Phosphates are zeroing out every day, a few specific questions

[living_tribunal]

I wonder if there is a way to bind your rock to its maximum before adding it to a tank?

This would relieve so many people of this frustrating issue.

I’m beginning to wonder if I have a weird Dino type. Whatever I have passed the paper towel test and passed a microscope test for the main 4 Dino types. It still has every characteristic of Dino and is starting to spread like a California fire.

This rock is really infuriating.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I have used seachem flourish nitrogen in the past and when you’re trying to add nitrogen to small batches of water it’s terribly difficult to measure. When I have to measure under .1ml for a product I’m dosing, it tends to stress me out.

It seems like brightwell dilutes their solution so you can add a lot more to a smaller volume of water. Some would say this is a bad thing.

I’ve also heard seachem has copper in their nitrogen solution, I don’t know if there is any truth to this.

you can make any nitrate dosing product as dilute as you want.

I personally would use a diy of known purity before trusting most companies with a product that may have unknown purity and likely costs more.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I wonder if there is a way to bind your rock to its maximum before adding it to a tank?

This would relieve so many people of this frustrating issue.

I’m beginning to wonder if I have a weird Dino type. Whatever I have passed the paper towel test and passed a microscope test for the main 4 Dino types. It still has every characteristic of Dino and is starting to spread like a California fire.

This rock is really infuriating.

You’d have to decide in advance what phosphate level you wanted, then carefully dose the rock until that level remained in solution. It will take a lot of time and effort.

 

[living_tribunal]

You’d have to decide in advance what phosphate level you wanted, then carefully dose the rock until that level remained in solution. It will take a lot of time and effort.

For my current situation, once I find the amount of phosphate import per day that gives me a surplus, do I need to be careful about how much I add past that?

Or do I continue to dose at that level to maintain it? I’m just wondering how the leeching vs binding process works once a lot of the rock is bound.

I’ve heard of situations opposite to mine where people are doing water changes and GFO but can’t reduce their phosphate because of the leeching.

I’m struggling to understand how it all works.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

You just need to watch but need not obsess any more than you would when feeding more. Any rise is slow.

 

[living_tribunal]

Just a quick update, I for sure have a full blown Dino infection in my display now.

Kicking myself for not finding out the rock binding phosphate issue sooner. To make matters worse, I still haven’t found the equilibrium point of how much phosphate I need to dose per day in order to have a surplus.

I’m up to dosing .035ppm 3 times a day which still zeros out pretty quick. I don’t know how much more I can dose at one time before it’s too large of a spike for the corals.

Really hoping I can find the dosing amount answer or finally have the rock start binding less soon.

 

[LARedstickreefer]

What are you using to measure phosphate?

 

[living_tribunal]

What are you using to measure phosphate?

Hanna phosphorous ulr.

 

[pigmo]

we have a 2 year old system, and we had similar po4 levels... zeros.

we choose to diy po4 (with randy's help) and put it on an automatic doser, currently adding 5ppm per day to an ~650 gal system. we use NaH2PO4 from amazon, diluted to 10 g/l.

it's not perfect, sometimes we get shocked, as we sometimes still test zeros... and have to adjust accordingly.

if you have stoney corals, be careful with your alk, it may drop if you increase po4 levels.

if the new ghl ion director tested and controlled po4, we'd buy it pronto (sadly, it does not).

good luck

 

[living_tribunal]

we have a 2 year old system, and we had similar po4 levels... zeros.

we choose to diy po4 (with randy's help) and put it on an automatic doser, currently adding 5ppm per day to an ~650 gal system. we use NaH2PO4 from amazon, diluted to 10 g/l.

if you have stoney corals, be careful with your alk, it may drop if you increase po4 levels.

if the new ghl ion director tested and controlled po4, we'd buy it pronto (sadly, it does not).

good luck

I appreciate the insight and feedback, it’s nice to hear from someone in a similar situation.

I think my plan is similar. I work from home tomorrow so I’m just going to do a large .05ppm dose in the morning and then test every subsequent hour to get the rate of phosphate binding.

That should give me a decent approximate dosage so I can get a surplus before I turn my lights on from the blackout I just started.

