What do successful reefers do to keep Phosphate at 0.03?

allabarton · Jan 29, 2013

What do successful reefers do to keep Phosphate at 0.03? Thank you.

Rob.D · Jan 30, 2013

GFO and water changes have helped me keep Phosphate in check.

Fidofence · Jan 30, 2013

Rob.D said:
GFO and water changes have helped me keep Phosphate in check.

Plus 1

allabarton · Jan 30, 2013

Regular GFO or HC and how much per gallon. The reason I am asking my SPS/LPS do not react to well to GFO HC. And I am down to 1/2 cup for 190g system. I turn GFO reactor off. Corals look better, Phosphate goes up.

Fidofence · Jan 30, 2013

I use a much smaller quantity than recommended and change it every week

bct15 · Jan 30, 2013

Change it every week, I use a cup for about 240 gallons. Feed your fish with a turkey baster to avoid over feeding, soak the food in a cup of aquarium water, suck up some water and food into the baster, squirt a little food into the tank, when the fish have completely eaten all of that squirt a little more until the fish have been fed.

Rob.D · Jan 30, 2013

allabarton said:
Regular GFO or HC and how much per gallon. The reason I am asking my SPS/LPS do not react to well to GFO HC. And I am down to 1/2 cup for 190g system. I turn GFO reactor off. Corals look better, Phosphate goes up.

I use BRS standard GFO, when I first set up my reactor I used 1/2 cup and upped the amount by 1/2 cup every month, I have maxed out at 1 and 1/2 cups. I have a guestimated 130 gallons.

I feed both PE Mysis (I do not rinse) and homemade food.
My bio load includes
Small 2" Hippo Tang
Small Yellow tang
Royal Gramma
Pajama Cardinal
Flame Hawk Fish
Picasso Clown Pair
Solar Fairy wrasse pair
Mystery Wrasse
Melanaurus wrasse
Lg Lyre tail anthia male
small Lyre tail female
Most of my SPS are med sized colonies.
Mechanical filtration is Reef Octopus NWB 150 (undersized for my bio load) and I run dual filter socks, changed every three days.

As you can see my system is a high nutrient system, so the amount of GFO needed for me, will probably not apply to you.

fragmatic · Jan 30, 2013

No flake foods, a good healthy crop of some form of algae in my refugium, add nothing but RODI water, make sure there are no strange kinds of rocks, feed my tank enough to be sure I don't quite cloud my water so I keep a large colony of bacteria, clean the sand, sometimes vacuum out the sump as a water change method (my sump is bare bottom and my refugiums are separate), run a skimmer 24/7, and use a GFO as a back-up.

It tends to vary from non-detectable to .025.

grumpy-crab · Jan 30, 2013

I run a ATS i have never had phosphate in my system.

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gobeach · Jan 30, 2013

I'm using GFO and BioPellets. My Nitrates and Phosphate were high and since I've been using the Pellets and running GFO. The GFO wasn't making much of a dent until I added the BioPellets. I have not tried eliminating the GFO - it's working fine now - but I must confess I've not been very successful with SPS - but my LPS and all other livestock are thriving.

Budman's Corals · Jan 30, 2013

Feed only the size of the fish's eye daily... Water changes biweekly

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Steve175 · Jan 31, 2013

Feed every other day and less than you think. As big as possible ratio between total volume and display tank volume.

Chameleon · Feb 1, 2013

I dont feed frozen or flakes and run a refugium with caulerpa. phosphates are always in the .01-.03 range. backup is gfo

Me z · Feb 1, 2013

Before I switched to zeovit. I used biopellets, two gfo reactors, and my fuge. Some people have to work harder at it than others.

metrokat · Feb 1, 2013

My test kit reads 0.03 but I do not believe my phosphates are actually that low. For one I have a little maxima clam that requires low level phosphates for it's energy, second I have abundant macros that like to eat phosphates. The phosphates are bound up in various ways in my system, perhaps the "free" phosphates are testing at 0.03.

I have GFO in a reactor in addition to abundant macros. I feed very heavily and focus on feeding the corals more than the fish. Without GFO my SPS had begun to brown out, now I believe the system maintains a fine line between too much and too little.

grumpy-crab · Feb 1, 2013

metrokat said:

Is that dragons tongue macro in your DT?

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Dowtish · Feb 1, 2013

Warner Marine Ecobak in a reactor. Much less maintenance and much cheaper than GFO.

Acroman79 · Feb 2, 2013

When I first set up my tank I had a reactor for carbon, Gfo, bio pellets. I just filled them up and let it rock. Big mistake! It sucked the life out of my sps! I was told by several other reefers my water was to clean and my coral starved. Took the Gfo and bio pellet offline immediately. Now 3 yrs later I run my carbon reactor with 1 1/2 cup. And Gfo 11/2 cup as well on my 220 and all is well now. I am thinking of running bio pellets again as well.