P04 keeps increasing, HELP.

[lpsouth1978]

I'm hoping I can get some help from all of you. I am having trouble keeping my P04 down. It has been steadily climbing despite everything. The system was setup using dry rock that was previously used in my 200 and cycled for 2+ months in a brute, so I don't think the rocks are leaching it. I have barely any algae anywhere in the system, just enough that my Tomini stays happy and fat.

I feed pretty light, I would really like to be able to feed more. I will usually feed a small amount of LRS Fish Frenzy, Herbivore Frenzy, and/or Mysis 4-5 times a week. Approx = 1/2 cube of Mysis each day. I also feed a ~2" square if Nori 2-3x/week.

My skimmer runs 24/7. I use filter floss instead of socks and change it 2-3x/week. I also have a small bag of Chemipure Elite and a bag of Chemipure Blue in the filter floss tray. Lastly, I have been doing weekly 20% water changes, which I would like to be able to reduce to every other week or even monthly.

Params -

Temp - 78.3 (Inkbird & Seneye)
SG - 1.026 (Digital & standard refractometers)
pH - 8.0 - (Seneye)
Alk - 7.4 to 8.0 (Hannah dkH) I am working on getting the doser going for this
Ca - 440 (Red Sea Pro)
Mag - 1350 (Aqua Forest)
P04 - 0.18 (Hannah ULR Phosphate)
N03 - 12-15 (Nyos)

Please let me know how you would suggest I get, and keep, my P04 down. I am hoping to stay away from a reactor because I don't really have space for one. Any help is appreciated.

 

[MalteseOne]

although i dont know anything of the chemipure bags you use, you are in the same situation i am in currently.

the only information that you didn't give is what carbon dosing method you might be using and if you regularly add bacteria. I also totally understand the no-room-for-reactor feeling as my reactor sits off to side of tank.

I cannot claim to have solved my problem, but I think now that I didn't continuously add bacteria lost to the protein skimmer (24hr operation) and my carbon source was wrongly applied (reactor has too much in it). In fact my phosphates are slowly rising from 0.118 to 0.160 lately over 2 weeks. Im hoping the forum solve your problem and i can use the ideas as well.

 

[lapin]

I would use GFO in a reactor.
You could also start dosing carbon

 

[lpsouth1978]

although i dont know anything of the chemipure bags you use, you are in the same situation i am in currently.

the only information that you didn't give is what carbon dosing method you might be using and if you regularly add bacteria. I also totally understand the no-room-for-reactor feeling as my reactor sits off to side of tank.

I cannot claim to have solved my problem, but I think now that I didn't continuously add bacteria lost to the protein skimmer (24hr operation) and my carbon source was wrongly applied (reactor has too much in it). In fact my phosphates are slowly rising from 0.118 to 0.160 lately over 2 weeks. Im hoping the forum solve your problem and i can use the ideas as well.

I don't carbon dose at this point and have only attempted it once in the past. I also don't regularly add bacteria.

 

[lpsouth1978]

I would use GFO in a reactor.
You could also start dosing carbon

With little to NO room for a reactor, do you think Phosguard or gfo in a media bag would be sufficient?

 

[Duffer]

Gfo in a bag would be one way to go, carbon will help with nitrates but not so much with phosphates...the rock can still leach phosphates out...every time you feed or something else, the phosphates will be absorbed to your rock or sand..

I had luck with phosphate rx...it lowered by phosphates better than gfo

 

[lapin]

If you run a sock or something like that the GFO would work better than a bag. If you use a bag make sure water goes thru it if you can for best results.

 

[dvgyfresh]

It doesn’t seem very high to me, maybe because I keep mine at that mark lol , but yea GFO in a filter bag works wonders , I just put some In as my phosphate got to .3. I use a 1/4 cup for 50 gallons of water

 

[lpsouth1978]

Thank you all for the thoughts. Does anyone know if Selcon has a tendency to raise P04? I thought i would test that as a theory and stopped using Selcon for a few days. Tested P04 this morning and it is down to .06. I wonder if the Selcon was causing the P04 to increase faster than the Chemipure could remove it.

