LifeRock absorbed all Phosphates

[Andrews_aquarium]

So I've found out the hard way that Liferock has completely absorbed all phosphates in my tank causing a STN event to half my SPS and a Diatom bloom on the sanded.

The tank has been setup for about 1 year and I was struggling with keeping phosphates at decent levels for the first 4-5 months.I speculated that the liferock was absorbing it as I've read it a few places (but not a lot of info on it anywhjere) and talking with some SPS pros saying that dry rock would be absorbing it. About the 6th month is when I could tell things were getting good in the tank, levels were getting ideal and all corals have been thriving, great color and growth. So I figured the rock had finally stopped absorbing and completely cured.

Then about 10 days ago I put some spare LifeRock in the back chambers just to add more room for bacteria, pods, critters, etc. and then of course I went on a 5 day trip and came back to things looking off. Polyps on half the SPS not extended and I notice the Coraline algae was fading quickly.I test all nutrients and find Phosphate and NO3 complete at 0. I used two different test kits for both to confirm.

Now I have a small tank (20g) so adding a couple pounds of rock was actually a very significant Phosphate remover. I had no other chemical media running the whole time and skimmer was working fine but its not strong enough to pull nutrients like that. Plus I also have heavy fish load and feed at least 2-3 times a day. So the only change to the tank was the LifeRock.

I have since removed 70% of the new rock I added to the tank and have turned off skimmer and been feeding heavily, using reef roids and dosing a small amount of No3 and Phosphate to help get the rebound going. Things are looking slightly better now on day 2 of fixing the problem.

So just a heads up to people regarding Dry Rock and phosphate removal, curing the rock before hand is a must in my opinion.

 

[Spare time]

That may be because of the rock's dormant bacteria. Carib sea life rock is advertised as semi alive. I highly doubt the rock itself would rapidly suck in phosphate, but the rock's bacteria scavenging your phosphates wouldn't surprise me.

 

[Stigigemla]

I restarted my 420 gallon tank after cleaning all rock from Palythoa with Chlorine and NaOH.
In half a year I added about 4.5 mg/l to get 0.15 mg/l in the water. No water changes and sand so the phosphate is in the rock.

 

[nereefpat]

Are you measuring phosphate with an ULR hanna checker?

 

[92Miata]

That may be because of the rock's dormant bacteria. Carib sea life rock is advertised as semi alive. I highly doubt the rock itself would rapidly suck in phosphate, but the rock's bacteria scavenging your phosphates wouldn't surprise me.

Dry rock will absolutely absorb phosphate (assuming it hasn't already absorbed a lot).


OP - you just need to feed more for a bit. And stop changing things before you go on vacation.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

That may be because of the rock's dormant bacteria. Carib sea life rock is advertised as semi alive. I highly doubt the rock itself would rapidly suck in phosphate, but the rock's bacteria scavenging your phosphates wouldn't surprise me.

Well, it is absolutely true and very well established (both in the scientific literature and in hobby testing) that bare calcium carbonate readily absorbs phosphate, and it can be a truly staggering amount.

One pound of Florida aragonite rock was shown to bind 57 ppm of phosphate from 5 gallons of water, leaving only 0.16 ppm in the water.

Phosphate Absorption Rates in Aragonite

The more you add, the more will bind!

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Stigigemla]

Yes I am using Hanna Checker 736.

 

[nereefpat]

Yes I am using Hanna Checker 736.

lol. The OP, not you

 

[Cell]

There's a good lesson here to never make a change to your system, no matter how seemingly innocuous it is, prior to going on vacation or an extended period away from your tank. I go to greater extremes and typically only make changes at the start of the weekend or multiple days off to make sure I can be home to deal with any unforeseen and unwanted consequences.

