I continue to feel your pain.
Thankfully, I'm not battling dinos myself atm.
I think you're making an excellent point though. Half the reefing world is struggling to reduce phosphate and is told they're not being successful bc it's bound to the rocks and the rocks are leaching. You're just trying to have detectable phosphates and are dosing the dog snot out of it, but are told the rocks are binding it all.
Both cannot be true... lol... at least as not as simple as stated. There must be some mechanism at work.
I'm going through the same and daily dose enough P to equal around .08 and I consistently read 0 on Hanna on an 8 mo tank with absolutely minimal filtration. I'm living with it, knowing that there is P available, even if I cannot detect it.
All I can say is that I've not noticed any averse reaction from my corals when I've overshot the mark and raised P as high as .5. I would't recommend going that high, but it comes right back down. If you're intent on getting your substrate saturated to the point where you can read free P in the water column, you might have to be a bit more forceful in your dosing.
Thankfully, I'm not battling dinos myself atm.
I think you're making an excellent point though. Half the reefing world is struggling to reduce phosphate and is told they're not being successful bc it's bound to the rocks and the rocks are leaching. You're just trying to have detectable phosphates and are dosing the dog snot out of it, but are told the rocks are binding it all.
Both cannot be true... lol... at least as not as simple as stated. There must be some mechanism at work.
I'm going through the same and daily dose enough P to equal around .08 and I consistently read 0 on Hanna on an 8 mo tank with absolutely minimal filtration. I'm living with it, knowing that there is P available, even if I cannot detect it.
All I can say is that I've not noticed any averse reaction from my corals when I've overshot the mark and raised P as high as .5. I would't recommend going that high, but it comes right back down. If you're intent on getting your substrate saturated to the point where you can read free P in the water column, you might have to be a bit more forceful in your dosing.