Also my nitrates bottomed out the other day. Stopped my skimmer for the day and stopped my vodka drip for a day, went up to 3 and now back at 10 and maintaining. I know I need nitrates to reduce phosphate.
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Every tank and situation is different, so you must calibrate your situation.Question for you.
Say, 300 Gallon total water volume and 2.5ppm phosphate. How much would you mix and dilute and how much would you drip?
I have a giant Refugium of cheato, light ran 24/7 and growing rapidly. So I try to keep some nitrates. I don't have any nuisance algae issues. What brought all this was my acro and candy cane both lost color and candy cane completely closed up. I was at like 50ppm nitrate and 2.5 phosphate. I've now got nitrate to 10 and stable but can't budge phosphate. I've had rowaphos going about a month now, replenished weekly with no budge, large water changes daily with no budge, less feeding. Last thing I figured is try phosphate e, I just want to be safe.You only need nitrogen to if you want to try and reduce phosphates with organic matter - trying to grow bacteria or algae. This is not a great way to reduce phosphates since they don't need much. You don't need nitrates at all, actually, and the bacteria and algae can also use nitrite or ammonium for nitrogen and almost certainly prefer it.
To remove po4 with chemicals or media you do not need nitrogen at all in any form.
Every tank and situation is different, so you must calibrate your situation.
I used 25 ml of phosphate-E to reduce 125 total gallons from 0.9 to 0.45 ppm phosphate.
For your tank i'd dilute 50 ml into 2 liters, dripped over 6 hours or more into the overflow. Caught by 5 micron filter sox, running your skimmer too.
Do not eliminate any of these or risk to livestock.
Do not reduce po4 ppm by more than 0.5 ppm per day. Do not use lantanum chloride below 0.2 ppm.
You will have to do this multiple times due to your po4 level.
There is nothing that you can do. It will rise as the aragonite releases. Just wait for it.
If you have a lot of corals, then going from 1.5 to .5 and then back up to 1.4, or whatever, may cause issues over time. It is the up/down that is an issue and not lowering in it's self. Better to go more slow and be more linear in the decline rather than look like an EKG.
I'll be happier just maintaining anything under .5 lol let alone .05 but I do hope to get there but this makes sense. Thank you for explaining. I just don't want to harm anyone of anything.You will figure out an amount in a few days. Once you get to your desired level, then dose enough to just maintain. When the po4 is high, the surface will unbind usually overnight or in a few days.
If you want to use LC to get really low it can then take a week for a significant amount of po4 to unbind from the rocks since you do have to go deeper and away from the surface. It also gets harder to remove since it requires more binding time with the water than a trip down the overflow - just dripping into a sock is not enough contact time anymore with the lower po4 in the water. These are all problems that you can address when you get there... and we are talking about like .05, or so, anyway.
Wow this stuff is fast. Dripped into my overflow directly into filter socks, then feeds into reactor/skimmer chamber, into refugium and into tank. Did cloud a bit today but I turned it up a bit. I actually did 50ml of phosphate e to 4L of RODI and dripped it over since Sunday. Finally finished the 4L today and put another 4L but a bit faster of a drip. That just ran out. Dripped over 14 hours. Yesterday my phosphate was 1.5. Today it is 1.0. Daily I'm coming down about .5 so about tomorrow I will half the dose and figure out my actual usage. Thank you for the suggestion.
Now everyone says I will have a spike again as it leeches from my rocks? Should I be worried and how should I prepare?
I wonder how your phosphate got so high. It sounds absurd with regular water changes. You really mean it was at 2.5ppm and not .25? A .5 drop in a day is a ton.
I assume you posted it correctly and it is that high. I just wanted to express my surprise.
On the rocks leaching it back out, I would think if its not leaching at the rate its been absorbed that it will be a slow climb and not sudden.
But frankly I don't really know, mostly just curious to see how this continues going for you.
Yeah, I carbon dose with elimi NP and my skimmer bubbles are tough and many.I wondered the same, as I must have had a bad test at first, it always told me 0.5. Then I went to my lfs and got 2.5ppm. My mouth dropped. Bought a new test and tested at home and confirmed both 2.5ppm and my other test was no good anymore. Got another lfs test and also 2.5.
I'm still at 1.0 now but going to start bringing it down more with more dosage of phosphate e, assuming everyone reacts well to it. Skimmer has definitely been working over time.
Just to update you, I had a crazy spike about a week ago. Jumped way back up to 2.5. I'm finally back down to 1.0 and I've not changed anything. It just went up and now I'm coming back down. I'm wondering if I'm going to start getting under 1.0Yeah, I carbon dose with elimi NP and my skimmer bubbles are tough and many.
Really curious to see if you get a fillowup spike that seems to be specifically from leaching.
My thinking is that its leaching back as concentration drops so it should be slow and steady enough for you to keep it at a steady decline with consistent dosing.