Hanna Phosphate ULR Level .43

[exnisstech]

Yeah my other corals seem to be thriving. The zoas, Xenia and gsp are growing like weeds. Do these corals prefer a higher phosphate level?

Also, beautiful tank!!

They can but I also have them doing well in lower levels. I have 5 tanks and rather than worry about levels I just left them run and see where N and P end up. I like to think of it as a state of normalcy which is where a tank runs with no intervention on my part to reduce N and P. As long as most coral are doing fine I don't worry about one or two that may not be. I never make changes unless the majority of coral are not thriving. I typically ignore high levels of N and P but will address low levels that test at or near zero because i don't want coral starving and I don't want dinos which tend to occur at very low levels.

 

[UMALUM]

Yes, a gem, hippo and a baby Sohal

I'm thinking 2 cubes is fine with those 3 pigs.

 

[Quilecito]

Hello everyone!


I wanted to chime in on this conversation because the user’s situation with the Hanna ULR Checker reading 0.43 ppm sounds very familiar to something that happened to me.


My Hanna was also consistently reading MAX (or very high), which worried me a lot. However, when I compared it with a Salifert kit and, more importantly, with an ICP-OES test, both came back showing zero PO₄.


I found out that the cause of this huge discrepancy was a high silicate level in my water. The silicates were interfering with the chemistry of the Hanna ULR Checker and causing the phosphate readings to be falsely high.


My question to the OP (Tom Boyle) and those of you running your tanks at 0.4+:


• Have you tried to measure your silicates?


• If you’re only using the Hanna ULR, have you compared that high reading with another type of kit (like Salifert) or, ideally, an ICP test?