Cannot achieve traceable phosphate for love nor money

[forneyjohn19]

This exact situation happened to my tank. My phosphates were permanently zero for the first 6 months. I used Caribsea Liferock, 25 gallon tank. I began dosing neophos daily. The next six months phosphate hovered between .01 and .03 (as long as I dosed neophos. If I didn’t dose then the level dropped to 0.0.). Then one day my phosphates were sky high. Since then I haven’t had this problem, so my rock reached the saturation point.

In my opinion you have two different tasks. First and foremost, ensure the corals have access to phosphorous. I set my neophos on an automatic doser spread across 24 hours because my phosphate would be detectable after dosing neophos for about 24 hours, at which point it would be absorbed and undetectable. This way the corals always have some phosphate in the water column. You could also feed coral food heavily. That way the corals are eating phosphorus and are less reliant on pulling from the water column.

Second, you can focus on saturating the rock faster or just wait it out. Personally, I just focused on the corals and eventually the rock saturated. I also have a much smaller tank with way less rock. But, you could start throwing in massive amounts of fish food, coral food, and phosphates (such as neophos). I would just be careful and test phosphates often because once the rock saturates your phosphate levels will rise very quickly.

Best of luck!

 

[FernBluffReef]

Wow that is a lot of NeoPhos. I’m afraid to use that much.

My tank is also started with MacroRocks in November, so about three months old like yours. No measurable phosphates. I’ve gone as high as ~10ml a day with NeoPhos, been afraid to go more. Gotten Phosphate to register one day at a .02 and on occasion .01. Feeding occasional reefroids, but being careful at this stage with reefroids as I understand it will feed Dino’s also. Most of the time I’m at .00 phosphates.

I’m surprised your Nitrates are still at 50. Mine were around 50-75 after completion of the cycle but have slowing been inching down every week. Yesterday they were down to 2.6 and I have one new torch that bailed and one that doesn’t look well. The others are doing great. And this is with a tank full of fish.

So I’m now dosing both NeoPhos and NeoNitro. Also feeding a bit of roids and reef energy. Last night I restocked pods, so adding some phyto now which will consume some of the nutrients I’m adding but also help limit Dinos and feed the pods. E.g I have some Dinos but it’s not bad. Still have some diatoms. Coralines are starting to lay on fairly well.

Following to see what else I can learn.

Sounds like I just need to bite the bullet and add even more NeoPhos and Nitro

 

[Reefahholic]

1ml of that solution would raise my 200 gallon tank .01 Phosphate. After dosing my tank would use up that phosphate fast so through the course of 24 hrs on a doser I would dose 6ml of that solution per day spread out to slowly raise my phosphate to .1 phosphate after about a week.

That’s not too bad. I dosed 0.16 ppm daily for 1 year on my current tank. Never seen anything like it before.