Phosphates Through the roof

[thom_smith]

This happens more than people would think it does.

I know. I have done it myself.

 

[gbroadbridge]

So basically, my phosphate is .1 and I do 20% water change. My phosphate should be .08 right? We all know it won't be because as fast as you remove it the rocks and sand leach it back in. Water changes alone will not control it unless you have a nano tank and do weekly 50% changes. Other remedies need to be incorporated such as GFO, fuge, modified feeding etc... water changes do very little to control phosphate but do help with nitrates and certainly replenish major and trace elements which is good for your tank.

^^^ 100% correct

 

[BeanAnimal]

^^^ 100% correct

No it is not. It illustrates that his system has sequestered phosphate, not the OPs or mine, etc. It is fully system dependent as the conversation above illustrates. The generalities that are passed along in this hobby as "rules of thumb" or "simple fact" are often far from the truth.

How long was the system at the higher phosphate? How porous is the substrate and rock? How much of that substrate and rock are there. How long was the system at the higher phosphate level? What is the system volume and what is driving the phosphate to begin with. The list of variable is long.

We are way off topic. But those are some of the questions that the OP could answer. If I were him, I would start with regular water changes combined with GFO as well as identify ways to reduce the import to begin with. Is there a skimmer and how is it tuned/sized? Etc.

 

[Lavey29]

^^^ 100% correct

Granted I'm no scientist but have many decades of experience in this hobby primarily with fresh but now salt for multiple years. Each tank is unique but the way I see it, tanks with elevated phosphate issues probably have most of their total phosphate bound up in rocks and sand and a minimal amount in the water column. This is why water changes have a very minimal effect on your overall phosphate number when you check it and what you do remove with a water change is immediately replaced with some that is released from rocks and sand. Water changes alone typically do not resolve elevated phosphate issues and other remedies are needed. If you do a 20% water change you are not truly pulling 20% phosphate out of your tank because the majority is still bound in rocks and sand.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Please stop doubling/tripling down on the generalizations. It is only serving to generate a useless circular conversation for the sake you you being "right". It is not helpful for this to go round and round.

Every system is different, treat them that way.

Ask the right questions - give the advice that matches the answers, not some anecdotal "rule of thumb" passed from one hobbyist to the next.

 

[Lavey29]

Please stop doubling/tripling down on the generalizations. It is only serving to generate a useless circular conversation for the sake you you being "right". It is not helpful for this to go round and round.

Every system is different, treat them that way.

Ask the right questions - give the advice that matches the answers, not some anecdotal "rule of thumb" passed from one hobbyist to the next.

Just trying to keep it real Bean. You have your opinion as do I but we do agree on several things such as each tank is unique and interior tank layout coupled with the other factors you mentioned may change phosphate levels. I also agree with the advice you gave the OP to reduce his phosphate level via water changes, GFO and reducing import. His levels are only slightly elevated and the remedies you suggested will surely help him.

 

[Newjimky]

0.3 is through the roof?

Sam exact thing I thought .through the roof @.3 lol? Through the roof is .90 maxed out lol

 

[Lavey29]

Sam exact thing I thought .through the roof @.3 lol? Through the roof is .90 maxed out lol

They say don't chase numbers. I'm at .41 and tank is thriving so even if you're at .90 it just depends how your tank is responding. Lots of beautiful tanks with high nutrients levels but they seem to be primarily very mature established systems that have balanced out at those levels

 

[BeanAnimal]

They say don't chase numbers. I'm at .41 and tank is thriving so even if you're at .90 it just depends how your tank is responding. Lots of beautiful tanks with high nutrients levels but they seem to be primarily very mature established systems that have balanced out at those levels

Rapid changes are often more of a problem than the actual numbers of many things.

Stable phosphate levels that high does not usually come overnight. The same with hyper/hypo salinity. When it happens over months, or YEARS - things acclimate/adapt very gradually. Growth or color or other health parameters may not be ideal, but they are often not terrible either.

 

[Lavey29]

Rapid changes are often more of a problem than the actual numbers of many things.

