phosphate help!

acidtablockshifty · Apr 5, 2015

alright i don't forum much but i am definitely one for details, so here they are in case others are too. The gfo has been going all day, couple things happened while starting it up, i did get the canisters full of water first and ran about four gallons through into a bucket which i was going to replace as a micro water change, the level in the sump dropped causing my skimmer to increase flow slightly over flowing ( it was already pretty full ready to be cleaned) as quickly as i could, i shut the skimmer off, so... the gfo was running then skimmer problem, then i noticed the whole tank went cloudy, i grabbed a new filter sock (because while i hate them and haven't been using them at all) but it was new and i didn't think anything of putting it in to maybe catch the cloudiness that was happening (idk), skimmers cup is already back on before the sock was added didn't even get to add both because the skimmer immediately starting pulling out what seemed to be very soapy bubbles, i freaked and took the filter sock out.... must have chemicals or something from manufacturing .... i added one cap full of flourish later when the tank had cleared up,.... i think the gfo is already spent, really good tumble on it earlier come home its flat just sitting there and theres all kinds of bubbles in the canister like a sprite in a clear glass, and it looks dark too. anyways upped the flow a little bit get it back to some movement, cyano in the fuge looks much weaker already

i guess ill test with api tomorrow, i only have two packets left for the hanna and id like to use them in like a week or two, if i see any kind of drop to say .30 ill change out the gfo, i know it would probably be usually good for like a month or even way more in a normal system but with the levels high i want to export the phosphate asap even though it probably too fast. the rock is coming out for a re-aquascape, add sand, syphion bed, rock rinse and scrub

Randy Holmes-Farley · Apr 5, 2015

FWIW, GFO only lasts a week or two in my tank. How long it lasts is entirely on how fast the water flows through it and the phosphate level in that water.

acidtablockshifty · Apr 7, 2015

I checked the phosphate today with the hannna, its at .12 ppm now and i changed it out, ill check it again on like friday. The algae scrubber is growing a little green now, going to have to check the water friday, but not going to add any more flourish till then. May start carbon dosing soon but im not sure i need to right now, so i might wait.

acidtablockshifty · Apr 8, 2015

my skimmer has stopped pulling a lot of skimmate, barely anything now, does anyone think i should start carbon dosing now or what, i think it might be good idea to start right now

Randy Holmes-Farley · Apr 8, 2015

That seems reasonable.

acidtablockshifty · Apr 18, 2015

need a little theory/what to do... as of wed. 15th phosphates are at 0.06/to 0.08, i have removed all but four pieces of rock and put in a kiddie pool so i can add sand/ gravel-vac/ re-aquascape, i used tank water to fill the kiddie pool( heated w/ power heads) did basically a 36 gallon water change. Ill get to the point now the tank is sitting with barely any rock and just had decent water change, now i haven't checked the phosphate or anything yet in it, but there's no skim-mate, like nada. Now i get that most of my beneficial bactriea are probally in my rock so when i took it out makes since that skim-mate reduced, but If my rock is the cause of my phosphate issue should i keep it in the pool and just keep changing the water in that basically re curing it, or is that not even going to help. Do i need to start looking at using say lanthunum chloride to get the phosphates out of the rock, does the phosphate leaching only stop when say coralline algae totally encases the rock or something. I do think that the high phosphate levels have actually killed the coralline that was on the rock because looking at it much closer seems very brown but it doesnt seem like say cyano covering the rock just seems like dead coralline algae, there is colored coralline but it is more of the greens to say toothpaste looking aqua colored that seem to be what made it the most. There is some purple pink but its not much and all this dark colored stuff i think prbally was purple before the fallow of the tank

Randy Holmes-Farley · Apr 18, 2015

Many people treat rock for phosphate outside if a tank where one can be very aggressive, such as with lanthanum chloride or even muriatic acid (kills everything).