Has anyone tested their plain tap water and found concerning phosphate levels?

[KingLucy1997]

So I have been preparing this pico tank for some Zoas and Xenia’s and was told by the aquarium store guy to focus testing on phosphate. I purchased a Hanna’s ultra low range phosphates detector and found my tanks phosphate level would drop despite any number of water changes. So I tested my plain tap water and found one phosphate level of 0.68 ppm and another above 1ppm. I live in Minneapolis and did some research to find that the city puts phosphates into their 100 miles of cast iron pipes to prevent corrosion or leaching of heavy metals like lead into the drinking supply. But I also found that only below 0.05 ppm of phosphates is considered safe for drinking water. Should I be concerned? I’ve been drinking this water for most of my life. This explains why I had such trouble keeping things alive in my previous tanks. I solved the problem for now by using some bottled reverse osmosis water that has 0.04 ppm phosphates, and I was able to get the aquarium down to that 0.04 ppm level after many water changes. Will not be using my tap water for aquariums again and am considering switching to bottled to drink or getting some type of filter. Will any type of water filter for drinking remove phosphates?

 

[Tired]

Phosphate of 1ppm is fine for a lot of corals, and most other animals. It can brown some corals out a bit and may make SPS skeletons brittle, is all. I don't know if it's fine for humans to drink, I don't grow humans in my reef tank.

You shouldn't be using tap water for your reef tank. Phosphate is the least of your concerns. Contaminants that are fine for you to drink, but not fine for your corals to be in, are the main concern. Use distilled or RODI water- which, by the way, should come with 0ppm phosphates. You can get a home RODI unit to make your own RODI water, which is probably the best route, as you can then make sure the filters are always clean.

You never want your aquarium to hit 0 phosphates, or photosynthetic organisms will suffer and slowly start to die. The minimum you want is 0.03. For most soft corals, phosphate anywhere below 2ppm should be fine.

Xenia and zoas love nutrients. If you've had them die in the past, probably the tank was too clean.

 

[KingLucy1997]

Phosphate of 1ppm is fine for a lot of corals, and most other animals. It can brown some corals out a bit and may make SPS skeletons brittle, is all. I don't know if it's fine for humans to drink, I don't grow humans in my reef tank.

You shouldn't be using tap water for your reef tank. Phosphate is the least of your concerns. Contaminants that are fine for you to drink, but not fine for your corals to be in, are the main concern. Use distilled or RODI water- which, by the way, should come with 0ppm phosphates. You can get a home RODI unit to make your own RODI water, which is probably the best route, as you can then make sure the filters are always clean.

You never want your aquarium to hit 0 phosphates, or photosynthetic organisms will suffer and slowly start to die. The minimum you want is 0.03. For most soft corals, phosphate anywhere below 2ppm should be fine.

Xenia and zoas love nutrients. If you've had them die in the past, probably the tank was too clean.

The reverse osmosis water came from the Minneapolis municipal supply, which might explain the presence of phosphate. The problems I had in the past were mainly shrimp, which I have heard are quite sensitive to water parameters. Do you have any specific RO/DI systems for recommendation, and would I have to integrate the system into my plumbing? I am renting so I can’t alter any of the piping.

 

[Tired]

The RODI unit I have is called an RO Buddie. It screws onto the end of your faucet and can be easily removed. Works fine for me. There are other, larger units with a similar method of attachment, but I can't really recommend them one way or another, because I haven't tried them. You just have to make sure to replace the cartridges regularly.

Shrimp are sensitive to water parameters, sure, but so are corals. I don't think phosphate killed the shrimp. It's possible your tap water has copper in it from copper pipes, or there's loads of other things that could do it.

 

[KingLucy1997]

The RODI unit I have is called an RO Buddie. It screws onto the end of your faucet and can be easily removed. Works fine for me. There are other, larger units with a similar method of attachment, but I can't really recommend them one way or another, because I haven't tried them. You just have to make sure to replace the cartridges regularly.

Shrimp are sensitive to water parameters, sure, but so are corals. I don't think phosphate killed the shrimp. It's possible your tap water has copper in it from copper pipes, or there's loads of other things that could do it.

