Need advice on phosphates!

BaileyB

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So I’ve been struggling with extremely high phosphate in my tank 1.0 ppm+ my Hanna checker couldn’t read it it was so high... I bought some brightwell aquatics PO4 xport cubes to hopefully lower down the phosphates since I don’t have a GFO reactor nor have room for one in my tiny 10g sump.. over about 2-3 days of being in there I tested phosphate again and read .60 ppm, 4 days later I checked it and it’s now reading .62 ppm so it appears to have stopped going down, I already have the max recommended cubes, so don’t want to add anymore, but should I take them out and replace them with new ones? Would this maybe help bring the levels down more without adding too much of the blocks? They recommend 5 blocks for ever 100 gallons, I have 4 in my 80 gallon system. Also have refugium running with cheato but doesn’t seem to be growing too too fast, it’s growing, just slowly. So advice? My levels have been .90 ppm+ for about 2 months now and my corals are looking a lot less colorful and little less happy.. so looking to get those phosphates back down to near 0. Any advice is appreciated :)
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BaileyB

BaileyB

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What refugium light do you have?
Just a cheap 50W led grow light from amazon, my cheato has grown pretty decent in the past, enough to fill the fuge and pull some out to sell, but the past month had really slowed down, probably due to adding the blocks? But the levels are still high so the algea should have plenty of nutrients right?
 

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Maybe try chaetogro or similar if you aren't supplementing trace elements. Also, the cubes are not supposed to be replaced as they end up turning into typical biomedia when the gfo is exausted. Sometimes chaeto does a little better with flow if you don't have that.
 
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