Phosphates are at 1.97ppm

[Tom800]

I originally had a topic concerning high nitrates and phosphates, but after doing many water changes, phosphates are still an issue.

Originally nitrates were at over 75ppm and phosphates at 2.20ppm (I really neglected testing for this and let it get out of control)

I got nitrates down to around 25, but phosphates are at 1.97ppm. This seems pretty bad considering what they should be at. My lfs is recommending a liquid remover at this point (Elimi-Phos rapid). What are your thoughts on how I should approach this. Corals are not growing and I suspect the high phosphates are the reason. I have a 180 gallon reef tank. Thanks.

 

[tripdad]

Whatever remedy you use, you will need one, go slow! Rapid shift can cause major issues. Also may take a while if rock is loaded up with PO4.

 

[ReeferMo]

You can try a GFO reactor
I just installed one a few days ago and my phosphate level is the same as yours 1.95

 

[Australian_Reef]

Have you been using any phosphate removing media up until this point?

If not I’d add the amount of your chosen product that the company recommends (I use seachem phosbond as its nice an clean/easy to use) either in a reactor or in a bag in the sump, and measure the fall in phosphates daily, once it stops falling, replace the media and repeat. Don’t add more media than they recommended just as you don’t what the levels dropping suddenly.

You could look at moving to a lower phosphate fish food as well and making sure there no over feeding.

If you have been using media with no results then it may be time to look at a liquid remover or increasing the among of media you use slowly. The main thing is that you don’t need to do anything drastic if your tank is doing ok (ie not dying). But keep testing often so you know what’s happening to the levels, can’t recommend a Hanna ULR tester enough.

 

[BoaConservationist]

I do a heavy in/ heavy out system, combination of a refugium and a carbon reactor was my solution, you could also just use GFO, the only danger with gfo is speed of strip or bottoming out, slowly increase the flow rate on the reactor, keep testing, and find a dosing method thats based off calcium if you aren't icp testing, also my highest phosphate absorbing macroalgae always tends to be blue octhodes and blue hypnea (so maybe just setup a small octhodes/ blue macro reactor) , my 2 cents <3

 

[Drag80n Reef]

My preferred phos removal method is using Rowaphos. I don’t use a GFO reactor, I just keep it in a media bag and change it when necessary. So far I’ve only had to change it once every 4 months. But I check my values manually every 2-3 days using Hanna and salifert checkers. I started using Rowaphos when my phos went up to .75 and it started to decrease phosphate by .1 per day. My phos has been stable and I keep it in the 0.08-0.15 range

 

[Tom800]

Thanks all for the comments, I have not been managing phosphates directly at all. I have had this tank for a year and a half, and someone was managing it for me for quite some time, but really didn’t do a good job so I took it over myself. I’ve got everything under controls in terms of water chemistry, except for nitrates and phosphates. I got my nitrates down to 25 through a series of water changes, though I still need to investigate, keeping it stable. for phosphates, I’m leaning towards the media bags like seachem phos guard, I’m a little hesitant to do the liquid remover to start with, only because based on what I’m reading that might easier to screw up. Once I get phosphates down to a much better level, I can start figuring out what to do on a more permanent basis to keep it stable. I assume I can just place the media bags in my sump, and I then test daily phosphate levels?

 

[Tom800]

I put one bag of phosguard (treats 60g) in my filter (fleece roller) and it’s been in for about 15 hours and phosphate has only gone down from 1.9 to 1.89 – should I throw in another bag? Thanks.

 

[Australian_Reef]

I put one bag of phosguard (treats 60g) in my filter (fleece roller) and it’s been in for about 15 hours and phosphate has only gone down from 1.9 to 1.89 – should I throw in another bag? Thanks.

If you have a 180g tank add the recommended amount for 180g. I wouldn’t use the pre filled bags or it’s going to cost you alot of money. Buy it by the litre or more.

15 hours isn’t enough time and a 0.01 change is in the error margin for any test kit but if you’ve only added the amount for 60G you aren’t going to see the results.

 

[Impunitus]

Give it time and GO SLOW when dropping your phosphates. I learned the hard way in my tank when I had a .5 swing and it cooked what was a very healthy slimer frag as well as making my hammer drop 2 heads. From what I have read .1 is about as fast as you want to go per week. I ended up using 1/4 the recommended amount of GFO to remove at this rate. 1/2 recommended was way too fast and full dose probably would have been horrible.

You can always add more if you need to, but this is a process that is best done slow rather than fast. Important for any of your corals and your fish as well. Your rock is also going to leach out of lot over time, so you will likely find it bouncing up and down when testing.

Good luck! Hope you keep this thread updated on your progress :)

 

[slingfox]

If you don’t want to use the more potent liquid phosphate removers, you are going to have to go through a lot of the solid form removers (ie, potentially hundreds of dollars). The reason why is not only do you need to remove phosphate from the water column but the phosphate that has been absorbed by the rock and sand. As you pull phosphate from the water column, some phosphate will leach out from the rock to sand to equalize levels once again.

You can definitely reduce phosphates gradually. The key longer term issues is figuring out how to keep phosphates at a target level long run.