It also could have been the Fasciola hepatica that slaughtered everything else in my old tanks too..

 

[Acros]

Our planted tank was regularly reading phosphates of 2 ppm. Turns out our tap water reads 1 ppm phosphate.

 

[Tired]

It also could have been the Fasciola hepatica that slaughtered everything else in my old tanks too..

Sorry, are you sure you've got the right Latin name there? I had to look that up, and it sounds like that's a parasite that infects mammals and freshwater snails. A quick search isn't turning up anything about it infecting shrimp, corals, or any saltwater invertebrates at all.

Fasciola hepatica - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[KingLucy1997]

Sorry, are you sure you've got the right Latin name there? I had to look that up, and it sounds like that's a parasite that infects mammals and freshwater snails. A quick search isn't turning up anything about it infecting shrimp, corals, or any saltwater invertebrates at all.

Fasciola hepatica - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That is what a scientist told me on research gate after describing the bizarre parasite that wiped out two of my tanks filled with snails and hermit crabs. If you look up just the genus there is another possible specific species she (the scientist) said it could be (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciola_gigantica). She said both of these flatworms had been observed in personal marine aquariums. It has only been published to infect Gastropoda (snails) but nothing I could find on it being observed infecting hermit snails. If you look at these two species life cycles, it’s not to far off from what I observed. Both Fasciola species have multiple morphs that infect multiple intermediary species, and I observed multiple morphs of these bizarre things. Specifically I saw free swimming flukes, weird black flatworm (body has a sort of liquid appearance) with a head and a stalk with a ‘head’ with two large blank white eye spots. I know these two the best because I literally did surgery on my last surviving hermit crab in my second tank that got the exact same parasite infection as my first reef tank with hermits/snails as well. I have only had these two reef tanks in my life (the first was 5 gallon, the second was 10 gallon). The hermit crabs and snails in both tanks were infected with the flatworm, but corals were fine in both. Both tanks also had a good chunk of the coral/macroalgae/hermit crabs/snails sourced from Florida. After looking into Fasciola species range I found that frequency of infections (in agriculture, human, pet, livestock, any animal that would be treated medically by a human) are increasing in the south east of the US which correlates with increasing average temperatures and higher water levels. These climate change factors would benefit Fasciola and allow it to spread farther inland. Although both the 5 gallon tank and 10 gallon tank had Florida sourced stuff, I used different companies based in Florida for both these tanks. One of these companies temporarily closed around the time of my tank infections. They denied ever encountering what I am describing. I learned the most about whatever flatworm species this is by trying to physically remove the flatworm from my last surviving hermit crab. When removing the hermit from the tank, a bunch of fluke like animals appeared to be ‘dive bombing’ the hermit. The hermit appeared to be irritated by these flukes and was attempting to grab at them but it wasn’t nearly coordinated or fast enough to stop the flukes from attaching under its shell. I picked up the hermit with a net and placed it into a transfer bucket. What appeared to be a small normal piece of wood or bark on the bottom of the bucket suddenly moved incredibly fast towards the hermit and attached itself to the hermit with some sort of proboscis like appendage. The hermit moved surprisingly fast to try and get away but not fast enough. I managed to get the hermit out into a small pool where I could operate. There were several dissolved holes in the shell, one of which the stalk and head morph I described earlier was sticking out of one of them. I desperately tried to remove the stalk head thing, and managed to do so by getting the hermit out of its shell. Upon leaving its shell I noticed the hermit had some flukes attached to its body as well which I removed with a tweezers. The only thing I couldn’t removed was what looked like a puncture wound or white raised dot on the very rear tip of the hermits abdomen. The hermit seemed most irritated at this one abdomen wound, but after I got all the other parasites off of it the hermit was acting significantly less irritated. I placed the hermit into a small dish of saltwater and calcium powder for a day or 2 to heal. I then prepared a 2.5 gallon, aragonite substrate tank with some green stringy macroalgae and and some red seaweed food. I placed the hermit, which appeared no longer irritated and mobile despite the lack of shell, gently into this tank with some shells. I then left for a couple hours. I came back and the hermit crab’s abdomen had exploded open and there were pink liquidy creatures with similar eye spots all over the tank, some were burrowing under the substrate, others were sticking out attached to the pieces of red seaweed using it like a raft, slowly moving towards the hermit’s carcass and sort of nibbling at it. Over the next few days, the pink blobs shifted color and shape to blend into the seaweed, substrate, and macroalgae. One of these flatworms attached to the seaweed near the hermit carcass developed a clear proboscis like structure from the seaweed flatworm to the hermit carcass. Started the process to get these things ID’ed by describing the above on research gate, a science forum with lots of active professional scientists/professors and managed to get into contact with some professors at the University of Florida who got me in contact with the head parasitologist in Florida who said he would ID my species if I paid him hundreds of dollars, purchased and utilize specific fixing materials, paid for shipping, and even then there was a possibility that I would need to pay him hundreds of more dollars for follow up tests and no garuntee that he would be able to conclusively ID the parasite. So I said no. I melted everything with muriatic acid. To be fair the parasites didn’t infect the shrimp, but the shrimps died within 10 minutes of being free in the tank despite my attempt to acclimate them just before the infection bloomed in the 10 gallon tank. These shrimp were from Florida. They were peppermint shrimp I think. I knew the snails were infected in the salt water tanks because there appeared to be holes dissolving in the shells of the snails kind of like the hermit crabs snail shells except there seemed to be way more little black liquidy creatures trying to claw their way out of the shells of the actual snails vs the snail shells used by the hermits.
Finally, the parasites managed to cross contaminate the fresh water tank containing pond and Ramshorn snails beneath my salt water tank. I knew the freshwater tank was infected when holes began developing in the freshwater snails and the shells of the snails began to move independently from the snails body as if there was something inside the shell trying to break out. There also appeared to be cysts on the macroalgae/plants in all infected tanks. This is consistent with Fasciola’s life cycle because hepatica specifically can infect human’s bile ducts if consumed, which occurs in its native range where people eat water plants sometimes without cooking properly. Another thing supporting this theory is that Fasciola go through multiple intermediary hosts and forms, one of which are freshwater snails. If you think about it, hermit crabs are pretty similar to snails because they both use the same shell covering a soft body. If these flatworms can survive the human stomach and live in our liver’s bile ducts, I’d assume they could survive salt water fine, especially if this is some kind of un-described variant of the Fasciola species. This genus isn’t the most area of popular scientific study, and therefore it’s possible that there hasn’t been enough funding for parasitology studies to discover every species of Fasciola or whatever parasite I had was. It’s also possible that the parasite I had was a new species of flatworm that adapted to different intermediary species and salt water. Sorry this is so long, I can’t really explain what happened succinctly. I know this is a hard to believe story but there’s no way I could make something like this up. So far I haven’t met anyone who had the same experience as me, just the scientist who said that there were similar reports to what I described here that occurred elsewhere.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

