Phosphate

[Flyangler33]

Hey All,

About 7 weeks into my first tank journey, did a water change last night and ran all the parameters:

Nitrate	6.6
Phosphate	0.27
Alkalinity	8.6
Calcium	422
Salinity	1.025
Temperature	77
PH	7.8

I was searching around for how to maintain or reduce my phosphate. There seems to be a lot of mixed information and seems there are a ton of variables. My question is should I be super concerned with the phos level right now, and should that prevent me from adding some first beginner corals? If you recommend me lowering it before adding in corals, what method would you suggest? Pic of the clowns for fun.

 

[FUNGI]

IMO....
Throw them in....you are fine.

 

[Jonathanw1234]

Hey All,

About 7 weeks into my first tank journey, did a water change last night and ran all the parameters:

Nitrate	6.6
Phosphate	0.27
Alkalinity	8.6
Calcium	422
Salinity	1.025
Temperature	77
PH	7.8

I was searching around for how to maintain or reduce my phosphate. There seems to be a lot of mixed information and seems there are a ton of variables. My question is should I be super concerned with the phos level right now, and should that prevent me from adding some first beginner corals? If you recommend me lowering it before adding in corals, what method would you suggest? Pic of the clowns for fun.

I would agree with Fungi it shouldn't matter too much, but I would try to work on lowering your phosphate with some GFO in a bag and put it into your filter chamber/sump

 

[eliaslikesfish]

I’ll be the third to agree, it’ll be completely fine. When I first started my phosphates were at a whopping .68 and I couldn’t lower them for the longest time till I started using phosban but that whole time I had softies and LPS and never had an issue. Still, I would try to lower them haha.

 

[crazyfishmom]

In a tank this young, nutrients are going to vary.

I would consider testing a couple of times a week and keeping an eye on them. If they start to trend up then I would consider removal methods but you can easily bottom out a tank unnecessarily as nutrients balance out at the beginning and that tends to be worse. You’ll also find that when you add corals that they start using up some of the phosphate.

I would recommend carbon dosing or macro algae any day before attempting to use chemical means of phosphate removal in particular for a newer tank.