Stable phosphate levels that high does not usually come overnight. The same with hyper/hypo salinity. When it happens over months, or YEARS - things acclimate/adapt very gradually. Growth or color or other health parameters may not be ideal, but they are often not terrible either.

Curious about your statement that you have done no water changes for 5 years. Do you have sand substrate or bare bottom? If sand do you move it around like with a turkey baster or just leave it be?

 

[BeanAnimal]

Curious about your statement that you have done no water changes for 5 years. Do you have sand substrate or bare bottom? If sand do you move it around like with a turkey baster or just leave it be?

The system started with a shallow (medium?) sand bed - maybe 2" or so. During the worst of the phosphate mess I siphoned a good bit of it out, to maybe 1" average depth.

The rock work sits on this sand, but most of the front of the tank is currently bare and the right back corner (a triangle shape maybe with maybe 12" x 12" legs slopes upward to the corner from 1" deep under the rocks to maybe 6" deep in the corner. A tiny DSB I guess.

This was not on purpose, but just 10 years of natural currents depositing sand in the corner. I do not disturb the sand. The system currently has a LOT of algae. No skimmer for at least 6 years, no water changes or GFO, or dosing etc. A scopas tang and a coral beauty, both 10-12 years old I would guess. Some LPS and leathers and mushrooms and zoas. No SPS left. I did not feed more than maybe 4-6 times a year... they are healthy and happy and live off of the algae. I just added a Reef Octo regal skimmer and Chemipure Elite and going to remove most of the algae and get back into SPS.

 

[geosReef]

I have about 150+lbs of rock some some Fiji, macro, rock from the keys, and Caribbean rocks from PetSmart(my first 50lbs) i cured 100+lbs with bleach and muaratic acid before starting the cycle( was in Rodi for a month before starting the cycle yes I made sure it didn’t have any phosphates or nitrates or chlorine, phosphates were around 0.02 nitrates 0.00) i have a 200G system. I feed mysis and algea wafers once a day and reef every energy once a week I don’t have that many corals and I blend phyto and reef energy with reef roids and direct feed once every two weeks. I was also dealing with hair algea for 2 months with undetectable nitrates and phosphates. My phosphates spiked I started dosing kalk. I check phosphates and nitrates on my clean water and it’s always between 0.00 0.01 as of now since they have spike hair algae is GONE. Also how does ph affect phosphate? I just purchase a gfo reactor should be coming in this week

 

[areefer01]

Lanthanum Chloride (IMHO) should never be used with fish (esp Zebrasoma Tangs). There is no safe way to use it. Free lanthanum in the system is pretty much inevitable and it appears to collect around the gills, where it reacts and harms the fish. The lower the phosphates in the system, the more the chance of free LaCl...

Caution should be used and prior to one should try to understand why the phosphates are high and if it even matters. That is another subject all together but to say there is no safe way to use it is a bit misleading. You can use it safely and people do. Drip/dosing into a skimmer being the safest. Slief over on RC has a good post on how to use it as does Thales. Is it the right tool to use here? Probably not.

TL; DR to the OP are you sure the phosphate number is the cause? Also there are several ways to lower but if you don't understand how it is at that number reducing it will only be short term and more than likely climb right back up.

 

[BeanAnimal]

I have about 150+lbs of rock some some Fiji, macro, rock from the keys, and Caribbean rocks from PetSmart(my first 50lbs) i cured 100+lbs with bleach and muaratic acid before starting the cycle( was in Rodi for a month before starting the cycle yes I made sure it didn’t have any phosphates or nitrates or chlorine, phosphates were around 0.02 nitrates 0.00) i have a 200G system. I feed mysis and algea wafers once a day and reef every energy once a week I don’t have that many corals and I blend phyto and reef energy with reef roids and direct feed once every two weeks. I was also dealing with hair algea for 2 months with undetectable nitrates and phosphates. My phosphates spiked I started dosing kalk. I check phosphates and nitrates on my clean water and it’s always between 0.00 0.01 as of now since they have spike hair algae is GONE. Also how does ph affect phosphate? I just purchase a gfo reactor should be coming in this week

How long have phosphates been that high. Timeline maybe of levels?