So I have been preparing this pico tank for some Zoas and Xenia’s and was told by the aquarium store guy to focus testing on phosphate. I purchased a Hanna’s ultra low range phosphates detector and found my tanks phosphate level would drop despite any number of water changes. So I tested my plain tap water and found one phosphate level of 0.68 ppm and another above 1ppm. I live in Minneapolis and did some research to find that the city puts phosphates into their 100 miles of cast iron pipes to prevent corrosion or leaching of heavy metals like lead into the drinking supply. But I also found that only below 0.05 ppm of phosphates is considered safe for drinking water. Should I be concerned? I’ve been drinking this water for most of my life. This explains why I had such trouble keeping things alive in my previous tanks. I solved the problem for now by using some bottled reverse osmosis water that has 0.04 ppm phosphates, and I was able to get the aquarium down to that 0.04 ppm level after many water changes. Will not be using my tap water for aquariums again and am considering switching to bottled to drink or getting some type of filter. Will any type of water filter for drinking remove phosphates?

In my tap water article, I showed that some tap water systems have up to 5 ppm phosphate. RO/DI removes it. SO can other methods, but RO/DI removes other things that you'd want removed (such as copper).

Water changes are not a good way to reduce phosphate as even a 100% change may only remove a small portion as much of it may be temporarily stuck to rock and sand surfaces.

