Help with high nitrates and low phos

fishingchuck · Apr 7, 2025

Hello all. Was hoping to get some help getting my tanks going again. I have a 24gallon aio cube and a 150gal with a 40 gallon sump. Tanks have been running for about 4 years total. I had some life event and I neglected the tanks for about 1.5 years. Pretty much just topped them off with RO water and feed occasionally. Needless to say the algae was quite bad. About 3 months ago I began trying to get them back up to speed. I got water test at the lfs. Nitrates in bothe tanks were 150-160. I started doing water changes 2-3 x a week. Rip cleaned and daily dosing with Microbacter 7. Got some biopellet in the big tank. Nitrates started reading in the chart on my Hanna checker. Then I started with what I assume is Dino’s. I checked my phos. (Hanna low range) and it was 0. For the last month I’ve been dosing both tanks with Neo phos. Daily. I just can’t seem to get the phos up. I’ve been testing weekly and some times I can get a phos of .06 the next week it’s back at 0. I just got
New reagents. Today I added 2 cc of neo phos and 8 cc of tank water and tested to see if my Hanna checker was working. It read 2.50 which I believe is the max. So I know the checker is working. Currently all the livestock seem happy and healthy. Thanks in advance for any help.