Phosphates are zeroing out every day, a few specific questions

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

randy, any idea which type of P is necessary for our creatures?

All photosynthetic organisms are likely to be able to use inorganic phosphate. Organic forms vary and most may be usable by some organisms (by those organisms that eat foods). Think of organic phosphate like fish food. It needs to be digested before the phosphate becomes available for use.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

This article of mine describes the different types of phosphate and how it is used in the ocean, etc.

Phosphate in the Reef Aquarium

The phosphorus atom is one of living matter's basic building blocks. It is present in every living creature and in every reef aquarium's water. Unfortunately, it is often present in excess in reef aquaria, and that excess has the potential to cause at least two substantial problems for...

www.reefedition.com

 

[living_tribunal]

So some good news.

I just completed a 3 day blackout with the typical Dino combat routine.

It looks like most all of it is gone but more importantly, my phosphates held up for an entire 24 hours. Yesterday, my phosphates ended at .07. Today when I measured they were at .03. That’s with no dosing.

There’s a strong chance that there were a lot of phosphates being released from the Dino. So the real test will be how they hold up now that the lights are back on.

I believe that the rock may be much closer to saturation and I’m a lot closer to being able to maintain phosphates with just my clowns, feeding my coral, and soon my new wrasse and blenny adding to poop.

I’m going to just dose .03 phosphate in the morning and see how it holds up for the next week or so.

I really appreciate all of the help everyone. I would have been very lost had it not been for @Randy Holmes-Farley and everyone else’s help.

 

[ReefEngineer]

Thank you living_tribunal for sharing, and continuing to share, your experience. Your timing is incredible given my situation with dinos and my tank's ability to consume high amounts of NeoPhos in short periods of time. At this point I'm only able to keep my phosphate level above zero by allowing my skimmer cup to drain back into the sump. It could be the rock and sand absorbing the NeoPhos but I'm beginning to suspect it's related to the dinos or the bacteria I've been adding (to combat the dinos) more and more.

Any new developments?

 

[SCHAULJ]

Good read! I have a similar issue right now. 6 month old Reefer 350. 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates. I have an ugly bacteria growing on the rock/sand bed...pretty confident its dinos. I was looking at ordering brightwell NeoNitro and NeoPhos and dosing both to detectable levels. Any issues in dosing both or should i just dose one - if so which one? Think im going to turn my skimmer off during the day and let it run at night only as well...

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

@Randy Holmes-Farley - always enjoyed your articles!

 

[Chris Villalobos]

I used to have pretty low PO4 measurements but never completely zero using the Hanna Low Range Phos meter. One day I accidentally added way too much PO4 and my tank sucked it up! I thought maybe it was being sequestered by the new sand I had added but I have never seen a spike in my tested PO4 since.

I've dosed 0.2PPM PO4 per day for almost a year now and my tested PO4 is always around 0.03 to 0.07 PPM. I dose 0.1PPM in the morning and 0.1PPM in the evening. I can't believe how much PO4 my tank uses. Before I started dosing both NO3 and PO4 my results with SPS coral were terrible and I constantly had Dino and Cyano problems. Ever since I started dosing any hard coral I add seems to thrive and I haven't had a Dino outbreak since.

 

[SCHAULJ]

Chris thanks for sharing your experience! If i purchased Brightwells Neophos and begin dosing until my Hannah ULR checker registered .02-.03 would that naturally fix my zero nitrate problem as well? Is having 0 nitrates w/ .02ish phosphates acceptable? Just trying to better understand the science in this tank! It might be best if I purchase both products and use both to achieve desired levels - say Nitrate 1-2ppm, phosphate .02ppm or so.

 

[Chris Villalobos]

Chris thanks for sharing your experience! If i purchased Brightwells Neophos and begin dosing until my Hannah ULR checker registered .02-.03 would that naturally fix my zero nitrate problem as well? Is having 0 nitrates w/ .02ish phosphates acceptable? Just trying to better understand the science in this tank! It might be best if I purchase both products and dos both to desired levels.

Dosing Nitrate is interesting. You can have zero tested inorganic Nitrogen but have loads of organic Nitrogen floating around in your tank that is not testable using hobby grade test kits. I've done a bunch of testing using Triton's NDOC tests and when I had Dino problems I had almost zero Nitrate but "5PPM or more worth of Nitrate" locked in organic forms of Nitrogen in my tank. I think it was partially due to overfeeding.

If it was my tank I would dose Nitrate to around 1PPM or so and also make sure I wasn't overfeeding by using a NDOC tests. Now my NDOC's come back with Nitrogen mostly in Nitrate form. Like I said my tank has never looked better.

 

[html]

pure rain water the best phosphate source

 

[html]

I do prefer brightwell for nutrients for sure. Much easier over all.

I think my aim with this thread though is to really figure out what in the world is going on.

I’ve been dosing phosphate like crazy and it’s had no impact other than feeding whatever is sucking my nutrients.

I’ve really been stressing on how I should approach this situation. I can’t seem to find anything similar online either.

remove filters or stop skimmer

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Solid discussion!

 

[Dal-Reef]

Solid discussion!

I agree learned a lot reading this one.. Thanks for putting your self out there for us all to learn living_tribunal

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

pure rain water the best phosphate source

Huh? Seems uncontrolled at best.

Phosphorus in rainwater: Partitioning inputs and impact on the surface coastal ocean

Error - Cookies Turned Off

aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

from it:

"Preliminary results showed a high temporal variability in total concentration (0.05–4.3 mmol/liter ). "

 

[ReefEngineer]

@living_tribunal How has your tank been doing lately?

 

[ReefEngineer]

bump

 

[Mykawl]

I commented way back suggesting to dose 5ppm, 1ppm would be much safer and still a quick way to maybe reach “equilibrium” with the rock.

High pO4 seems not to be an urgent threat. My tank had this problem and i didn’t feel like waiting weeks to fix it. I way overdosed to around 10 ppm haha, honestly left it for a couple days then some big water changes and gfo(phosguard) to bring it down to 2 and now it stays under .25.

Honestly I have no idea if the rock absorbed any during that saturation period. I do know phosphate is detectable now and again stays under .25

No animals or corals were harmed during this : ) lol

on a related note I think a much easier answer to nutrient deprivation is more fish or less filtration intensity/duration

 

[Mykawl]

There was a comment made earlier I’m also curious about saying if this is normal for dry rock tanks why don’t others report this more or maybe I just haven’t come across that conversation.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

There was a comment made earlier I’m also curious about saying if this is normal for dry rock tanks why don’t others report this more or maybe I just haven’t come across that conversation.

it is very common when dosing phosphate to not see the expected rise. In many cases, folks probably assume organisms used it, but calcium carbonate binding will be in play too.

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

What is a safe target to raise p04 per day? I'm trying to get to 0.08-0.1 and it's currently around 0.01-0.02 I'm using potassium phosphate mixed at a ratio of 0.75tsp per 500ml. So on my system 23gal 1.3ml dose would raise it to 0.08 can I dose this or start a little lower and try to raise it a little first?

 

[acesfull44]

I’ll look into this for sure. I’m also considering oyster feast as it apparently has phosphorous in it.

I started using Oyster Feast and my phosphates when from 0 - .13 (measured by Hanna ULR checker) in less than a week.