What is a long term plan to deal with PO4?

[Biglurr54]

My tank is about 3.5 years old. I have nice growth and colors. Ive stopped testing Nitrate and Po4 because things are good. Occasionally I get curious what my levels are. I tested and i have 0.45 po4 My nitrates are staying at 5 -10. I do 5gallons a day water changes (220g system) and I run an Algae reactor that I havent harvested in months. Im looking for a long term Phosphate reducer.

Normally, when Po4 climbs like this on me, i throw some GFO in a reactor and call it a day. Sometimes i will also do a couple of big water changes to lower it a bit as well. Im not a fan of constantly changing out GFO and cycling the po4. Is there anything that is a steady po4 remover that I can match to the amount the tank creates so I can hold my Po4 at a given level?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

There are lots of ways, but I'd be wary of messing with it and causing a problem.

Growing macroalgae and GFO are certainly fine ways.

 

[PatW]

Your tank looks great.

I run nitrates far lower BUT every system is different and if it ain’t broken, don’t fixit.

The phosphates are pretty high. But your go to strategy of pounding it down with GFO and water changes seems to be working.

I have used chaeto in a refugium effectively for reducing both phosphate and nitrate. It can flourish and then go bust. It needs a pile of light. And it seems to need micronutrients for long term success. Adding micronutrients is not that hard but it does not FEEL RIGHT to dose something when you can’t measure the levels.

Another possibility is a turf algae scrubber. I don’t know if that runs into issues with micronutrients or not.

Or you could use Lanthanum Chloride to remove phosphate. It works pretty well and it is easy to track especially if you add it upstream of a filter sock. I have not found a decent inexpensive source of it.

 

[Biglurr54]

I have issue with my charro regularly. If I dose cheatogro it grows great. When I stop, it stops growing. I have plans to build a big fuge over the winter. Then I can dose the cheato gro as needed by look.

I ran an ats on a different tank and it worked well but was a pain to constantly clean. One time after cleaning, I forgot to turn the water back on to the ats. It died and it was 2 months before it really came back.

I agree that it's not a problem now but I feel like it's a mounting problems and the major po4 swings from my current attack plan of water changes and gfo seems wrong to me.