Elevated phosphate levels

[Surfside74]

Good evening,

I have 150 gallon tank with a 40 gallon breeder as a sump. I have 210 pounds of Tampa Bay live rock in there as well as 100 pounds of Tampa Bay live sand. I have a uv sterilizer and a reef octopus class 150 skimmer. I have approximately 15 fish in there, including tangs and angelfish. The tank is also a mixed reef with various LPS, SPS, and softies. I do a biweekly 25 gallon water change and I have a refugium going with some chaeto in it, which is slow growing. My phosphate levels as of today are .64. I have no nuisance algae growing in the tank and everything looks good. My tank has always run around .4-.6 PO4 and I have no adverse conditions that I can see and corals seems to be happy. I’ve been reefing for quite a while and I usually don’t chase numbers but I do wonder if maybe I should implement some GFO or something to lower the phosphate down just a little bit. What is everyone’s thoughts on this? Thank you in advance.

Rob

 

[Pod_01]

I have no nuisance algae growing in the tank and everything looks good. My tank has always run around .4-.6 PO4 and I have no adverse conditions that I can see and corals seems to be happy.

From the description it sounds like things are going well and while PO4 is bit elevated I would not be making any drastic changes.

From my personal experience decreasing PO4 caused me more issues vs. increasing PO4…

GFO will work but I would use small amounts, change it often. Also keep in mind that GFO will remove other things from the tank.

PO4 is bound to the rocks etc.. so as you remove some from the water column the rock will release (unbind) some as well to reach a new equilibrium. It can take a lot of time to see drop in the PO4…

Good luck,

 

[Surfside74]

I have no nuisance algae growing in the tank and everything looks good. My tank has always run around .4-.6 PO4 and I have no adverse conditions that I can see and corals seems to be happy.

From the description it sounds like things are going well and while PO4 is bit elevated I would not be making any drastic changes.

From my personal experience decreasing PO4 caused me more issues vs. increasing PO4…

GFO will work but I would use small amounts, change it often. Also keep in mind that GFO will remove other things from the tank.

PO4 is bound to the rocks etc.. so as you remove some from the water column the rock will release (unbind) some as well to reach a new equilibrium. It can take a lot of time to see drop in the PO4…

Good luck,

Thank you. I was kind of thinking the same thing as in if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. When I started the tank, my initial PO4 level was 0.1 when I put in all the live rock in. I do feed heavy but have to for the fish.

 

[Piotrek]

I'm in team refugium. You don't need a separate tank for it, even creating a small section in your sump can to the trick. You won't get a rapid drop after adding macroalgae as with GFO (I use GFO to manage unexpected spikes if they happen - I put a small bag for 3 days and repeat the measurement).

 

[exnisstech]

Good evening,

I have 150 gallon tank with a 40 gallon breeder as a sump. I have 210 pounds of Tampa Bay live rock in there as well as 100 pounds of Tampa Bay live sand. I have a uv sterilizer and a reef octopus class 150 skimmer. I have approximately 15 fish in there, including tangs and angelfish. The tank is also a mixed reef with various LPS, SPS, and softies. I do a biweekly 25 gallon water change and I have a refugium going with some chaeto in it, which is slow growing. My phosphate levels as of today are .64. I have no nuisance algae growing in the tank and everything looks good. My tank has always run around .4-.6 PO4 and I have no adverse conditions that I can see and corals seems to be happy. I’ve been reefing for quite a while and I usually don’t chase numbers but I do wonder if maybe I should implement some GFO or something to lower the phosphate down just a little bit. What is everyone’s thoughts on this? Thank you in advance.

Rob

Sounds very similar to my 330g heavily stocked with 9 tang most pretty large so I feed heavy. I run socks changed regularly, skimmer, cryptic fuge and an ATS that I harvest regularly. Water changes were 26g weekly (285g total volume). I recently switched to an AWC changing 20 liters a day. I added the AWC to make maintenance easier not to reduce nutrient but in the back of my mind I'm hoping it reduces NO3 a little since it creeping close to 60 ppm. PO4 has never been below 0.4 and gets high enough to cause my Hanna ulr to flash 0.9 so I have no idea how high they actually are. When PO4 reaches 0.9+ I'll run some GFO but I never try to get it lower than 0.4. my reasoning is the looks good with no algae so I just roll with it. Any tank I've ever had algae problems in has been low nutrient tanks. I don't buy into the though process that high nutrients drive algae but that's based on my personal experience not science

This is the tank. Last Sunday NO4 tested 56.7 and PO4 0.78

Accepting higher levels of N and P is easy for me. I moved out of this tank after 6 years. N was 30-40 and P never below 0.4

 

[BryanM]

Thank you. I was kind of thinking the same thing as in if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. When I started the tank, my initial PO4 level was 0.1 when I put in all the live rock in. I do feed heavy but have to for the fish.

There are plenty of successful "dirty" tanks out there.

Implementing GFO wouldn't be a bad idea, just know that its usually not a fast process and GFO is kinda expensive. It is what I do, and have been using for 6months+, but if I stop phos creeps right back up.

If your tank looks good and maintains .4-.6 I might just do nothing. My tank w/o GFO creeps up past .9 sadly.