Mystery phosphates.

[Bugeater281]

I've been doing this a long time, and lately I've been having issues and I'm stumped on what's going on. So I could use some advice.

I lost quite a few euphilia a few months back, BJD hit me for the first time. My hanna tested my water at .90 flashing.... or even higher than that. My other display was like .1. I started running my saltwater through gfo, and could only get my phosphates down to .1, but that's still way better. After some waterchanges, i got the phosphates down to .5 and my issues disappeared. I notice the BJD is back, so i test again. Flashing .90 again. Test my fresh mixed salt water and its at .5. Test my tap, .7, but I'm not sure hanna can accurately test tap.

I replaced all filters less than 6 months ago, my di is exhausted, but still putting out 1 tds water. And thats recent, it was fine last batch of water I made.

I'm out of ideas, I have no idea if its coming from the salt, my tapwater, food, or if my hanna is bad. My test sample is darker than my .40 calibration vial. so the .9 seems accurate.

Also tested my nano that been am algae mess for months. It had a 50% waterchange 10 days ago. Phosphates are .56.

I have so many tanks i thought running gfo on the new saltwater was the best idea.

The situation just makes no sense to me, as I've been doing 40g waterchanges around once ever ten days with water at .1 phosphates. Yet my phosphates seem to be going up. My fresh mixed saltwater should not be a .5 phosphates. This makes me wonder if its my tap water/rodi system letting phosphates through. I run a sentiment filter, 2 carbon blocks, and then ro and di. I've been hooking up my mixing pump to a container and pumping fresh mixed saltwater through the gfo in 50g batches.

So I need advise on how to track down the issue, it could be my tap, my rodi system, my top off or many other things. Id like to nip the problem before i start school again next week. I just dont want to drop money on unneeded filters. I also prefer not to run gfo on all my tanks, as that makes stability harder to maintain. And if my fresh mixed saltwater in testing at .5, it seems the issues is not in the tanks, but that tanks are suffering from the issue.

 

[Uncle99]

Common to find phosphate in source city fed water as it helps to keep pipes clean. Mine is .1ppm to the tap.

If your water is delivered by pipe, check the stats, most cities indicate the amount of phosphate in your waters. See if that accounts for the high level. It may be a combination of source water and through foods.

If phosphate has been high in your system for a while, it will take some work to remove.

Easiest is Phosphate-x and a fine filter sock.
It can knock down phosphate quickly without the expense of GFO. I use GFO to maintain levels.

I dose every 24hours until I reach .2ppm and will hold flat (ish) for a week.

Then I use Fauna Marin Phosphate 0.04 and run in a canister for a month, this media does not bottom out phosphates so easy to deploy.

At this point, I’ve pulled a ton of phosphate from the water column and can hold a .1ppm level for about 6 months, then, she seems to creep upwards so I repeat the above.

 

[slingfox]

You may have phosphates absorbed in your rockscape and sand. As you bring the level in the water down the phosphates from the rock and sand leach out to a new equilibrium level. This means it can take a while to get things stable. What is the expiration date on your phosphate reagent.

Also, it is Black Friday soon so you may want to pick up an ICP test which tests both your RODI and tank water.