Phosphate jumped massively in a week....

[Jasongtr]

Backstory

75 gallon tank, 8 fish no coral, various inverts.

Been dosing 7ml nopox for nearly 3 months, nitrates been stable at 30ppm for 6/7 weeks, phosphates floating around 0.05 for the same time, stopped dosing nopox last tuesday as frankly im fed up of the side effects, gunky glass and powerheads being the main ones.

My turf scubber i made with cheapo ebay led strip lights is sort of working but another one is almost ready with much more powerful lights.

Just tested and nitrates have gone up to 40ppm but the phosphates are 0.45, thats quite a jump and i didnt believe it so tested again with the hanna, then a salifert kit abd finally for a giggle with an api kit, all said around the same, its gone up a lot....

Other than stopping the nopox we have only done one other thing differently and thats increase feeding from 2x a day to 3x a day and that was only to stop the phosphates hitting zero - all fishfood is frozen


So do i start nopox again and if i did would i have to go through the lengthy wait time, or should i just slowly get the phosphates down with phosphate e which ive used before

Any thoughts?

 

[blaxsun]

It's probably linked to the increase in feeding, yes. Certain types of coral supplements (ie: Reef Roids) can also spike your phosphates. Have you considered running GFO to keep them in-check?

 

[Jasongtr]

It's probably linked to the increase in feeding, yes. Certain types of coral supplements (ie: Reef Roids) can also spike your phosphates. Have you considered running GFO to keep them in-check?

Ok, i get we increased from 2x a day to 3x but to jump from 0.03 to 0.48 phosphate in 6 days....

We dont have coral so its not coral food.

I put a bag of rowaphos in months ago ( forgot about it to be honest) i took that out yesterday but that would of long since of been depleted, we may run gfo but ill see how potent the turf scrubber will be too

 

[blaxsun]

Ok, i get we increased from 2x a day to 3x but to jump from 0.03 to 0.48 phosphate in 6 days....

We dont have coral so its not coral food.

I put a bag of rowaphos in months ago ( forgot about it to be honest) i took that out yesterday but that would of long since of been depleted, we may run gfo but ill see how potent the turf scrubber will be too

Yeah, it's typically only good for a month. GFO is easy to remove and stop using if the algae scrubber starts hitting your target parameters.

 

[Jasongtr]

Yeah, it's typically only good for a month. GFO is easy to remove and stop using if the algae scrubber starts hitting your target parameters.

Yes not a bad idea