 

[KingLucy1997]

In my tap water article, I showed that some tap water systems have up to 5 ppm phosphate. RO/DI removes it. SO can other methods, but RO/DI removes other things that you'd want removed (such as copper).

Water changes are not a good way to reduce phosphate as even a 100% change may only remove a small portion as much of it may be temporarily stuck to rock and sand surfaces.

Well somehow I managed to drop phosphates from 0.68ppm to 0.04 ppm with like 7 water changes. I just made the tank a couple days ago and all it has in it is some live rock and macroalgae so that is probably why this strategy worked

 

[KingLucy1997]

In my tap water article, I showed that some tap water systems have up to 5 ppm phosphate. RO/DI removes it. SO can other methods, but RO/DI removes other things that you'd want removed (such as copper).

Water changes are not a good way to reduce phosphate as even a 100% change may only remove a small portion as much of it may be temporarily stuck to rock and sand surfaces.

How am I supposed to remove phosphate if not by water changes?

 

[Tired]

If you have nitrate as well, phosphate will be removed by photosynthetic organisms using it up. There are phosphate-removing filter medias you can use, which have the risk of dropping the levels too low if not used carefully. But, again, it's not a big concern for softies. Just leave it alone, unless the corals are in distress.

I'm having a hard time reading your post about the flatworms. You need some paragraph breaks in there for readability, otherwise the eye kinda just slides over the whole thing.

I can tell you that shrimp dying within 10 minutes of addition is likely either an acclimation issue or a poisoning issue. No parasite moves that fast.

It does sound like you had some weird parasite going on. I'd think it would be more accurate to refer to it as possibly being Fasciola species of some sort, rather than definitively pinning it to one species that's freshwater only.

 

[threebuoys]

I've used a GFO reactor to reduce phosphates from a high level.
I found that the RO/DI water from my system had 1 ppm phosphate.
At Randy's suggestion, I have now added a second DI canister to my system to further remove the phosphate before I use the RO/DI water.

 

[MaxTremors]

How am I supposed to remove phosphate if not by water changes?

Read up on nutrient export in reef tanks. There are a few ways, water changes being one of them (though as mentioned not the most effective), the other ways are through growing macroalgae or an algae scrubber, through carbon dosing (though this is more effective for reducing nitrates), and protein skimming (this removed organic waste before it breaks down into phosphates/nitrates. Your corals and any algae will also consume phosphates, so the idea is to find a balance where your nutrient export roughly matches your nutrient import (usually from feeding your tank’s inhabitants), while maintaining a low level of nutrients so that your corals and desirable algae aren’t aren’t starved.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

How am I supposed to remove phosphate if not by water changes?

GFO, lanthanum, growing macroalgae, etc.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Well somehow I managed to drop phosphates from 0.68ppm to 0.04 ppm with like 7 water changes. I just made the tank a couple days ago and all it has in it is some live rock and macroalgae so that is probably why this strategy worked

Just beware it may rise again as phosphate desorbs from rock and sand. There can be the equivalent of TENS of ppm of phosphate on rock.

 

[KingLucy1997]

If you have nitrate as well, phosphate will be removed by photosynthetic organisms using it up. There are phosphate-removing filter medias you can use, which have the risk of dropping the levels too low if not used carefully. But, again, it's not a big concern for softies. Just leave it alone, unless the corals are in distress.

I'm having a hard time reading your post about the flatworms. You need some paragraph breaks in there for readability, otherwise the eye kinda just slides over the whole thing.

I can tell you that shrimp dying within 10 minutes of addition is likely either an acclimation issue or a poisoning issue. No parasite moves that fast.

It does sound like you had some weird parasite going on. I'd think it would be more accurate to refer to it as possibly being Fasciola species of some sort, rather than definitively pinning it to one species that's freshwater only.

