Battling phosphate and gfo

frankieg2293 · Mar 8, 2023

I have been battling phosphate for months,
Main reason I think is I got a used tank a year and a half ago.. and I reused all the sand and rock from last owner. I may have been able to reuse rock but I know I screwed up using the sand.
anyways. I’m in this now, so I have been using GFO in a reactor. And it’s not helping as much as I’d like.
is there a more efficient way to battle this.? My phos hovers around .08- 2.0 ppm I’d really like to keep it lower for obvious reasons.
maybe I should replace sand? Or maybe there is a chemical option?

Viking_Reefing · Mar 8, 2023

Vacuum out all the gunk from the sandbed will be step one. Removing it might cause more issues now that it’s there.

However, there must be something wrong with the implementation of the GFO. Either not using enough or the wrong setup. GFO can easily strip all the po4 out of the system in no time at all.

Dennis Cartier · Mar 8, 2023

frankieg2293 said:
I have been battling phosphate for months,
Main reason I think is I got a used tank a year and a half ago.. and I reused all the sand and rock from last owner. I may have been able to reuse rock but I know I screwed up using the sand.
anyways. I’m in this now, so I have been using GFO in a reactor. And it’s not helping as much as I’d like.
is there a more efficient way to battle this.? My phos hovers around .08- 2.0 ppm I’d really like to keep it lower for obvious reasons.
maybe I should replace sand? Or maybe there is a chemical option?

It depends if the range you have in your post is accurate (0.08 - 2.0 ppm). I suspect you might have misplaced the decimal and really mean 0.2 ppm. If so, it really is 0.2 ppm, then GFO is probably the easiest method to employ.

For higher PO4 levels, than Lanthanum Chloride (LaCl) becomes much cheaper and easier to use for bringing down PO4. However it does come with risks to your livestock if appropriate measures are not employed. I strongly suggest reading the various threads on using Lanthanum before contemplating using it to be informed of the risks and how to mitigate them.

gbroadbridge · Mar 8, 2023

frankieg2293 said:
I have been battling phosphate for months,
Main reason I think is I got a used tank a year and a half ago.. and I reused all the sand and rock from last owner. I may have been able to reuse rock but I know I screwed up using the sand.
anyways. I’m in this now, so I have been using GFO in a reactor. And it’s not helping as much as I’d like.
is there a more efficient way to battle this.? My phos hovers around .08- 2.0 ppm I’d really like to keep it lower for obvious reasons.
maybe I should replace sand? Or maybe there is a chemical option?

Phosphate binds to carbonate surfaces such as rock and substrate.
They can act as a reservoir for an awful lot of Phosphate.

The GFO is working fine, but as quickly as it is removing phosphate more is being released from the reservoir.
You simply need to keep it up and it will slowly reduce, which may take many months.

You could use Lanthanum Chloride as others have pointed out. It works by precipitating the phosphate out of solution and then the precipitate needs to be mechanically removed using very fine filter socks. If not removed it will pollute the tank.

Another alternative is an Aluminium Oxide based Phosphate remover such as Phosguard.
Personally, I would use that in preference to Lanthanum Chloride.

frankieg2293 · Mar 8, 2023

Dennis Cartier said:
It depends if the range you have in your post is accurate (0.08 - 2.0 ppm). I suspect you might have misplaced the decimal and really mean 0.2 ppm. If so, it really is 0.2 ppm, then GFO is probably the easiest method to employ.

For higher PO4 levels, than Lanthanum Chloride (LaCl) becomes much cheaper and easier to use for bringing down PO4. However it does come with risks to your livestock if appropriate measures are not employed. I strongly suggest reading the various threads on using Lanthanum before contemplating using it to be informed of the risks and how to mitigate them.

I did misplace. Decimal

Kapachuka3 · Mar 8, 2023

Try using phosguard, put the bag back in the filter and keep it in there until the phosphate levels go down. I have the same problem and this worked for me.