Perseverance Reef

[Fishy888]

Here’s the RO/DI bin

here’s the salty bin.

 

[fishguy242]

Nice to have a controlled experiment ,good thinking...

 

[Fishy888]

The salty side has a circulation pump now. The water is already brown but that’s good. I’ll be changing the water daily anyway.

So far the RO/DI side is clear as a bell. Of course dissolved phosphates are clear. I still expect it to take 2 weeks or more. Also, whatever the outcome of my experiment ends up being I’ll stick to curing rock in saltwater.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

The salty side has a circulation pump now. The water is already brown but that’s good. I’ll be changing the water daily anyway.

So far the RO/DI side is clear as a bell.

The ro water will stink to high heaven in a day or two.

 

[Fishy888]

The ro water will stink to high heaven in a day or two.

Hopefully I can figure out how to mitigate that but, sadly, you’re probably right. No matter how it turns out I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll stick to saltwater no matter how dead the rock seems.

 

[tbrown]

Hopefully I can figure out how to mitigate that but, sadly, you’re probably right.

Lots of air and a skimmer will help some. All the die off will stink as it rots.

 

[Fishy888]

Lots of air and a skimmer will help some. All the die off will stink as it rots.

I expect that on the salt side also but it will definitely begin on the RO/DI side first.

 

[Fishy888]

Good news. The water is clear in both bins and there’s very little sediment in the bottom of the bin. Bad news, phosphorus is over the limit still. Of course that’s to be expected since the rock’s been in that system for years it’s got years worth of phosphates and nitrates in it.

Since I’m keeping the salty side, well, salty I’m thinking about adding a couple of smaller pieces from the freshwater bin and adding them to the salty bin. Then any good bacteria that might have survived can colonize those rocks. Once I can get a reading below 200 ppb of phosphorus I’m going to trap some bristle worms and release them into the bin to help remove anything that didn’t get dislodged by the curing process. I’ll also add a rock from my sump that has plenty of pods.

@Lost in the Sauce, @tbrown3589, and @fishguy242 do you think it would be stupid of me to use some LaCl at this point to drop the phosphate levels in the saltwater bin? My thinking is that if I do I could get twice as much phosphate out of the rock each day. Phosphates in the rock and in the water column always seek equilibrium. The LaCl only reduces what’s in the water column but once that phosphate is gone the rock and water will seek equilibrium again and phosphates will be lower. But it might be a stupid thing so please let me know what you think

 

[Fishy888]

I’m going to start the LaCl dosing in the saltwater bin shortly. I’ll dose enough to drop phosphates by 0.7 ppm. Since there’s no life in there except maybe bacteria and the rock is so high in phosphates that I’m going to do one dose of LaCl in the morning and a water change at night. It would be the equivalent of two water changes a day phosphate wise. I need to find out if I can even use LaCl on the freshwater side. I doubt it but hopefully so.

Edit:
Phosphat-e is decidedly marine only. I figured as much but I thought I’d check.

 

[crusso1993]

Good news. The water is clear in both bins and there’s very little sediment in the bottom of the bin. Bad news, phosphorus is over the limit still. Of course that’s to be expected since the rock’s been in that system for years it’s got years worth of phosphates and nitrates in it.

Since I’m keeping the salty side, well, salty I’m thinking about adding a couple of smaller pieces from the freshwater bin and adding them to the salty bin. Then any good bacteria that might have survived can colonize those rocks. Once I can get a reading below 200 ppb of phosphorus I’m going to trap some bristle worms and release them into the bin to help remove anything that didn’t get dislodged by the curing process. I’ll also add a rock from my sump that has plenty of pods.

@Lost in the Sauce, @tbrown3589, and @fishguy242 do you think it would be stupid of me to use some LaCl at this point to drop the phosphate levels in the saltwater bin? My thinking is that if I do I could get twice as much phosphate out of the rock each day. Phosphates in the rock and in the water column always seek equilibrium. The LaCl only reduces what’s in the water column but once that phosphate is gone the rock and water will seek equilibrium again and phosphates will be lower. But it might be a stupid thing so please let me know what you think

Logically speaking, in this scenario, using Lanthanum Chloride should do what you are hoping it will. I am interested in seeing if the leeching process will speed up.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

However you are pulling phos out of the water, is pretty much fine since there's no other life in there The rock will be leaching it back out but I have no idea what the timeframe is to reach equilibrium. Personally, id be using gfo for this as it will continue pulling and pulling as the rock releases it, until depleted.

 

[Fishy888]

Logically speaking, in this scenario, using Lanthanum Chloride should do what you are hoping it will. I am interested in seeing if the leeching process will speed up.

