The secret to phosphates???‍♀️

[GlassMunky]

Those tanks are long established and have sufficient orthophosphate present. (Not the inorganic po4 shown in a test kit.) Younger, dry Cycled tanks take years to come close.

Yea and no real information about this system was given.

Was it dry rock, was it live rock, how long was it setup? None of that was stated so you’re just making assumptions the same way I did.

 

[I never finish anythi]

Yea and no real information about this system was given.

Was it dry rock, was it live rock, how long was it setup? None of that was stated so you’re just making assumptions the same way I did.

He says the tank has been running 1 ¹/² years

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Regardless of any other information, if phosphate is correctly reading as undetectable, there is no drawback and possibly significant upside to raising it to about 0.03 to 0.1 ppm.

How low it actually is, and thus how much urgency there may be to do so, depends on how he measured it, which I do not see discussed.

 

[Bramzor]

Why can’t I get phosphates to stick in my tank? I dose neo phos, feed extra, no water changes and I can’t get them to register. Now I have cyano taking over. I’m scared to do a water change or chemi clean because I’m scared the Dino’s will move in. Any suggestions?? I’ve attached my weekly testing results.

Had the exact same issue. Was dosing a crazy amount of PO4, took a week or more to finally see something show up on the Hanna checker followed by GHA everywhere and it went back to 0 with a ton of algae.

My advise, don’t dose any PO4 that will show up on a PO4 tester because you will try chasing a number and crash your tank.

I had great succes with Plus-NP from Tropic Marin. Is a product that tries to balance N and P by dosing a carbon source to lower N and P while adding N and P at the same time. Resulting in N and P in the tank for the corals and the type that will not end up in rocks or algae. Will also take a long time to show up on the tester but stopped testing it frequently since I know there is always some Phosphate available in the tank.

 

[ronsonb]

My tank is about to hit 1year and started with dry rock and I too battled bottoming out phosphates. Reading on here, thanks to Randy, I used loudwolf trisodium phosphate and actually wound up dosing to .15ppm target at the end to keep it from bottoming out if I missed a day to avoid dinos etc. It took a while and more dosing that I thought to get it to saturate. In hindsight I wish I dosed more earlier because this took a few weeks to do and that seems silly in hindsight.

In the beginning dosing enough to ~.05ppm each day would just result in .00ppm the next day. Granted I did end up with some GHA in the process (could have been new tank uglies could have been related I cant say for sure) but I finally have a stable phosphate reading and things have started to look way better since.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

My advise, don’t dose any PO4 that will show up on a PO4 tester because you will try chasing a number and crash your tank.

Sorry, but that sentence does not make sense, and it certainly is not true that properly dosing sodium phosphate will crash your tank.

 

[Tired]

Excess phosphate isn't going to crash your tank unless you dump the whole bottle in. At worst you'll get some ticked-off corals and an algae bloom- certainly not a crash.

 

[rtparty]

Plenty of tanks run without phosphates.

False. Phosphorous is essential to life. Some systems may run with no detectable phosphates (test kit error or detection level error usually) but none run without phosphates entirely.

 

[GlassMunky]

False. Phosphorous is essential to life. Some systems may run with no detectable phosphates (test kit error or detection level error usually) but none run without phosphates entirely.

 

[rtparty]

False information is going to be called out

 

[GlassMunky]

False information is going to be called out

dude youre just being a troll to be a troll. go kick rocks.
you obviously knew what i meant since you even said it yourself (undetectable levels) . stop being the word police. you look like a doouche

 

[jda]

Your corals and things need phosphorous, not phosphate. The things in your tank can get phosphorous from many more places that what a phosphate test kit can measure.

If you are getting a near-zero reading with a good tool like Hannah Ultra Low, then adding some might be a good idea. If not using Hannah or Hach or some other good tool, then you could have a fine amount and just not be able to detect it.

 

[jda]

Since phosphate is the end results of many other types and forms of phosphorous, the only reason that I can think of to have po4 at a detectable level is to show that you are not phosphate deficient. Even if you do show no phosphates on a test kit, you still could have plenty of phosphorous.

For example, Hannah shows between 1 and 3 ppb in my tank most of the time (sometimes up to 5 on occasion). Using a Hach total P test kit, I have between 8 and 10 times more phosphorous than what the Hannah can measure. Some might think that 1 ppb of po4 is too low, but nobody would say that 8 to 30 ppb of P is low - same tank, different ways to test.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

the only reason that I can think of to have po4 at a detectable level is to show that you are not phosphate deficient.

Which, IMO, is a pretty good reason.

I obviously agree that showing none for nitrate and phosphate may still be OK since the ocean is typically quite low, but then one is relying on other means of attaining N or P which may not be as easy to quantify.

 

[jda]

I agree too. I have come to realize that people like numbers more than logic, reason or what they are seeing with their eyes... they like to see 0.10 on a po4 test kit and feel better than having 0.005, feeding kilos of food a week and everything looks great in their tank and is growing.

 

[Miami Reef]

I decided that I like my nutrients very low because I like the colors of ULN better. I also feel better knowing that calcification is likely faster than high PO4 levels, although there are many conflicting studies about growth and P.

If color and growth wasn’t a concern, I would run much higher PO4 levels. I’ve seen acros in higher nutrient tanks, but I prefer the lower levels.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I decided that I like my nutrients very low because I like the colors of ULN better. I also feel better knowing that calcification is likely faster than high PO4 levels, although there are many conflicting studies about growth and P.

If color and growth wasn’t a concern, I would run much higher PO4 levels. I’ve seen acros in higher nutrient tanks, but I prefer the lower levels.

Do you add any particulate foods for corals, or dissolved organic phosphate compounds?

 

[jda]

Not ULN. Just natural. ULN is below natural seawater levels, IMO. ZeoVit and the other practices that coined the terms like ULN used media and chemicals to get below NSW levels.

 

[Miami Reef]

Do you add any particulate foods for corals, or dissolved organic phosphate compounds?

I just keep a lot of fish and feed them once a day. I only feed frozen, so there are lots of particulates.

My nutrients tend to jump quick if I don’t use GFO and Carbon dosing. I am pretty confident my tank will never become nutrient starved.

Jda, my phosphates range from 0ppb to 8ppb at most. It’s mostly at 0ppb lately. I strive to keep my nitrates bone clear with vodka. If I stop dosing for one-two days, nitrates will become detectable (slight pink).

 

[Cpc83]

@Randy Holmes-Farley could answer this better my opinion and mine only is neonitro forsure and probably neophos will throw off other chemistry. Neo nitro raises alk, what neophos raises or lowers as a result of use idk. Ive always struggled to maintian a sub .3 phos level and have any registerable nitrate if i get phos low nitrate is not detectable.