If I find a steady rhythm, I’ll pick up a doser.

 

[pigmo]

Following.

I've been dealing with the same issue with my tank. Uses up nutrients like a sponge. Dose to 60ppb phosphorus and it's back down to 8ppb the next morning. Same goes for nitrates. Dose to 10ppm and its back to 0 the next day. Kinda sick of dosing these. I have never had this issue...

we have diy no3 on a doser as well lol ;Cat

 

[living_tribunal]

we have diy no3 on a doser as well lol ;Cat

That’s a proper dosing setup if I’ve ever heard of such.

My nitrates have stabilized oddly enough. I know that nitrate can decrease phosphates as well so I’m kind of just honing in on phosphates right now and will get nitrates on track afterwards.

 

[SMB]

How are you measuring p04 and have you ever sent out an ICP test?

 

[living_tribunal]

How are you measuring p04 and have you ever sent out an ICE test?

Hanna phosphorous ulr, tested against standards and tank after dosing many times.

I haven’t done an icp test, I think it’s pretty clear where that phosphate is going at this point.

 

[living_tribunal]

One thing I don’t get is how don’t more people have this problem, especially with the proliferation of dry rock.

It just seems odd.

 

[pigmo]

That’s a proper dosing setup if I’ve ever heard of such.

My nitrates have stabilized oddly enough. I know that nitrate can decrease phosphates as well so I’m kind of just honing in on phosphates right now and will get nitrates on track afterwards.

here's our frag tank... i was thinking, we're pretty retarded and this is our 1st reef too... so if we can do it, you can too!

 

[living_tribunal]

here's our frag tank... i was thinking, we're pretty retarded and this is our 1st reef too... so if we can do it, you can too!

I’m sure I’ll figure out a stable routine. I’d srill prefer to have my display be more of an organic setup where the phosphate only really comes from food and fish poop. I wouldn’t mind having a little doser for my frag tank though.

Good looking frag tank btw, y’all seem to have a little bit of quite literally everything.

 

[living_tribunal]

You just need to watch but need not obsess any more HDN you would when feeding more. Any rise is slow.

I apologize for the additional follow up here but I’m not certain on how I can keep p04 up and consistent going forward.

So is my goal to completely saturate the rock until newly introduced phosphate levels in my tank will remain there until utilized by coral, macro fauna, phytos, etc?

My aim is to get to the point where I don’t have to dose phosphate in my display. I also don’t want to establish a high concentration bound to the rock so the equilibrium is above my target.

Just kind of confused about what I should aim for and how to keep levels consistent and up in the future.

I appreciate the help.

 

[Caliguy1983]

To be honest your tank looks pretty young. How old is the system? I think sometimes in this hobby we chase numbers vs keep our parameters stable. Most people strive for lower nutrients until they are focusing specifically on coloring and growing sps. I’d be cautious dosing anything until the tank is fully cycled. Are you doing water changes or running triton method? There’s many ways to be successful in this hobby. If it were me I’d just be patient, let the tank mature and add some fish. Keep your water stable. Feed your fish and let nature handle it. “Nothing good happens fast in a reef tank” and just so you know I’m not just a keyboard warrior here’s my tank. BTW I currently can’t measure phosphate on my test kit and my nitrate is less than 3 ppm. But I’m not losing sleep...

 

[chaoticreefer]

My problem was opposite from yours, I couldn't keep nitrates in my system, therefore making phosphates skyrocket to unmanage levels (no matter what I tried to use...gfo, big WCs, chaeto, etc). Once I made the connection that nitrates and phosphates are actually tied together (inverse in my situation) I started to solved my problems. Some dinos hate nitrates. I had dinos, once I started to dose NeoNitro, the dinos were wiped off from the map in the matter of a week or 2. So...with that being said, I haven't seen you mentioning your nitrate levels...where are they?

I will be switching over to the Green Leaf Aquarium Nitrate product once this batch of NeoNitro runs out. Got it few weeks ago and it's sitting here waiting to be used. Its a no brainer, 2L of NeoNitro is like $38, whereas a pouch of GLA cost like $6 and God only knows how long that will last, but at least many, many folds over the 2L NeoNitro.

Soooo, I am curious about your nitrate levels?