Do you think I can "dose" PhosBan-L (LC) very slowly undiluted into a filter sock? The PO levels in my 120 are always sky high, due to overstocking, overfeeding and lots of 20-30 year old rock that leeches PO. Tank looks great but I really want to bring down the PO.Phosphates matter as much as alk and calcium in my opinion. I had a large 12 inch colony of stylaphora die off. Then a birdsnest. Things weren't looking right. My Chalice that grew like a weed had flesh stripping off all over. I decided to do an ICP test thinking that I had dropped something in the sump. A screw or penny or something. Who knows. . . got the results. No hard metals at all, the only issue was no trace elements (they all were 0) I was using regular IO salt and my phosphates were .56. I got a hanna tester and a week later, they were up to .66. My chalice continued dieing other corals were looking bad. No growth, signs of recession or outright death.
I dosed phosphate-e daily to get them down, set my algae turf scrubber lights to be on 22 hours a day instead of the 14 hours a day they were on and started doing water changes with Reef Crystals every 2 weeks at 30-40%. (130 gallons each time).
It took me 2 months to reduce phosphates from .66 to .07 ppm. Since then my Acros have tripled in Size, my Stunner chalice healed up and is back to growing like a weed. My Hammers have since added additional heads. My RBTA that was looking horrible and shriveled up is now open everyday and happy everyday. My superman monti is spreading for the first time!
Frags are growing. I have an alveopora that is looking amazing and growing relatively rapidly.
I can honestly say I haven't been happier with my tank since getting phosphates under control. I'm no longer dosing phosphate-e. Instead I'm vodka dosing 3 ml of vodka per day and that is keeping phosphates less than .1 ppm. I still test every 2-3 days to see what's happening but they're managed.
My Turf scrubber is full of a large 8-10" ball of hair algae within 3-4 days now. It used to be 7-8 days until I cranked the lights to be on longer each day.
With vodka dosing and having done several major water changes with reef crystals, considering reducing or eliminating water changes and dosing trace elements and continuing my 2-part dosing.