Dosing phospates no results

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Hi, I did an ICP https://aquaforestlab.com/results/S4xkGUXn90705
PO4 seems to be present also if I don't measure them with hanna 736, how do you think is it possible?

Test error is one possibility.

A second is that ICP detect forms of phosphate not detected by the Hanna, including nearly all organic forms.

 

[marcogig]

A little update on the situation... I kept dosing po4+ in the same quantity as usual and after 2 months I start reading 0,01 on hanna checker.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Sounds reasonable. Higher dosing would have gotten you there faster. :)7

 

[Bear22]

Problem with dosing PO4 is that your Dino will love it. Dino is not because of low po4, rather low po4 is a consequence of dino as dino eats a lot of po4 and all po4 you now will dose is just going straight to the dinos (and other algue aswell). I have showed with some experiments how much po4 dino can consume, and also release when they are dying. I would in your situation forget po4 for a while and focus in manage the dino. Once dino is dead the po4 will raise by itself. And for dino its only one good way, and thats black out + UVC together for 3 days. After that black out, continue with UVC for another 2 days, then quit. Now dose some bacteria. PO4 will now be raised , quite much if you had a lot of dino. Just let it be, po4 will go back to a steady state level within a few days.

Problem with your suggestion is that most suggested remedies for dinos is to increase nutrients. Not saying that your suggestion is erroneous as it's my opinion that dino control (I don't believe nuisance dinos can be eradicated from an aquarium) is still the wild west out there when it comes to a definitive strategy to manage.

And old established tanks aren't a sure thing for the lack of dinos either. In a recent podcast Mike Paletta talked about an outbreak of dinos in his aquarium that's been up and running for many years.