 

[BeanAnimal]

Caution should be used and prior to one should try to understand why the phosphates are high and if it even matters. That is another subject all together but to say there is no safe way to use it is a bit misleading. You can use it safely and people do. Drip/dosing into a skimmer being the safest. Slief over on RC has a good post on how to use it as does Thales. Is it the right tool to use here? Probably not.

TL; DR to the OP are you sure the phosphate number is the cause? Also there are several ways to lower but if you don't understand how it is at that number reducing it will only be short term and more than likely climb right back up.

Very respectfully - I do not agree (at all), as I have stated above. You may feel it is safe, I do not and do not feel that saying so is misleading. I feel that at the levels "safe" enough in a small system (less than 5K-10K gallons) those micro levels are not effective and GFO or other traditional means are better. Moreover, the lower the phosphate levels become, the more dangerous the LaCl becomes. I see hundreds of threads with people giving LaCl advice, and most of it is insanely wrong.

I am not new to LaCl or dosing methods and am very familiar with the old posts on RC regarding the subject (I had over 20K posts there when I stepped away 7-8 years ago, more than anybody on the site).

I was one of the very early adopters/testers, long before there were ANY products being sold to this hobby. I had talked to Joe Yaiullo not long after we hosted MACNA here in 2007. I think we had him here for a club meeting. A few years later his method become more widely known (I think due to a TOTM article and or an interview with Mark Levenson or somebody). I fiddled with it on and off for 2+ years, part of which I was a proponent if "used safely". The more I fiddled with it, the more unsafe I realized that it was.

Can it be used safely? Maybe - are most people using it doing it "safely" - not by a long shot from everything I read.

That is my two cents, take it leave it.

 

[areefer01]

Very respectfully - I do not agree (at all), as I have stated above.

Respectfully or not, no worry. Disagreements are fine. I'm sure in the hell not going to stomp my size 12 shoe, rip out my overflow box, and change designs because we disagree.

 

[907_Reefer]

0.3 is through the roof?

I was gonna say.. My tank has been running at 0.6, I do weekly 15% water changes. We also just moved the tank and replaced the entire sand bed, 0.38 a few days later. I'm like, sweet!

 

[Lavey29]

I was gonna say.. My tank has been running at 0.6, I do weekly 15% water changes. We also just moved the tank and replaced the entire sand bed, 0.38 a few days later. I'm like, sweet!

You removed the phosphates that were bonded in the sandbed that continually leach into the water column.

 

[907_Reefer]

You removed the phosphates that were bonded in the sandbed that continually leach into the water column.

Yep! I expected that, and it was nice to see a drop. Just wanted to share the experience. Now my 90 lbs live rock however, are also quite the PO4 host..

 

[gbroadbridge]

No it is not. It illustrates that his system has sequestered phosphate, not the OPs or mine, etc. It is fully system dependent as the conversation above illustrates. The generalities that are passed along in this hobby as "rules of thumb" or "simple fact" are often far from the truth.

How long was the system at the higher phosphate? How porous is the substrate and rock? How much of that substrate and rock are there. How long was the system at the higher phosphate level? What is the system volume and what is driving the phosphate to begin with. The list of variable is long.

We are way off topic. But those are some of the questions that the OP could answer. If I were him, I would start with regular water changes combined with GFO as well as identify ways to reduce the import to begin with. Is there a skimmer and how is it tuned/sized? Etc.

Wondered if you were the same animal as the critter on RCentral. Been a while since you were actively posting.

Science and Tech of reefs has exploded in the past few years, particularly during COVID but much has changed especially in experimental science tracking tank inputs/outputs.

Stuff that was written in stone a decade ago has since been discovered to actually have been written on Sandstone.

In terms of PO4, if you have water column levels of .03, if it is stable for a week, it will be at equilibrium with the level stored in the carbonate reservoirs such as rocks and substrate, which is why the simple statement that you can simply perform a water change to lower the level is more like to be false than true.

The answer to the OP's post is simply to use GFO, and over time, which may be a while, the levels will decline.

I think we all agree on that