 

[brandon429]

I dont agree with the causative here so that's a nice blanket plan for changes agreed. Stasis only before vacation, changes when at home

not saying its impossible Ops tank was po4 impacted, but am saying we can add liferock to any existing reef and not cause the events that happened for example in the skip cycling threads we run...there's a way for sure. not disagreeing phosphate was uptaken, but we have so many counter-work threads such has hundreds of totally new sandbed swaps on file / guaranteed to uptake po4 that I can't accept the causative here just yet.

we have jobs on file where liferock was added into existing systems to cure there.

we have done just thousands of jobs on file for reefs. whole reefs, big to small. sand swaps or peroxide burns or cyano fixes or skip cycles
and I bet a search will not show me asking for phosphate readings, in any of it. i could not care less about po4, we modulate light intensity though and that stops bleaching regardless of the cause: nutrients or temp irritants etc

stating that above to show level of insults we do to reefs without loss, just adding liferock won’t harm out work threads, that addition was coincidentally timed with some other event to cause the loss in my opinion

 

[brandon429]

Bio-spira works great

I just started a new tank a little over a week ago. I started with all dry rock and new sand. I added a bottle of Bio-Spira and put fish and coral the same day. Never saw any ammonia and fish and coral seem healthy.

www.reef2reef.com

an entire liferock reef curing out in the presence of corals and fish.

not just adding rocks, the whole system of rocks cured in the presence of a sensitive $250 anemone. that shows i wasnt being contrary in stating doubt in the causative, even if you did change phosphates a lot.

 

[Spare time]

Well, it is absolutely true and very well established (both in the scientific literature and in hobby testing) that bare calcium carbonate readily absorbs phosphate, and it can be a truly staggering amount.

One pound of Florida aragonite rock was shown to bind 57 ppm of phosphate from 5 gallons of water, leaving only 0.16 ppm in the water.

Phosphate Absorption Rates in Aragonite

The more you add, the more will bind!

www.reef2reef.com

Any clue why they do not make calcium carbonate based phosphate removers?

 

[jda]

Fresh calcium carbonate is a very effective phosphate binder. Very effective. It will never bind it all - it always leaves some in a type of "equilibrium." It will never take you to true zero... just like GFO, Al Oxide, dolomite or calcite.

Most quarried dry rock is full of terrestrial phosphate and has massive amounts already bound. The opposite of what happened here, apparently. I have no idea what is in life rock, but if one batch is full of terrestrial phosphate and the next is not, then it is possible to have staggeringly different results.

This is total science and needs to be understood to have a great reef tank, IMO. It is also important to note that the bind is reversible if the water level of phosphate drops lower than what it was before.

Lots of people who understand this use Calcium Carbonate as a phosphate remover. Remote sand beds, replacing sand (not for the reasons that are often touted on this board, but to export phosphate acutely) and even fresh gravel in a media reactor are all used. This is more of a "lack of understand thing" than a "lack of commercial product" thing.

Think of all of the people who have been adding P to their tanks not knowing that they are filling their rocks and sand up with it. Someday, if they ever want to get that it out, it could take buckets of GFO.

 

[Spare time]

Fresh calcium carbonate is a very effective phosphate binder. Very effective. It will never bind it all - it always leaves some in a type of "equilibrium." It will never take you to true zero... just like GFO, Al Oxide, dolomite or calcite.

Most quarried dry rock is full of terrestrial phosphate and has massive amounts already bound. The opposite of what happened here, apparently. I have no idea what is in life rock, but if one batch is full of terrestrial phosphate and the next is not, then it is possible to have staggeringly different results.

This is total science and needs to be understood to have a great reef tank, IMO. It is also important to note that the bind is reversible if the water level of phosphate drops lower than what it was before.

Lots of people who understand this use Calcium Carbonate as a phosphate remover. Remote sand beds, replacing sand (not for the reasons that are often touted on this board, but to export phosphate acutely) and even fresh gravel in a media reactor are all used. This is more of a "lack of understand thing" than a "lack of commercial product" thing.