It doesn’t seem very high to me, maybe because I keep mine at that mark lol , but yea GFO in a filter bag works wonders , I just put some In as my phosphate got to .3. I use a 1/4 cup for 50 gallons of water

I wasn't too worried about the number itself, just the trend of increasing. I would like to get ahead of it before it becomes an issue. At .06, I think I will leave everything as it is and continue monitoring for now. I did order a bottle of Brightwell Phosphate-E, though it looks like it will go in the cabinet for "emergency use ONLY".

If you run a sock or something like that the GFO would work better than a bag. If you use a bag make sure water goes thru it if you can for best results.

Right now I have the little Chemipure bags in the filter floss tray. They are laid so that the water has to go through them to move through the sump. I have filter floss on top of the chemipure to trap larger particles first.

 

[Patryk1982]

frozen food you must rinse in water. Do you have sand in your aquarium?

 

[lpsouth1978]

frozen food you must rinse in water. Do you have sand in your aquarium?

Seems like LRS would be nearly impossible to rinse and still have anything to feed. Yes I have sand, I have 2 x Haddoni Carpet Nems and a Melanurus Wrasse.

 

[lpsouth1978]

Well, I snagged some SPS from the ASD sale yesterday, so I went ahead and ordered the BRS Dual canister Carbon/GFO reactor along with ROX 0.8 carbon and High Capacity GFO. I am going to have to house the reactor outside the stand, but I want my corals to be as healthy as possible.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

frozen food you must rinse in water. Do you have sand in your aquarium?

I don't agree. I think folks have been misled by a "simple test" (see below).

Rinsing has a possible downside, IMO, which is to potentially rinse away potassium (from the inside of cells broken open by freezing) that folks may later need to dose because they threw it away.

Aquarium Chemistry: Phosphate And Math: Yes You Need To Understand Both

Foods are by far the most important source of phosphate in most aquariums. In considering whether sources of phosphate other than foods are important, one must carefully look to the actual amounts involved to determine whether other sources are even worth trying to minimize.

reefs.com

Rinsing Foods and the Effect on Phosphate
Now that we have some information on the phosphate in foods, we can critically examine the concern that many aquarists have about foods, and specifically their rinsing of frozen foods before use. A typical test you see is someone taking a cube of fish food, thawing it, and putting it into a half cup of water. They then test that water for phosphate and find it “off the charts”. Let’s assume that means 1 ppm phosphate, which would give a very dark blue color in many phosphate tests. Bear in mind this is a thought problem, not an actual measured value, but it is typical of what people think the answer is.

Is that a lot of phosphate? Well, there are two ways to think of the answer.

The first way is as a portion of the total phosphate in that food. A half cup of water at 1 ppm (1 mg/L) phosphate contains a total of 0.12 mg of phosphate. A cube of Formula 2 contains about 11.2 mg of phosphate. So the hypothetical rinsing step has removed about 1 percent of the phosphate in that food. Not really worthwhile, in my opinion, but that decision is one every aquarist can make for themselves.

The second way to look at this rinsing is with respect to how much it reduces the boost to the aquarium phosphate concentration. Using the same calculation as above of 0.12 mg of phosphate, and adding that to 100 gallons total water volume, we find that phosphate that was rinsed away would have boosted the “in tank” phosphate concentration by 0.12 mg/379 L = 0.0003 ppm. That amount washed away does not seem significant with respect to the “in tank” target level of about 50-100 times that level (say, 0.015 to 0.03 ppm), nor does it seem significant relative to the total amount of phosphate actually added each day in foods (which is perhaps 50-1000 times as much, based on input rates from Table 4. Again, the conclusion I make is that rinsing is not really worthwhile, in my opinion.

 

[Patryk1982]

thank you for this enormous amount of knowledge. I will definitely use it. thank you