Randy Holmes-Farley
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So dosing phosphate can raise the total alkalinity (just like silica), but won’t effect the amount of bicarbonate an’s carbonate?
It’s complicated. lol
But rest assured the effects are very small even with 1 ppm phosphate.
1 ppm phosphate will provide less than 0.03 dKH.
The reason it is complicated whether phosphate dosing impacts carbonate/bicarbonate has to do with the fact that one can dose PO4 - - - or HPO4- - or H2PO4 -. It then converts into the range of forms of phosphate present as a function of pH in seawater, and if the dosed forms do not match the final forms, some bicarbonate/carbonate may be added or removed.