tank was doing really well for a couple months. At that point I still had some turf algae but nothing major. When things were good, nitrate around 5 and phosphate about .03-.04. Cyano was there but way, way less (like 10% of before).

Ever since then though my nitrate has been slowly climbing and phosphate decreasing, and I am starting to have major cyano issues again, but this time it’s actually green (spirulina I assume). So as of today my nitrate is about 40 and phosphate .01. I have been dosing phosphate but I don’t know if that’s just feeding the cyano, but obviously I can’t stop or my corals will have issues (and some already are, acans are not very puffy and zoas are mostly closed, ironically my acros are mostly ok). I haven’t really changed anything with feeding the whole time. My chaeto grew like a weed though and I think that allowed phos to get too low.

I suppose the only positive it the turf algae is definitely dying back, I hope that is what is fuelling the cyano, but I really don’t know. I have quite literally been battling cyano now for about sixteen months, this is getting really old.

Cory · Aug 7, 2018

Potatohead said:
Hi Randy, I am bumping this up because I started dosing some TSP solution a few days ago. In another thread I found a formula that 1.88g of TSP mixed into one liter of RO will bring up phosphate .01 ppm per 1 ml of solution. My system is about 250 litres, and I have been dosing 7.5 ml daily to dose about .03 ppm to the system. However I am not seeing my phosphate rise in testing. I have only been dosing for five days so it's possible it is getting used up quickly. Should I increase the dose or wait for perhaps a couple weeks first?

Thank you

Id suggest dosing into a bucket of water and test that. Just to see it works.

Potatohead · Aug 7, 2018

Cory said:
Id suggest dosing into a bucket of water and test that. Just to see it works.

I put one drop into the ULR cuvette and the rest with tank water, it turned blue and pegged the ULR checker at 200. lol.

Cory · Aug 7, 2018

Potatohead said:
I put one drop into the ULR cuvette and the rest with tank water, it turned blue and pegged the ULR checker at 200. lol.

Lol. Nice. Is it .1 ppm po4 per 10 gallons? Try and dose double in a 5 gallon bucket and see if it raises it .1 ppm.

Potatohead · Aug 7, 2018

Well my system is about 250 litres, and I am dosing about 10 ml per day currently which should add .04 ppm. So the solution I am dosing is about 1/25,000 the volume of the system. So if I want to dose the same amount to say a liter to test, I would add .04 ml to a liter, which would only be about a drop. I can check that to see that it works but given the original ULR test I think it works.

My concern now is if the stuff is just binding to the rock and sand, I don't really want to continue. I really think the cyano is using it though, which is going to be tough to get around. Kind of at a loss. I think I may even start dosing a bit of carbon again along with some phosphate to try and bring nitrate down without bottoming out phosphate and see what happens. I don't have much to lose at this point.