Apologies for the readability it was really late at night. I can edit it into paragraphs. I agree that it’s only possibly a Fasciola species because there was no official confirmation. But that is my theory based on an PHD scientist in the Indian Counsel of Medical Research who studies Fasciola gigantica larvae on the Research Gate forum.
To reiterate I don’t think these parasites killed the shrimp, they just seemed to die in less than an hour after being added to the tank and didn’t have any of the symptoms of this parasite’s infection like the hermits and snails. I agree that the shrimp died from some sort of poisoning, water parameter instability, or something else like that.
The evidence that supports these parasites possibly being Fasciola sp. is because they were able to go from my saltwater 5G tank to my freshwater tank beneath it, likely hitch hiking on some Marino moss that I had transplanted to the freshwater tank from the saltwater tank after being in the saltwater tank for some time (weeks) because I mistakenly thought moss balls could live in salt water. But of course I have absolutely no idea what these things were.

 

[KingLucy1997]

GFO, lanthanum, growing macroalgae, etc.

I do have some red branching macroalgae in there! The aquarium store guy basically just told me to follow the phosphate level and if it was high (over 0.1ppm) to do a water change. Was the aquarium guys rationale incorrect about water testing and water changes for my particular tank?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I do have some red branching macroalgae in there! The aquarium store guy basically just told me to follow the phosphate level and if it was high (over 0.1ppm) to do a water change. Was the aquarium guys rationale incorrect about water testing and water changes for my particular tank?

Well, he's not giving the best advice, but it isn't "wrong". The problem is, a 100% water change will not remove all (often not even most) of the phosphate in the water.

 

[KingLucy1997]

If you have nitrate as well, phosphate will be removed by photosynthetic organisms using it up. There are phosphate-removing filter medias you can use, which have the risk of dropping the levels too low if not used carefully. But, again, it's not a big concern for softies. Just leave it alone, unless the corals are in distress.

I'm having a hard time reading your post about the flatworms. You need some paragraph breaks in there for readability, otherwise the eye kinda just slides over the whole thing.

I can tell you that shrimp dying within 10 minutes of addition is likely either an acclimation issue or a poisoning issue. No parasite moves that fast.

It does sound like you had some weird parasite going on. I'd think it would be more accurate to refer to it as possibly being Fasciola species of some sort, rather than definitively pinning it to one species that's freshwater only.

If you have the time/interest to read here is a version of the parasite post with paragraphs:

This is the possible species ID from an Indian Council of Medical Research Research assistant Ph.D scientist told me on research gate after describing the bizarre parasite that wiped out two of my tanks filled with snails and hermit crabs. If you look up just the genus there is another possible specific species she (the scientist) said it could be (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciola_gigantica). She said both of these flatworms had been observed in personal marine aquariums. It has only been published to infect Gastropoda (snails) but nothing I could find on it being observed infecting hermit

If you look at these two species life cycles, it’s not to far off from what I observed. Both Fasciola species have multiple morphs that infect multiple intermediary species, and I observed multiple morphs of these bizarre things.

Specifically I saw free swimming flukes, weird black flatworm (body has a sort of liquid appearance) with a head and a stalk with a ‘head’ with two large blank white eye spots. I know these two the best because I literally did surgery on my last surviving hermit crab in my second tank that got the exact same parasite infection as my first reef tank with hermits/snails as well. I have only had these two reef tanks in my life (the first was 5 gallon, the second was 10 gallon).

The hermit crabs and snails in both tanks were infected with the flatworm, but corals were fine in both. Both tanks also had a good chunk of the coral/macroalgae/hermit crabs/snails sourced from Florida.


After looking into Fasciola species range I found that frequency of infections (in agriculture, human, pet, livestock, any animal that would be treated medically by a human) are increasing in the south east of the US which correlates with increasing average temperatures and higher water levels. These climate change factors would benefit Fasciola and allow it to spread farther inland.

Although both the 5 gallon tank and 10 gallon tank had Florida sourced stuff, I used different companies based in Florida for both these tanks. One of these companies temporarily closed around the time of my tank infections. They denied ever encountering what I am describing.

I learned the most about whatever flatworm species this is by trying to physically remove the flatworm from my last surviving hermit crab. When removing the hermit from the tank, a bunch of fluke like animals appeared to be ‘dive bombing’ the hermit. The hermit appeared to be irritated by these flukes and was attempting to grab at them but it wasn’t nearly coordinated or fast enough to stop the flukes from attaching under its shell. I picked up the hermit with a net and placed it into a transfer bucket. What appeared to be a small normal piece of wood or bark on the bottom of the bucket suddenly moved incredibly fast towards the hermit and attached itself to the hermit with some sort of proboscis like appendage. The hermit moved surprisingly fast to try and get away but not fast enough.