Think of all of the people who have been adding P to their tanks not knowing that they are filling their rocks and sand up with it. Someday, if they ever want to get that it out, it could take buckets of GFO.

The rock of life rock is carib sea's standard dry base rock coated with the color and some dormant bacteria.

 

[Stigigemla]

One problem (in a way is it good too) is that the amount of phosphorus bound in calcium carbonate is dependent on pH. And I guess in a smaller amount on alkalinity and magnesium amount in the water. So if You add calcium carbonate it is just a guess how much phosphorus it will bind.
The good thing is that the equilibrium between phosphor in the water and the carbonate makes the phosphate level a bit more stable.

 

[brandon429]

can we agree that neither phosphate nor the addition of the rocks was the problem for the op

rtn and sandbed cyano not related to liferock. Ike’s thread wasn’t the only one we have it was the first one that came to mind

can post more to see if liferock stripping phosphate is causing issues for people who make entire reefs out of it


also on file: 5 yrs in a single thread of all new sandbeds being installed, no rtn

 

[jda]

This is reef2reef. Does it matter what actually happened, or is the OP going to believe what they want to? Some of us are just trying to explain how things work so that people can make up their own minds. After all, some people believe that even scores of pages on one single narrow topic make that true and dang the torpedos.

Agreeing that it was not the rock is just as reckless as agreeing that it was. Nobody knows.

While pH does matter, it is not a huge deal in our systems. Temperature and salinity matter a bit too. Surface area dominates above all other factors.

 

[Andrews_aquarium]

Are you measuring phosphate with an ULR hanna checker?

Yes

So for an update to the tank since the first post.

After removing 70% of the rock that I first put in I have been able to keep phosphates in for most of the day. But by the time I wake up in the mornings and test I'm between .01-.02. So just the small amount of rock I have left in the tank is still absorbing a large amount of phosphate. I have no media in the tank just a Skimmer so theres nothing else that could be pulling the PO4.

I have been feeding 2-3 times a day very heavily on my already overstocked tank, plus putting Oyterfeast and Phyto in everyday. When I test at the end of the day after an hour or 2 from my last feeding my phosphates are at .09-.18. Obvisouly thats all from recent feeds and everything being put in but my morning its all but gone.

Luckily all my corals that were affected have almost all recovered, some slower than others but color is coming back and seeing growth on some already. Funny thing is during this whole low nutrient spell all my Acros absolutely loved it, I have polyp extension like I hadn't seen on a few and have had amazing growth ever since this bottom out. So at the moment this seems to be working well as a PO4 remover and feeding heavy, I will have to keep a close eye on it all as to see if/when the rock stops absorbing so much.

Also wanted to add I sent out an ICP test to make sure all my test kits are spot on during testing this and PO4 came back 0.01836 mg/l and my Hanna checker was reading .02 so Id say it was pretty spot on and giving me confidence in my readings.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Any clue why they do not make calcium carbonate based phosphate removers?

It can be used that way.

The other materials (such as GFO and aluminum oxide) used are made for other industries and we just piggy back most of the time. I suspect surface area is an issue. Could fine calcium carbonate be a method? Sure. But it might be more expensive than other methods.

Calcium Carbonate Phosphate Binding Ion Exchange Filtration and Accelerated Denitrification Improve Public Health Standards and Combat Eutrophication in Aquatic Ecosystems

Calcium Carbonate Phosphate Binding Ion Exchange Filtration and Accelerated Denitrification Improve Public Health Standards and Combat Eutrophication in Aquatic Ecosystems

Cultural eutrophication, the process by which a lake becomes rich in dissolved nutrients as a result of point and nonpoint pollutant sources, is a major cause of the loss of natural lake ecosystems throughout the world. The process occurs naturally in ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

" In this study, calcium carbonate was found to be an excellent phosphate binder, reducing up to 70% of the phosphates in a given sample of water, and it posed relatively negligent ecological repercussions. "

 

[Spare time]

I love these conversations