hydrogen peroxide raise phosphate level?

Randy Holmes-Farley

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I have been dosing H2O2 for 6 days now and my phosphate lvl has gone from .03 to .4

How much are you dosing? Seems huge.

maybe you are killing off organisms that were consuming it?
 

Jason Kelsey

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How much are you dosing? Seems huge.

maybe you are killing off organisms that were consuming it?
I read that the stabilization process in the making of hydrogen peroxide uses phosphoric acid or some form of phosphorus which would add to my Phosphate levels as others have mentioned and experienced after I made this initial post. The bottle doesn’t specify. It just says (stabilized). I’m going to pick up some GFO which I haven’t needed to use up to now but my thoughts are basically to take out the excess phosphate that I’m adding through out this h2o2 process. I’m 5 days in dosing 25ml 3 times a day in a 225 gallon total volume system. I figured 25 gallons of rock / sand.
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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I read that the stabilization process in the making of hydrogen peroxide uses phosphoric acid or some form of phosphorus which would add to my Phosphate levels as others have mentioned and experienced after I made this initial post. The bottle doesn’t specify. It just says (stabilized). I’m going to pick up some GFO which I haven’t needed to use up to now but my thoughts are basically to take out the excess phosphate that I’m adding through out this h2o2 process. I’m 5 days in dosing 25ml 3 times a day in a 225 gallon total volume system. I figured 25 gallons of rock / sand.

Yes, sometimes it is used, and sometimes not, but the amount seems high to me to be a stabilizer.


In 225 gallons (850 L), 0.4 ppm is 680 mg of phosphate. You only added 450 mL of peroxide, so it would need to contain at least 1500 mg/L phosphate. That sounds like a lot, but I’m not certain how much is typically used.
 

Jason Kelsey

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Yes, sometimes it is used, and sometimes not, but the amount seems high to me to be a stabilizer.


In 225 gallons (850 L), 0.4 ppm is 680 mg of phosphate. You only added 450 mL of peroxide, so it would need to contain at least 1500 mg/L phosphate. That sounds like a lot, but I’m not certain how much is typically used.
In the post I read from someone else having the same thing happen, their Phosphate increased by approximately the same amount. This leads me to believe that I’m on the right track. I did look around for anything that might have died and I couldn’t find anything. I’ve also been feeding pretty heavily in an attempt to build up my fish’s immune system but it’s adding to the Phosphate problem. After running gfo for a week while measuring phosphates daily I should have a better understanding of where I’m at and where I’m going
 

taricha

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