Phosphate saturation in a new tank

[Ziggy17]

Solution:
6gram/litres.
Adding 1ml in 55gallons = po4 +0.01ppm and k = +0.008ppm

cool. Something to keep in mind if I ever need a tonne of it :)

 

[Ziggy17]

I've been trying to get my system to stabilize at .1 for three months now. Barebottom start with real live rock and a heavy acropora load are making it impossible.

I get it. It’s actually taken me 2 years to get it to a steady .08-.12 range with no intervention other than feeding. I’ve had to dose periodically when it dips and rowaphos when it spiked. But now that I have it, I really don’t want to start over. Bouts of GHA, Bubble algae, dinos, cyano. Literally anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Red Sea seam failure included. So I’d hate to fight those fights again if I can avoid it.

 

[rishma]

I've been trying to get my system to stabilize at .1 for three months now. Barebottom start with real live rock and a heavy acropora load are making it impossible.

I think most people are gun shy about dosing too much and it takes forever. I accidentally dosed >0.8ppm and the corals were pretty darn happy 24 hours later. It still dropped a lot over the next 72hrs settling just above what my target was…so I changed my target and called it good!

 

[Doctor Derp]

I think most people are gun shy about dosing too much and it takes forever. I accidentally dosed >0.8ppm and the corals were pretty darn happy 24 hours later. It still dropped a lot over the next 72hrs settling just above what my target was…so I changed my target and called it good!

I'm gonna try dosing up to .2 and see if I can get it to soak into these rocks.

 

[Featherweight]

Yeah, but I’m using live sand. So rinsing it would not be advantageous.

You can rinse love sand no problem. Reserve a bit if you are worried. Not rinsing sand is much worse than cleaning up your live and a bit in my experience.

 

[Ziggy17]

Not rinsing sand is much worse than cleaning up your live and a bit in my experience.

How so?

 

[Featherweight]

I rinsed my last batch of live sand. It was incredibly dirty. I prefer to start with a clean sand bed with minimal fines in it.

 

[archipelago]

Any time I start a new tank, I dose NO3 and PO4 to ' saturation', as you are.

A nice side effect for me has been almost no Dino outbreaks.

Two tips I'll share related to use of other indicators (and common sense) when you are dosing PO4:

1. I find almost invariably, when I dose PO4 I see a decrease in NO3. While NO3 is not as essential as PO4 to the coral, I also find my corals are happier when they are detectable. I almost never dose PO4 without concurrently dosing NO3.

2. If you find you are dosing a ' large' amount of PO4 and you are also getting a lot of algae growth - you may want to back off the PO4 (even if you are registering low or no PO4). I find low levels of PO4 are usually less impactful overall than battling a major hair algae outbreak. Of course this will be balanced against any Dino growth/outbreaks, as these are the hardest to treat if they take hold.

 

[Linden13]

I am currently doing this now while I'm waiting for my new tank to arrive. I have a big bin with new sand and new dry rock that I keep adding water when I do tank water changes and add ammonium bicarbonate daily and also add neophos to get everything cycled and stable till it goes into the new tank. Hoping to cut back on any parameter changes and crazy uglies. I already had a big bottle of neohos left over from when I set up my tank originally so I didn't buy it recently.

 

[Luckyduck]

Hey there friend. Congrats on the new tank! I'm not sure how long you have before you set up the new one. You may not have enough time but I'll share what I have done in the past and I'm currently doing again now as I am upgrading my 110 to a 230. It worked extremely well for my 35 to a 110 and I only did it for a week but the longer the better. This go around I've had it cycling for 5 weeks so far.

