phosphate help!

[acidtablockshifty]

so i had a marine velvet out break after i had to add some new fish to my tank, because i failed to setup the qaurintine properly, my main tank has been running for about a year i guess. I initially started it with dry rock dry sand. I am new to the hobby of fishkeeping prior to this, and i skipped a step wich is curing the dry rock. The tank is 125 long 55gallon sump that has roughly 35 to 40 gallons water, so call it 160. it has i want say 90 pounds of rock maybee 130 i cant remember 100 pounds silica sand. I havent really kept up with testing for phosphates as i knew they were high. After i just fallowed out the tank for two months plus still going, i did a check of the water. Now i guess i should have continued doing water changes but i was honestly not sure if i was going to continue the hobby after loosing some fish i was pretty attached to. i set up an algae scrubber off my full sypion drain the side that feeds the refugium, its been running since before the outbreak still getting very dark brown/reddish algae nothing green this whole time. checked the water paramiters.

1st check of phosphates with hannah checker 1.32 ppm
salinity with refractometer 1.026
temp via hm digital 78
ph via hm digital 8.3
ammonia via api 0
nitrite via api 0
nitrate via api 0
calcium via api 440mg/l ppm

testing of top of water/ro di with hannah checker 0.08ppm phosphate

a recheck of the main tank water 0.70ppm phosphate

a recheck of that check just immediately after
basically letting the regent dissolve more 1.28ppm phosphate

a check of the well water straight from sink 0.05ppm phosphate

a recheck of that immediately after 0.21ppm phosphate

a recheck of the recheck of the check 0.04ppm phosphate

so i guess the question is are the phosphates high because i havent been changing the water while its fallow, is the amount of phosphates in the ro/di a recipe for dissater, i wish i had recheck the top off water one to see if it matched the tap water. im going to test distilled water next its just im almost out of packets of regent. I guess my other question is how does phosphates affect fish how much do i need to clean this water/system up before adding fish back in. im going to start carbon/vodka dosing as soon as i get a handle on how much to dose how often, i also want to start nitrate dosing with flourish to maybee get my chaeto going crazy. its growing now but nothing like i need it to be. do i wanna wait for nitrate dosing for a while after i start carbon dosing. this video kinda explains what i want to do except i really dont want to buy a reactor. https://youtu.be/BWvebC3accY

 

[glb]

Phosphates don't bother fish as much as they bother coral. What do you mean by rechecking? Are you using a Hanna checker? A phosban reactor can bring down the phosphates but you also need to figure out where it's coming from.

 

[acidtablockshifty]

by rechecking i mean i use the same vile i have two viles, one with say tank water to zero the unit, the other with the tank water regent added they say to mix for like two minutes but the meter shuts off in two minutes so i load the vile in and zero out the meter while its zeroing out i mix the regent in, having the two viles i can rezero the meter to run the check again. when i added the regent to the top off water it did not want to dissolve at all. so on the ones i rechecked i would consider the recheck more accurate because the powder is fully dissolved, but that doesnt explain why the sink water one went from 0.05 then 0.21 then o.o4 .

 

[acidtablockshifty]

edit while its zeroing i add the regent to the other vile

 

[glb]

by rechecking i mean i use the same vile i have two viles, one with say tank water to zero the unit, the other with the tank water regent added they say to mix for like two minutes but the meter shuts off in two minutes so i load the vile in and zero out the meter while its zeroing out i mix the regent in, having the two viles i can rezero the meter to run the check again. when i added the regent to the top off water it did not want to dissolve at all. so on the ones i rechecked i would consider the recheck more accurate because the powder is fully dissolved, but that doesnt explain why the sink water one went from 0.05 then 0.21 then o.o4 .

Why would you not want to dissolve all of the reagent? I guess that's where I'm confused. I have a Hanna checker too and I use two vials as well. Only the reading with the reagent totally dissolved will be accurate.

 

[glb]

You can also draw two vials of tank water. Put the reagent in one and shake for two minutes, and then start the checker. That way as soon as you get the C2 prompt after using the vial without reagent, your second reagent vial is ready to go. I find this saves me the hassle of getting the second vial ready quickly before the checker times out.

 

[acidtablockshifty]

thats exactly what im doing though? i guess i just need to know if my ro di water is fine to use i just read the sticky up top says that there are succesful reefs running 1ppm of phosphate but the goal would actually be to have .003-.005 somewhere around there i would assume ill never see those numbers if my top of is at .08 somthing like that. im going to start carbon dosing and maybe nitrate dosing too, but i would really like to put fish back in but i dont want to that if say high phosphates are perfect breeding ground for ich marine velvet, one major problem i had was i started the tank up with just tap/well water, but i was using a stupid hydrometer to check salinty when i got a refractometer i read 1.030 so i lowered that down to 1.026 and have been using ro/di water for 5 6 months, then had to fight ph because the ro/di water was at 7.3 and in no time lowered the tanks ph to 7.8 or lower. is it fine to put fish in a tank with such high phosphate or do i wait till i have it corrected. i think i also need to check silica leves, as i have a plathora of diffrent things growing/ taking over bryopsis?, tunicates were problem they've come back weaker still there, barnicals, fuge covered in cyano, a nice healthy aptaisia, some red stoney tunacite looking things

 

[glb]

You could try a phosban reactor for the tank. Don't worry about the pH of the RO water. When you add the salt mix it will rise to where you want it to be. .7 is pretty high for phosphates. Do you know where it's coming from?

