How quick should you remove Phosphate from your Aquarium? Safely :)

[crush665]

I have searched and searched online and I cant really find an answer to this question. Can I go full send on Phosphate removal with my new GFO reactor and 50% water changes? Will it hurt my current inhabitants? I bought two new digi frags and they dont look happy so I checked the Phosphate/Nitrate and was shocked!
I have .5 Phosphate and just installed my first GFO reactor, I currently put some PhosGuard in it until I get the shipment of ROWAphos.
100 Gallon system with all healthy soft coral (basketball size pipe organ, leathers, many variety of gargonian, many variety of mushrooms out of control etc) and two new not happy digi frags.. fish are 3 tangs, a melanarus wrasse, 3 clowns, a mandarin goby, a damsel, a huge coral banded shrimp, many hermit crabs and snails for CUC.
Current perimeters:
79C temp
8.16PH
0.5 Phosphate
2ppm Nitrate
8.89 Alk
434 Calcium
1341 Mag
R/O water only
Tank is well established and has been running for 6 years, I have no algae issues but have a few large tangs.

 

[Macbalacano]

If your tank is doing well with your current level of phosphate, why change?

If you are set on lowering it, I would do it slowly. If it were me, I'd aim for 0.05 per day change so as not to shock anything - especially if everything is already happy and healthy.

 

[exnisstech]

If your tank is doing well with your current level of phosphate, why change?

^This^ I wouldn't drop it if everything is doing well and it isn't climbing.

 

[crush665]

If your tank is doing well with your current level of phosphate, why change?

If you are set on lowering it, I would do it slowly. If it were me, I'd aim for 0.05 per day change so as not to shock anything - especially if everything is already happy and healthy.

I was hoping to start adding some SPS, but it seems the digi frags I recently bought are not happy.

 

[Macbalacano]

I was hoping to start adding some SPS, but it seems the digi frags I recently bought are not happy.

Ah that makes sense. Depending on the SPS you want to keep, that may be really difficult to do with your existing corals as they may have quite different requirements from a phosphate and nitrates perspective.

But what I said previously stands - I would do max 0.05 decrease per day and monitor how everything is doing. You can do a lot more damage by shocking all the corals currently in there if the phosphate drops very quickly.

 

[dwest]

Go really really slow.

The phosphate in the water is like the tip of the iceberg. Most of the phosphate will be bound to the rock and sand if you have any.

If you are using a reactor, I would start with a small fraction of the media that the instructions say.

Water changes won’t help with phosphates, as again most is bound to the rocks.

 

[BryanM]

.5 phos and no algae.... That seems wild to me. I wonder how that works.

Tank looks awesome, but yeah, adding SPS might be problematic. Also, generally you know the tank turnover for SPS is much higher generally than LPS. I've been contemplating this lately, but I think its fairly tough to support a mixed reef with flowie type LPS, and add SPS that require a ton more flow.