The supplies:
55 gallon Brute garbage can and lid
150 Watt heater
Powerhead
Air pump and stone
Dry rock
Several brands of Bacteria
Bottle of Pods
Live Phyto

The process:
I didn't do this all at once, took about a week to fill the bin to the desired level as you can see on my note sticker. I started out with 12 gallons of freshly mixed saltwater and siphoned 8 gallons out of my running display. Added all of my new dry rock between both cans and put saltwater in each bin. From my running system, I took out a couple small live rock pieces and a bio block. I added a small bit on Ammonium Nitrate and Microbacter 7. Over the next couple weeks I kept adding new and system water, along with more bacteria, live phyto, pods and kept an eye on the salinity. It'll be running for a couple more weeks until I'm ready to swap everything from the 110 to the 230 but essentially I'm cycling all of the water I need for the upgrade. This way there will minimal to no shock and as close to stable as it can be when I double my system volume.

You can read the notes on the side of each bin for more detail.

 

[Ziggy17]

Hey there friend. Congrats on the new tank! I'm not sure how long you have before you set up the new one. You may not have enough time but I'll share what I have done in the past and I'm currently doing again now as I am upgrading my 110 to a 230. It worked extremely well for my 35 to a 110 and I only did it for a week but the longer the better. This go around I've had it cycling for 5 weeks so far.

The supplies:
55 gallon Brute garbage can and lid
150 Watt heater
Powerhead
Air pump and stone
Dry rock
Several brands of Bacteria
Bottle of Pods
Live Phyto

The process:
I didn't do this all at once, took about a week to fill the bin to the desired level as you can see on my note sticker. I started out with 12 gallons of freshly mixed saltwater and siphoned 8 gallons out of my running display. Added all of my new dry rock between both cans and put saltwater in each bin. From my running system, I took out a couple small live rock pieces and a bio block. I added a small bit on Ammonium Nitrate and Microbacter 7. Over the next couple weeks I kept adding new and system water, along with more bacteria, live phyto, pods and kept an eye on the salinity. It'll be running for a couple more weeks until I'm ready to swap everything from the 110 to the 230 but essentially I'm cycling all of the water I need for the upgrade. This way there will minimal to no shock and as close to stable as it can be when I double my system volume.

You can read the notes on the side of each bin for more detail.

Very cool idea, and I wish I could, however the WAF is super low :)

 

[Ziggy17]

I rinsed my last batch of live sand. It was incredibly dirty. I prefer to start with a clean sand bed with minimal fines in it.

If it was going to see fish and water right away, I’d agree. However I will have several weeks to stir it up daily and get is where we like it to be prior to fish or coral.

 

[Luckyduck]

Hey there friend. Congrats on the new tank! I'm not sure how long you have before you set up the new one. You may not have enough time but I'll share what I have done in the past and I'm currently doing again now as I am upgrading my 110 to a 230. It worked extremely well for my 35 to a 110 and I only did it for a week but the longer the better. This go around I've had it cycling for 5 weeks so far.

The supplies:
55 gallon Brute garbage can and lid
150 Watt heater
Powerhead
Air pump and stone
Dry rock
Several brands of Bacteria
Bottle of Pods
Live Phyto

The process:
I didn't do this all at once, took about a week to fill the bin to the desired level as you can see on my note sticker. I started out with 12 gallons of freshly mixed saltwater and siphoned 8 gallons out of my running display. Added all of my new dry rock between both cans and put saltwater in each bin. From my running system, I took out a couple small live rock pieces and a bio block. I added a small bit on Ammonium Nitrate and Microbacter 7. Over the next couple weeks I kept adding new and system water, along with more bacteria, live phyto, pods and kept an eye on the salinity. It'll be running for a couple more weeks until I'm ready to swap everything from the 110 to the 230 but essentially I'm cycling all of the water I need for the upgrade. This way there will minimal to no shock and as close to stable as it can be when I double my system volume.

You can read the notes on the side of each bin for more detail.

Very cool idea, and I wish I could, however the WAF is super low :)

Ahhh yes that doesn't make it easy. You can always dose some phosphate to your new water to kick it up a bit closer to your existing stuff. But if we're taking 0.02-0.04 different I wouldn't stress it too much. Even 0.1 you should be fine. They may be ticked off for a few days but they'll adapt. Alkalinity would be the parameter I would l stress the most. Corals do not do well with Alk shocks.