 

[acidtablockshifty]

sand? rock? i honestlyy think its the pellet i was and have been using seeweed pellets and the brown one cant think of the name, but it is probally just dye off using ruby reef kick ich and the orange one for velvet. i also shook the detritus off the rocks in the tank water while getting the fish out to put in qaurintine, in heindsite that was probally a really bad idea i could have just had a barrel to rinse them off in. and i only used the "miracle" liquids because when i took the fish out of qt because of high nitrates, i thought they would be good in my tank as none of them looked to be showing any signs of anything, but i had added to ammonia to the qt to make sure it would fully cycle. i had used bio speira wich did work kind of never showed ammonia but couldnt keep nitrite and nitrate down, i also think i did to much of a water change at a time. but the tang finished its little recycle a little to late i was only able to save like 5 fish with copper treatment, they are in copper again because it came back in the qt during fallow.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I think your tank is a good candidate for GFO and not for other methods since nitrate is low.

The pH of the RO/DI is NEVER the cause of low tank pH. If the alkalinity is normal, then else bated CO2 is necessarily the explanation.

 

[Reefing Madness]

SeaKlear- Liquid dosing
GFO- Needs Reactor
Phosban- Needs reactor
SeaGel- Needs Filter
Brightwells Phosphate E- Liquid remover

 

[acidtablockshifty]

so you think i should run gfo? vs starting to carbon dose via vodka. I have a brs daul gfo and carbon reactor, i was more or less talking about like, while im not sure but i do know i wouldnt want to try and tumble anything with the brs as ive not to much luck using it. when i first starting using i guess i put way to much media in, then i went with less and seems to only tumble good for like 3 days perfectly then it no longer functions how it should. I was running gfo and carbon before the velvet outbreak but i stopped and emptied it out as i didnt want one more place for the parasite to stick around, actually before the outbreak i had switched to using two bags of chemipure elite in the reactor that worked awsome and continued to have good controlable flow. i have two more ready to use but i guess i dont want to waste them so i could try gfo again in both. maybee my media was being used up? in three days who knows. I was advised not to run gfo while carbon dosing so i guess ill have to pick a method of madness. Ill probally go with gfo and flourish dosing just get the nitrates readable see if the chaeto takes off a bit maybe the scrubber will too i see it kinda has just a few lonels strands of green hair on top of the brownish red sludge.

 

[acidtablockshifty]

the algae when i clean the screen bleeds out onto paper towell a wicked bright purple/pink

 

[Reefing Madness]

If your Carbon Dosing already, thats why your Nitrates are down, carbon dosing brings down some phosphates, but not nearly as much as it does with Nitrates. I Vodka Dose daily, and use SeaKlear bout every 10 days in my system.
It would all depend on what you choose to get rid of the phosphates, that will dictate how long it will take.

 

[acidtablockshifty]

Im not carbon dosing right now or have ever yet, the tank has never showed nitrates while maybee a little bit a long time ago probally after the initial cycle, and i think maybe a little after a good amount of fish were added. but other then that nothing. I think your right the gfo would be the best since i have no goal of reducing nitrates. With the phosphate being so high how often should i change it out like once a week. what about the ro/di water though do i need to look into that further it being like .08 can i peg that as a culprit to possibly adding to the high levels. I do about 11 gallons a week from the auto top off. but for a while i was running no lids and it evapped a lot a lot, it was like the amazon jungle for a short while until i got lids for the tank.

 

[acidtablockshifty]

quick new question. i still get slightly brown deposits/residue when making salt water not as bad as when the ro/di unit was new. I guess this is iron being encapsulated by something they put in the salt to help your skimmer remove the iron. My question i guess is, is there a salt that doesn't do this right now i'm using reef crystals, but i think if i had the iron in the water yes it would help feed hair algae but i could then harvest it from the algae scrubber. or is there a simple iron supplement i could add that's recommended.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

If you do not have nitrate, carbon dosing (and macroalgae) won't be able to bring down your elevated phosphate. That's what I meant by you are a candidate for something like GFO.

I wouldn't worry about the deposits when making salt, and I would not assume the brown is iron.

I use a DIY iron supplement made from Fergon tablets at the drug store.

 

[acidtablockshifty]

i started the gfo up today, any links on gfo info?, also macro algae, i think i need to do a circle back and just go over all this stuff again. thanks for the help ill make another post when i have some results, my predicted outcome is that gfo will dramatically help lower the phosphate but that ill still need to start carbon dosing do lower things further, and once its back down to regular level my algae scrubber will actually start to do its job, and maybe the cheato will grow to be harvestable.

 

[glb]

i started the gfo up today, any links on gfo info?, also macro algae, i think i need to do a circle back and just go over all this stuff again. thanks for the help ill make another post when i have some results, my predicted outcome is that gfo will dramatically help lower the phosphate but that ill still need to start carbon dosing do lower things further, and once its back down to regular level my algae scrubber will actually start to do its job, and maybe the cheato will grow to be harvestable.

Good luck! My gfo reactor dropped phosphates to zero within days.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

i started the gfo up today, any links on gfo info?, also macro algae, i think i need to do a circle back and just go over all this stuff again. thanks for the help ill make another post when i have some results, my predicted outcome is that gfo will dramatically help lower the phosphate but that ill still need to start carbon dosing do lower things further, and once its back down to regular level my algae scrubber will actually start to do its job, and maybe the cheato will grow to be harvestable.

This has more on GFO and macroalgae and other methods of phosphate reduction:

Phosphate in the Reef Aquarium

and this has details on what GFO is and how it works:

Iron Oxide Hydroxide (GFO) Phosphate Binders by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com