 

[jasonvan]

wow. and i thought my spike to 0.6phos was really high. it must be really out of balance. i dose phos e into my skimmer via a dosing pump daily. its worked almost too well.

your probably leaching it from somewhere. maybe old rock?
when i took out a bunch of my old rock and replaced it with new marco rock. it dropped really fast.

slingfox is right about the sand. my special grade is only 1 year old but when i accidently stir up the sand when moving corals. my phos would spike from 0.1 or 0.25

 

[Tom800]

Update: as of the test I just took. We are now down to one 1.87, that’s with two bags of phosguard in it. So I’m not sure if the rate is going to increase overtime, but if it’s going to only go down .01 or two a day, not sure if that is is going to be enough, and yes, I get that it shouldn’t go down super quick, but I don’t know how negligible .01 is considering how high it is to begin with. By the way, there is no sign of any severe trouble in the tank, the only issue is corals are not really growing, and I have lost two heads on my torch corals, which I am assuming is related to the high phosphate issue. Nitrates are around 24 as of yesterday‘s test, alkalinity at 8.5, calcium at 480, and magnesium at 1550 (I find that my magnesium checker is always slightt higher than my other back up tests). I am reluctant to use liquid phosphate remover unless I have to, just because that’s much easier to screw up based on what I’ve read. here is a picture of the tank (yes I know there is a outbreak of aptasia, but I have put in nudibranchs a week ago)

 

[GSPClown94]

If you are going to use GFO I think using it in a media reactor would be better than those bagged GFO products. Has anyone ever tried extracting phosphate from saturated GFO with lanthanum chloride outside of the aquarium as a way to reuse some GFO?

 

[Impunitus]

Update: as of the test I just took. We are now down to one 1.87, that’s with two bags of phosguard in it. So I’m not sure if the rate is going to increase overtime, but if it’s going to only go down .01 or two a day, not sure if that is is going to be enough, and yes, I get that it shouldn’t go down super quick, but I don’t know how negligible .01 is considering how high it is to begin with. By the way, there is no sign of any severe trouble in the tank, the only issue is corals are not really growing, and I have lost two heads on my torch corals, which I am assuming is related to the high phosphate issue. Nitrates are around 24 as of yesterday‘s test, alkalinity at 8.5, calcium at 480, and magnesium at 1550 (I find that my magnesium checker is always slightt higher than my other back up tests). I am reluctant to use liquid phosphate remover unless I have to, just because that’s much easier to screw up based on what I’ve read. here is a picture of the tank (yes I know there is a outbreak of aptasia, but I have put in nudibranchs a week ago)

Better to judge over a few days as .01 can be margin of error on the phosphate test. The fact that you didn't see a sharp decline in a day is a good thing.

Keep on measuring, you could be removing phosphates but your rock and sand are going to leach as you work to bring your phosphates down.

From my research when I was working to drop mine from .6, your corals are not necessarily going to show stress when you have high phosphates but they will show stress when you bring it down rapidly. I could see my corals stressing when my phosphate was swinging around and finding out what worked best for my tank. I have since stabilized at .2 but looking to get down a little further to the .1 range and then keeping between .1 and .2.

In my case I added my fuge with a lighting period of 14 hours and have a 1/4 recommended amount of GFO in a bag. I don't have the space for a reactor due to being in an AIO.

If you can do a reactor it would probably be more efficient than media bags, but again we have to work with the tools we have. I'm still new to reefing, but I am of the same mind that chemical solutions should be a last resort. If you have a fuge, up your lighting period, or maybe grow a macro in your display if you cannot get a dedicated fuge?

 

[BoaConservationist]

50% water change, imo, its never a "shock" if its going back to baseline / proper amounts, you might be shocked that something bad happens but likely down that line that was coming with/without correction anyways ;)

 

[Impunitus]

50% water change, imo, its never a "shock" if its going back to baseline / proper amounts, you might be shocked that something bad happens but likely down that line that was coming with/without correction anyways ;)

Will water changes really be successful here? He mentions that a series of water changes got nitrates brought down but phosphates are still sky high.

With the levels he has and the leaching from his media he's going to be doing constant 50% water changes and probably not accomplishing much of anything other than bottoming out nitrates and still having very high phosphates. All my research says that water changes are not a solution for phosphate control but I'm also happy to be wrong :)

I wonder if @Randy Holmes-Farley has any input on bringing down phosphates in a way that will not upset your tank inhabitants.

 

[Impunitus]

@Tom800 something else that came to mind...have you tested your source water for phosphate by chance? Both from your RODI and then testing your mixed saltwater to see if you are introducing phosphates without knowing?

 

[Tom800]

Will water changes really be successful here? He mentions that a series of water changes got nitrates brought down but phosphates are still sky high.

With the levels he has and the leaching from his media he's going to be doing constant 50% water changes and probably not accomplishing much of anything other than bottoming out nitrates and still having very high phosphates. All my research says that water changes are not a solution for phosphate control but I'm also happy to be wrong :)

I wonder if @Randy Holmes-Farley has any input on bringing down phosphates in a way that will not upset your tank inhabitants.

So almost 2 weeks ago is when I started to tackle both my high nitrates and phosphates. I did about 30% water changes every two days, and the last two water changes I even did consecutive days. That was a lot of work to do it. Nitrates were brought down from some number well over 75 to around 25 so that worked, but phosphates went down from 2.20 to 1.90. So if all those water changes didn’t bring it down closer to what it should be, I think it has to be extracted through media or worst case scenario a liquid remover if needed.

 

[Tom800]

@Tom800 something else that came to mind...have you tested your source water for phosphate by chance? Both from your RODI and then testing your mixed saltwater to see if you are introducing phosphates without knowing?

I haven’t tested the RODI water, I am picking up more Hannah reagents later today, I could give it a test later. I think it was from the tank personally, I had excessive nitrates also, so it’s not like the high phosphates came out of nowhere. Someone else used to take care of the tank for me and to make a long story short, it was better for me to take it over and I’ve learned the trade over the last year. After figuring out everything else, and battling with it, getting nutrition levels where they should be for Fish. Now I’m left with corals and I’ve got apple, magnesium and calcium figured out, so I was done left with nitrates and phosphates and that’s where we are now. Like I said, I got nitrates down from doing a lot of water changes, still not exactly where I wanted to be, but 20-25 is a lot better from some number over 75.