Highish phosphates

[LandLockedJones]

Hey there again, so my tank is roughly 9 months old. I’ve fallen off over a few months and finally am back in the swing of things and trying to get this tank right.

Things are actually going fairly well. But phosphates are a bit high. I’m wondering if this is contributing to my lack of growth and algae issues. Which I am managing a bit better than before.

System is 40gallon display and sump is eshopps 100 I think. kinda small, so space is limited.
Salinity: stable at 35ppt
Temp: 78.5deg F
Alk: 7.89dkh
Nitrates: 12.3ppm
Phosphate: 3.2ppm

So the reason I posted this in the equipment section, was to get some help determining what I should add too help bring this phosphate back to normal.

As far as I can tell, my options are
Skimmer- installed a bubble magus z6 but it was too big and just overflowed constantly. So I removed it.
Algae scrubber- more expensive than I’d like.
Refugium- unsure if it can replace a skimmer. Unless they can exist in the same compartment I can’t do both.
gfo- considering using it to begin lowering the numbers. But was hoping not to add the cost of constant replacement to the monthly bill ya know?

This being said, it doesn’t seem that .3ppm is terribly high and I’m not trying to do this in a day. More thinking of seeing it slowly decrease.

I will add some photos of the tank and sump so you can see what I’m working with space wise.

I was thinking the tunze 9004 skimmer, and a refugium if they can both run in the same compartment. But I haven’t seen anybody do them together. Skimmer typically gets its own chamber. I only have one other than the return chamber.

Would building an acrylic shield around the skimmer prevent algae from entering the skimmer?

Any shareable wisdom or critiques are welcome. Thanks for reading!

 

[LandLockedJones]

I think I’m going to order an icp test to confirm it isn’t my source water causing my issue. I do have a rodi setup but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that I am getting phosphates slipping through.

 

[jda]

I would run a skimmer all of the time. They do more than just remove proteins like gas exchange and also remove harsh metals that bind to organics.

My guess is that the ICP will not tell you anything. The po4 is coming from the fish food or there is a good amount bound in the rocks and sand from the past.

 

[Lavey29]

I agree, skimmer is best option. .3 phosphate is not bad at all. Place bag of phosguard in the sump and it will walk that number down slowly.

 

[LandLockedJones]

I have wanted to run the icp for a while now and I already ordered it. So I will come back and let everybody say I told you so haha.

I wasn’t terribly concerned about the .3 reading. But figured it was high so I would try to begin reducing it. If I can lower it at all without going too low, then I’ll call it a win.

But I did like the skimmer solution the best. I was just not sure it was the right move. The last one made quite a mess of my sump spitting saltwater everywhere.

I don’t usually get much out of the rocks when I blast them but I will try when I do my water change today and I admit that I have been skipping over the sand bed until I recently figured out how to throttle the line to keep from removing sand and only pull out detritus. So I will keep attacking it in small doses with each water change.

I guess I’ll be adding a skimmer, come on tunze sale for brs.

Thanks a lot for the responses, I’m hoping to see things start growing soon but I also just realized that these corals have actually only been in this tank about a month.

They were in a little quarantine system I broke down before going on vacation since it didn’t have an ato. These corals were my first mistakes haha. The fact any are even alive at this point shocks me. For I added them to my first 10 gallon only 6 weeks after setup…like a fool, my brain remembered 6 weeks before adding corals, not 6 months…and nothing replaces time when it comes to tank cycling. So they took a pretty heavy blow.

Though I’m hoping I finally have them moving in the right direction. This tank was running 9 months before I added anything. Nothing looks negatively impacted by the new system which I will say is improvement.

I’m not very good at this haha but I am trying to get it right with this tank and have a 120 build in the works.

 

[LandLockedJones]

Well I got my triton icp test results and it read .067 phosphates. I was using a Hanna checker but I probably messed up.

They stated that calcium, magnesium and iodine are all low. Which I expected.

More notable however, was the 5micrograms/L of iron detected. The only metal found to be present in the water. I did remember Jda’s comment about the skimmer removing harsh metals.

I have the skimmer but have not yet installed it. Came in yesterday while I was out of town.

The only equipment I am running currently are as follows:
-jeboa sow 3 wave maker-2 years old sat dry for about 3 months.
-jeboa mdp3500 return pump-9 months old
-2 brs heaters one is about 2 years old I think. Was installed to be a backup but I never plugged it in.

I see no obvious signs of rust on anything except my cabinets parts. It has pocket doors and I see a bit on the bearing runs and a few screws here and there. But nothing directly overhanging the sump or tank shows any signs of rust.

So I think it’s one of a few options:
A: internal rust inside the magnet casing for the old wave maker
B: pocket door rails are kicking rust particles up as I move the doors in and out.
C: old heater/newer heater rusting internally
D: contaminated source water
E: that rusty rod I found was a fractured piece of a larger rod and there’s another piece in the tank.

Anything else I should inspect? And will the skimmer alone be enough to remove the iron present or should I add some sort of carbon or something.

Oh and would it be okay to go magnet fishing in my tank?

Any thoughts or ideas are most welcome thanks for the time!

 

[LandLockedJones]

Correction:

There was also a reading of Aluminum present as well.

Range:0-60micrograms/L
Detected: 55micorgrams/L

 

[LandLockedJones]

Well, I decided to go magnet fishing, obviously can’t remove aluminum unless it had iron content. But I know that little rod was magnetic. So I dug through the sand, and ended up coming back with what seems to be black and white flakes of something.

I cannot tell what it is exactly, but some of the pieces when I rubbed them between my fingers felt solid, but when I applied pressure the black flakes would smear onto my fingers almost like you would expect of activated carbon.

The white pieces looked more like sand than anything but were fairly rigid and pointy when squeezed. Almost felt like broken ceramic bits.

I’ve never run carbon or gfo in this system. So not sure if that makes sense, but they were quite ferrous, eas my magnet was decently strong and would attract these things from a distance of about 3” pretty quickly (After being removed). Inside the tank they seem to be buried in the sand bed and had to come in direct contact with the magnet.

I unfortunately threw it away before getting a photo, though the particles are so small I’m not sure the would really show much.

I’ll try and pull some more out later to post it and see if anybody knows what it is. The black ones could be iron soaked carbon coming from my rodi I suppose. But I haven’t noticed anything in my mixing bins.