Seaklear Lanthanum dilution

[Saintnovakai]

Hey Randy. I have a question that I'm sure many people might have posed to themselves.

How do we dilute Seaklear Pool Lanthanum to Phosphate RX-ish strength?

I have a huge bottle that I want to be more accurate with and since the RX has specific instructions to its strength, I'd like to bring some down to those levels.

Brightwell also makes a similar product too. How do I dilute and how much?

 

[tehmadreefer]

It depends on your water volume and amount of po4, thus you have to experiment then watch it closely as once po4 is taken out you have to adjust your doses.

Or just use a few drops of undiluted into an overflow.

My 180 I started with the 1ml to one gallon of rodi, but since just put 1 drop undiluted to the overflow. Again every tank.is different and seaklear is extremely strong so be careful. Start very small doses and test.

 

[Saintnovakai]

It depends on your water volume and amount of po4, thus you have to experiment then watch it closely as once po4 is taken out you have to adjust your doses.

Or just use a few drops of undiluted into an overflow.

My 180 I started with the 1ml to one gallon of rodi, but since just put 1 drop undiluted to the overflow. Again every tank.is different and seaklear is extremely strong so be careful. Start very small doses and test.

Using Seaklear isn't the problem as I dose then test, dose then test but it would be waaaay easier if we could dilute it to a known strength that would be standard for all tanks just as Phos RX does. This way we have a standard drops to gallon formula.

Reason being is that I've known Seaklear to work overly well at some instances than others. Because I have to use a gallon bottle with a few drops to dose, sometimes I end up stripping more than I need to even with 1or 2 drops for my tank size. That thing is wicked!

Sooo....let's dilute. I want to use one of my old API bottles with the diluted solution to just do a drop or two into the overflow and never have to worry about watching the gallon bottle and it's drip rate over long periods.

 

[Saintnovakai]

Anyone?

 

[EmdeReef]

Anyone?

I don’t have a bottle of seaklear handy but I think they used to include the potency?

It wouldn’t be too hard to calculate, with some margin of error, how much to dilute to remove x amount of phosphate.

 

[Saintnovakai]

I don’t have a bottle of seaklear handy but I think they used to include the potency?

It wouldn’t be too hard to calculate, with some margin of error, how much to dilute to remove x amount of phosphate.

Im a language person. I hear math and I run the other way. Lol. In all seriousness though. Do we know the concentration of Phosphate RX? If we did we could dilute easily. How can we test this?

 

[EmdeReef]

Im a language person. I hear math and I run the other way. Lol. In all seriousness though. Do we know the concentration of Phosphate RX? If we did we could dilute easily. How can we test this?

Can you post the pic of the label where they state how much phosphate seaklear removes?

 

[Saintnovakai]

Can you post the pic of the label where they state how much phosphate seaklear removes?

Yup. Here we go!

 

[EmdeReef]

I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine but

based on the table, 0.15ml will reduce phosphate by around 0.13ppm in 50 gal of water.

I’m not chemist but It’s a bit more complicated than that which is why usually these products give somewhat directional instructions.

 

[roberthu526]

Using Seaklear isn't the problem as I dose then test, dose then test but it would be waaaay easier if we could dilute it to a known strength that would be standard for all tanks just as Phos RX does. This way we have a standard drops to gallon formula.

Reason being is that I've known Seaklear to work overly well at some instances than others. Because I have to use a gallon bottle with a few drops to dose, sometimes I end up stripping more than I need to even with 1or 2 drops for my tank size. That thing is wicked!

Sooo....let's dilute. I want to use one of my old API bottles with the diluted solution to just do a drop or two into the overflow and never have to worry about watching the gallon bottle and it's drip rate over long periods.

Well it’s not hard at all. I myself don’t dilute when dosing. I just test before dosing then count how many drops I dosed, then after 12 hours I test again. Calculate the difference then divide by the number of drops I dosed to get how much phosphate each drop binds. Pretty straight forward.

 

[Saintnovakai]

So 0.15ml is 3 drops approx. So 3 drops to lower to 0.13ppm in 50g. Issue is that I put it into my overflow and it gets mixed down into a 5 micron filter sock. I think for such a short trip the lanthanum would leave the sock before it completely reacts and become flocculant outside the sock. I don't want that at all. This is why I wanted to reduce its potency to super weak but not have to dilute the drop or two into a gallon container and wait for it to drip for a long time so it doesn't drop levels too fast.

 

[EmdeReef]

So 0.15ml is 3 drops approx. So 3 drops to lower to 0.13ppm in 50g. Issue is that I put it into my overflow and it gets mixed down into a 5 micron filter sock. I think for such a short trip the lanthanum would leave the sock before it completely reacts and become flocculant outside the sock. I don't want that at all. This is why I wanted to reduce its potency to super weak but not have to dilute the drop or two into a gallon container and wait for it to drip for a long time so it doesn't drop levels too fast.

You can mix it up in any quantity of RODI and dose slowly.

 

[Saintnovakai]

That's what I currently do but I must be honest, it's so much easier to drop two or three drops of Phosphate RX into the overflow and forget about. Lol!

I only have about 55g total. Guess I'll just do some math. Any idea if lanthanum degrades after being mixed? I'd calculate the 0.13 down to the 10g to .5ppm as Po4RX and bottle it out into my old API bottles then easy peezy. This way I can give my dad and a few of my reefer buddies here in Jamaica some help when they need a Phosphate solution.

 

[Larry L]

based on the table, 0.15ml will reduce phosphate by around 0.13ppm in 50 gal of water.

I'm not sure what part of the table to trust. The last two columns are not consistent with the first four.

 

[EmdeReef]

I'm not sure what part of the table to trust. The last two columns are not consistent with the first four.

Lanthanum will precipitate as lanthanum phosphate and carbonate (which is why we see a drop in alkalinity). In simple terms, not all of dosed lanthanum will bind phosphates. That’s why it’s a bit of a trial and error when dosing.

Randy wrote a much better explanation of this if you search the forum for lanthanum.

 

[Larry L]

Lanthanum will precipitate as lanthanum phosphate and carbonate (which is why we see a drop in alkalinity). In simple terms, not all of dosed lanthanum will bind phosphates. That’s why it’s a bit of a trial and error when dosing.

Understood, was just pointing out that if you use that table like @EmdeReef did to figure out a dosage, you'll get very different values if you use the numbers in the first four columns as opposed to using the ones in the last two.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I’d only use a table as a rough starting guide, same as using gfo or any other phosphate binder.

 

[roberthu526]

So 0.15ml is 3 drops approx. So 3 drops to lower to 0.13ppm in 50g. Issue is that I put it into my overflow and it gets mixed down into a 5 micron filter sock. I think for such a short trip the lanthanum would leave the sock before it completely reacts and become flocculant outside the sock. I don't want that at all. This is why I wanted to reduce its potency to super weak but not have to dilute the drop or two into a gallon container and wait for it to drip for a long time so it doesn't drop levels too fast.

I never used filter socks. I just dose directly into the sump and it gets skimmed out. I dose a small amount and every 2-3 days the phosphate level drops 0.01
I always play it slow which is probably why I have not run into any side effects.

 

[TheReeferer]

Have the same question now that I have a bottle of the exact same SeaKlear stuff as OP.
I guess the hard thing is either Phosphate RX or SeaKlear publish their concentrations?

 

[TheReeferer]

about to run out of the phosphaeRX which is like driping $$$ into the toilet. Have a bottle of sea O’Leary ready to go. Anyone on the dilution equation?