Me too. I’ll keep everyone posted.

 

[Fishy888]

However you are pulling phos out of the water, is pretty much fine since there's no other life in there The rock will be leaching it back out but I have no idea what the timeframe is to reach equilibrium. Personally, id be using gfo for this as it will continue pulling and pulling as the rock releases it, until depleted.

I’ll probably end up going with GFO once I get my phosphates down more. As I understand it I’d be replacing it almost daily at the extremely high phosphate levels the rock is at.

I’m just using LaCl as its cheaper. Since its a hammer of a solution and I kind of need a hammer here. I thought I’d do it this way until I get to 0.5 ppm then switch to GFO. I want to run it in my system too, not just for the rocks.

Since I have you here how long does GFO last for all of you who run it? Obviously your systems have far fewer phosphates than my rock bins have.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

I’ll probably end up going with GFO once I get my phosphates down more. As I understand it I’d be replacing it almost daily at the extremely high phosphate levels the rock is at.

I’m just using LaCl as its cheaper. Since its a hammer of a solution and I kind of need a hammer here. I thought I’d do it this way until I get to 0.5 ppm then switch to GFO. I want to run it in my system too, not just for the rocks.

Since I have you here how long does GFO last for all of you who run it? Obviously your systems have far fewer phosphates than my rock bins have.

I get a few months out of my dual reactor, running 24/7 with ~2 cups each.

 

[Fishy888]

I’ve put 35 ml worth of LaCl into the saltwater bin. It’s enough to cloud the water. The circulation pump where I dosed it has lanthanum phosphate precipitant on it. The rocks look cleaner.

The first dose was 5 ml. I have 10 gallons in each tote. 1 ml per 4 gallons of LaCl should drop phosphates by 1 ppm. I dosed enough therefore to drop phosphates by 0.4 ppm. I tested phosphorous and got the flashing “200”. The 30 ml dose added to the previous dose was enough to drop phosphates by 2.8 ppm altogether. So far I’ve removed 2.0 ppm via water change only and 2.8 ppm via LaCl. Honestly I expect a total of 10 ppm and maybe even 20 ppm. The woman who had the rocks before me did two water changes also so she may have also removed 2 ppm with each ch

Here you can see the area where I dosed the LaCl and the precipitation that formed there.

The water has become noticeably cloudy.

Here’s how the rocks look tonight.

Of course one would normally dose right into a filter sock but since this water gets changed daily I dosed it right over the impeller blades. I’ll leave it overnight and change it out first thing in the morning.

I’m just going to cut my losses and use saltwater in both bins. I’m not even sure if the RO/DI water did much good or not in drawing PO4 out of the rock. Bacteria should be able to regrow during the curing process though.

 

[Fishy888]

Here’s the salty bin last night.

Here’s tonight.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

I would guess you've killed anytime beneficial in the rock that was sitting in RODI. It will regrow, but you need to feed it. Have you considered dosing straight ammonia?

 

[Fishy888]

I would guess you've killed anytime beneficial in the rock that was sitting in RODI. It will regrow, but you need to feed it. Have you considered dosing straight ammonia?

That sounds like a plan. I’d rather use straight ammonia than ghost feed especially since there’s still a ton of phosphate in the rock in that bin.

 

[Fishy888]

I’ve just added another 30 ml of LaCl. This is how the rock looked

The rock doesn’t look any cleaner tonight.

In a couple of hours I’ll test for phosphates and change both bins out.

As of tonight I’ve dosed 65 ml of phosphat-e total so far. That’s 13 tsp, which translates to enough to drop the phosphates in the bin by 2.6 ppm. Of course, all this is relative. I usually dose 2.5 ml to my system when needed. That drops my phosphates by 0.08 ppm.

This rock came out of a 75 gallon tank. I predict these rocks hold enough phosphates that, if I had a 75 gallon bin, I’d still need enough LaCl to drop phosphates by 10 ppm. Hopefully I’m wrong and it’s less. It could well be that the rock holds enough to need phosphates dropped by 20 ppm in a 75 gallon volume of water. I don’t know why but I think think the rock was in a 10 year old tank. If so it’s had enough time to absorb all kinds of not-so- goodness.

 

[Fishy888]

I just tested the water. I got 39 ppb of phosphorus or 0.12 ppm of phosphate. I’m making up some RO/DI water currently. Once I get that done I’ll wait until tomorrow to test again. If my phosphates stay where they are I’ll be adding life to colonize the rock. For now I’ll make a worm trap and leave it in the display. I’ll also add some hermit crabs and maybe an asterina or two. That’ll help things along.

Now that I have a rough estimate of how much phosphate the rock was holding