I managed to get the hermit out into a small pool where I could operate. There were several dissolved holes in the shell, one of which the stalk and head morph I described earlier was sticking out of one of them. I desperately tried to remove the stalk head thing, and managed to do so by getting the hermit out of its shell. Upon leaving its shell I noticed the hermit had some flukes attached to its body as well which I removed with a tweezers. The only thing I couldn’t removed was what looked like a puncture wound or white raised dot on the very rear tip of the hermits abdomen. The hermit seemed most irritated at this one abdomen wound, but after I got all the other parasites off of it the hermit was acting significantly less irritated.

I placed the hermit into a small dish of saltwater and calcium powder for a day or 2 to heal. I then prepared a 2.5 gallon, aragonite substrate tank with some green stringy macroalgae and and some red seaweed food. I placed the hermit, which appeared no longer irritated and mobile despite the lack of shell, gently into this tank with some shells. I then left for a couple hours.

I came back and the hermit crab’s abdomen had exploded open and there were pink liquidy creatures with similar eye spots all over the tank, some were burrowing under the substrate, others were sticking out attached to the pieces of red seaweed using it like a raft, slowly moving towards the hermit’s carcass and sort of nibbling at it.

Over the next few days, the pink blobs shifted color and shape to blend into the seaweed, substrate, and macroalgae. One of these flatworms attached to the seaweed near the hermit carcass developed a clear proboscis like structure from the seaweed flatworm to the hermit carcass.

I Started the process to get these things ID’ed by describing the above on research gate, a science forum with lots of active professional scientists/professors and managed to get into contact with some professors at the University of Florida who got me in contact with the head parasitologist in Florida who said he would ID my species if I paid him hundreds of dollars, purchased and utilize specific fixing materials, paid for shipping, and even then there was a possibility that I would need to pay him hundreds of more dollars for follow up tests and no garuntee that he would be able to conclusively ID the parasite. So I said no.

I melted everything with muriatic acid. To be fair the parasites didn’t infect the shrimp, but the shrimps died within 10 minutes of being free in the tank despite my attempt to acclimate them just before the infection bloomed in the 10 gallon tank. These shrimp were from Florida. They were peppermint shrimp I think.

I knew the snails were infected in the salt water tanks because there appeared to be holes dissolving in the shells of the snails kind of like the hermit crabs snail shells except there seemed to be way more little black liquidy creatures trying to claw their way out of the shells of the actual snails vs the snail shells used by the hermits.

Finally, the parasites managed to cross contaminate the fresh water tank containing pond and Ramshorn snails beneath my salt water tank. I knew the freshwater tank was infected when holes began developing in the freshwater snails and the shells of the snails began to move independently from the snails body as if there was something inside the shell trying to break out. There also appeared to be cysts on the macroalgae/plants in all infected tanks.

This is consistent with Fasciola’s life cycle because hepatica specifically can infect human’s bile ducts if consumed, which occurs in its native range where people eat water plants sometimes without cooking properly.

Another thing supporting this theory is that Fasciola go through multiple intermediary hosts and forms, one of which are freshwater snails. If you think about it, hermit crabs are pretty similar to snails because they both use the same shell covering a soft body. If these flatworms can survive the human stomach and live in our liver’s bile ducts, I’d assume they could survive salt water fine, especially if this is some kind of un-described variant of the Fasciola species.

This genus isn’t the most area of popular scientific study, and therefore it’s possible that there hasn’t been enough funding for parasitology studies to discover every species of Fasciola or whatever parasite I had was. It’s also possible that the parasite I had was a new species of flatworm that adapted to different intermediary species and salt water.

Sorry this is so long, I can’t really explain what happened succinctly. I hope this is more readable now with paragraphs. I know this is a hard to believe story but there’s no way I could make something like this up. So far I haven’t met anyone who had the same experience as me, just the scientist who said that there were similar reports to what I described here that occurred elsewhere.