Phosphate E

[edunn]

Hi,
I have a 90 gallon aqueon non drilled aquarium mixed reef tank. My tank is currently going through the ugly phase. My phosphate levels with the Hanna ultra low phosphate checker was 1 and I got it down to 0.5. by titrating feeding and switching to more frozen food. I have been unable to pry open my fluvial fx4 filter so put in gfo so I decided to begin dosing Phosphate E using a Red Sea dosing pump. I am essentially dosing 0.35ml of Phosphate E per day which has brought my phosphate levels down to 0.43. How fast can I safely bring down by phosphate levels to 0.05 using phosphate E?
Thank you for your guidance.

 

[TX_REEF]

I generally would not recommend chemical additives to bring down nutrient levels, especially in a new tank. I think you'd be better off with gradual water changes and correcting the underlying issue (likely overfeeding). Chemical additives frequently cause undesirable side-effects, even if they do "fix" the issue at hand.

 

[edunn]

I generally would not recommend chemical additives to bring down nutrient levels, especially in a new tank. I think you'd be better off with gradual water changes and correcting the underlying issue (likely overfeeding). Chemical additives frequently cause undesirable side-effects, even if they do "fix" the issue at hand.

Thank you, I have significantly decreased my feedings as well as continued 10% water changes. I’ll ditch the phosphate E for now. Thank you so much.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I would not remove more than 0.05 ppm per day, and would stop lowering in the 0.1 to 0.2 ppm range. :)

 

[UMALUM]

I'm gonna have to kindly disagree as I believe one of the best times to use lanthanum chloride is in / on a newer system. As long as your confident in your testing and you don't bottom out you could be avoiding a major headache down the road especially if you started with dry rock. I had no I'll effects dropping mine 0.1 a day till I hit what I wanted.

 

[edunn]

I'm gonna have to kindly disagree as I believe one of the best times to use lanthanum chloride is in / on a newer system. As long as your confident in your testing and you don't bottom out you could be avoiding a major headache down the road especially if you started with dry rock. I had no I'll effects dropping mine 0.1 a day till I hit what I wanted.

Thank you, I agree with all of your expert input. I will continue on with dosing of phosphate e and careful monitoring not to bottom out the phosphate levels.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I'm not a fan of reducing feeding to reduce nutrients, its not their fault. Or switch to frozen food if you think phosphate comes from food.

Did you start your tank with new dry white rocks? Have you tested if the phosphate is leaching from your rocks? Its easy, just add a rock or two to a bucket of new saltwater and test it, if the rocks are leaching, you'll be able to test and watch the phosphate level increase in the new water. If phosphates are leaching from the rocks, then its a long slow process to remove the phosphate from the system using gfo.